Why I love Kurt Vonnegut

[adorshki]

Came across this on Google Quora, thought it worthy of sharing:

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:

“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!"

Kurt Vonnegut

 

[Stuball48]

Al:
Best read of 2023, so far and the word guitar or Guild is not mentioned.

I am biased, being a retired high school teacher, after being in the classroom 40 years and married to a high school English teacher who retired with 36 years experience. I shared the read with her and she, immediately, began telling me about his books. One of her required books for her 11th grade Literature class was his "A Man Without A Country." She almost choked up talking about it. And I, absolutely, loved his advice to Ms. Lockwood's class. A+ for you!!!

 

[gjmalcyon]

Vonnegut's lyrics:

 

[Westerly Wood]

I also liked reading him in high school, I think it was Slaughterhouse 55. I am glad I had required reading like that in school when I was a kid. Actually, I think that was either 8th or 9th grade English class, don't remember. I do remember liking that book, as I am a terribly slow reader, it's freakin painful to read for me and my reading comprehension was sub par. But I always liked that book. I think Vonnegut, Salinger and Hemingway were my fave authors back then. Till I found Henry Miller, well, then I just rabbit holed his stuff like I did when I found The Who.

 

[Guildedagain]

I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

Yikes, one of the lizard people ;[]

Salinger

If you really want to know the truth ;[]

 

[Cougar]

Poo-tee-weet?

 

[davismanLV]

My personal favorite, full of wisdom and from more than just Vonnegut himself:

When Kurt Vonnegut was fifteen, he spent a month or so working on an archeological dig.

He once told a story of how he was talking to one of the archeologists one day over lunch and the archeologist was bombarding him with all of the typical getting to know you questions…

“Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject?”
Vonnegut told the archeologist that while he didn’t play any sports he was in theater, choir, played violin and piano and used to take art classes.

The archeologist was impressed.

“Wow. That’s amazing!”

To which Kurt Vonnegut responded…

“Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And this is where the archeologist said something to Kurt Vonnegut that Vonnegut would later say changed the trajectory of his thinking…

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

Here was how Vonnegut said the quote changed him…

“…I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

 

[Westerly Wood]

this is great:

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

 

[walrus]

Read all his books in high school and beyond. Very interesting style, very intelligent guy.

Love his cameo in "Back to School". Rodney has him write his paper for him, but the teacher hates it!

Warning - foul language.




walrus

 

[Rocky]

Hi-ho.
Boku-maru.

 

[Westerly Wood]

Read all his books in high school and beyond. Very interesting style, very intelligent guy.

Love his cameo in "Back to School". Rodney has him write his paper for him, but the teacher hates it!

Warning - foul language.




walrus

Rodney Dangerfield, just the best.
That movie was hysterical. The diving scenes alone.

Veer: Dangerfield was doing a scene in Caddyshack, like a full Rodney run, the cameras just rolling etc. He gets done and was immediately concerned cause no one there was laughing. He did not understand what happened. The director pulled him aside and said, no one is allowed to talk during filming etc...its' a movie. "quite on the set" ...

lol

 

[jp]

Also a huge Vonnegut fan here. As a young'un, I read and enjoyed a good part of his output and was thrilled to hear that my boys also became interested in him.

One of my writing mentors in college taught with him at the Iowa Writers' Conference and a had great story. After teaching classes, they often hung out with other visiting writers at a local bar, and the group once discussed how to best dull the artistic pain inside. They were going around stating suggestions:

"Alcohol doesn't do it."
"Nope," they would all reply.
"Marijuana doesn't do it."
Again, they all concurred, "Nope."
"Valium?" "Nah."
And then Vonnegut, who had been silent up until then, suddenly perked up with a sparkle in his eye, and stated "Now speed, . . . "

 

[Nuuska]

this is great:

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

A Not-So-Perfect Jack Of All Trades is better than A Perfect One-Trick-Pony ?

For me - at least more interesting

 

[shihan]

Great advice from Mr. V. I’ll try and keep that in mind while I’m torturing some poor song with my ‘all thumbs’ guitar style.
by coincidence, I just finished re-reading ‘Breakfast of Champions’. I was curious how it held up.
Very well, it turns out; still very relevant to today.

 

[adorshki]

A Not-So-Perfect Jack Of All Trades is better than A Perfect One-Trick-Pony ?

For me - at least more interesting

Funny, my Quora by-line is "Jack of Many Trades, Master of Some".

Great advice from Mr. V. I’ll try and keep that in mind while I’m torturing some poor song with my ‘all thumbs’ guitar style.
by coincidence, I just finished re-reading ‘Breakfast of Champions’. I was curious how it held up.
Very well, it turns out; still very relevant to today.

"Breakfast" contains my favorite Vonnegut parable:

“As for the story itself, it was entitled "The Dancing Fool." Like so many Trout stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate. Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub.”​

Personal favorite is probably "Cat's Cradle", also still relevant after all these years.

Anybody ever notice the Dead named their publishing company "Ice Nine Publishing"?

 

[Westerly Wood]

dancing fool:

 

[Rocky]

Personal favorite is probably "Cat's Cradle", also still relevant after all these years.

Anybody ever notice the Dead named their publishing company "Ice Nine Publishing"?

Inspired by his brother Bernard, who discovered silver iodide could be used for cloud seeding.

Bernard Vonnegut - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[adorshki]

Inspired by his brother Bernard, who discovered silver iodide could be used for cloud seeding.

Bernard Vonnegut - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"I did not know that!"

 

[bobouz]

Many thanks Al, for jogging so many memories.

 

[davismanLV]

And an excerpt from an interview with Kurt:

DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope.
KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
(Source: NOW on PBS, David Brancaccio interviews Kurt Vonnegut discussing his then newly published Book: 'A Man Without a Country' https://amzn.to/3HYOZeu)