Many years ago, I read a few of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. The one which struck me the most was “Slaughter House Five“, but I enjoyed the couple I read and I bought several more intending to complete more of his works. Well, life got in the way and I’ve never gotten around to them. I found a few of his quotes on another blog I subscribe to (and copied them to my own), but they tickled my fancy about getting back to the ones I’ve not read. “Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons” is one of those unread works. This is actually a terrific little book about science fiction, life, war, peace and honesty. I highly recommend it!! One story on Biafra was particularly touching; another (a SciFi story) on prolonged life was particularly frightening. As I said – highly recommended. And now I really do want to read several of his other works which have been sitting on my shelf for thirty odd years…

It’s a great collection of essays, reviews, an interview w/ Playboy Magazine, a fiction short story, and general observations about Humans. It’s Vonnegut, so it’s just outstanding because he’s a favorite of mine. :-)

Despite Kurt Vonnegut’s writing in this book’s forward that he doesn’t understand why anyone would be interested in what he has to say (“it was obvious to me that I had at least one thing in common with Joseph Conrad: English was my second language. Unlike Conrad, I had no first language, so I went to work on the transcript with pen and pencil and scissors and paste, to make it appear that speaking my native tongue and thinking about important matters came very easily to me”), his essays are as enlightening and entertaining as anything to be found in his fiction.
Unfortunately there is precious little of the former in print. We are however lucky to have this collection in which Vonnegut describes his time at the 1972 Republican Convention (dated only in that his subject is Richard Nixon. Close your eyes and you can easily imagine him describing the Republican party in 2018 when he writes “Mr. Nixon himself is a minor character in this book. He is the first President to hate the American people and all they stand for. He believes so vibrantly in his own purity, although he has committed crimes which are hideous, that I am bound to conclude that someone told him when he was very young that all serious crime was sexual, that no one could be a criminal who did not commit adultery or masturbate. He is a useful man in that he has shown us that our Constitution is a defective document, which makes a childlike assumption that we would never elect a President who disliked us so. So we must amend the Constitution in order that we can more easily eject such a person from office and even put him in jail.”), the Nigerian Civil War, the space program (“If a spaceship has been aloft for some time, and has splashed down safely, my neighbors may say something like, ‘Thank God’. They are grateful that the short-haired white athletes who went up in the pressure cooker were not killed. Interestingly, relief is expressed if a Russian cosmonaut comes home safely, too. It would seem wrong to my neighbors if the name of a defunct Communistic spaceman were mixed into the general body count in Vietnam, were mingled willy-nilly with the encouraging news of so-and-so many Communists killed that day. Body count”), Vietnam, writing, death (“When I think about my own death, I don’t console myself with the idea that my descendants and my books and all that will live on. Anybody with any sense knows that the whole solar system will go up like a celluloid collar by-and-by. I honestly believe, though, that we are wrong to think that moments go away, never to be seen again. This moment and every moment lasts forever”), a mass murderer his daughter met, and so much more.
His writing is a sparkling as his topics are eclectic. As with most of Vonnegut’s work after I put it down for the final time I feel blessed to have had opportunity to read him and sad that he is no longer here when we need him the most.

awww i really like him

"She found the world so marvelous, it seems to me, because she was so ravenous for marvels and because she was able to persuade herself and others that marvels were what they had seen."
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"If a person with a demonstrably ordinary mind, like mine, will devote himself to giving birth to a work of imagination, that work will turn tempt and tease that ordinary mind into cleverness."
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In this book of essays and commencement speeches, Vonnegut explores human nature and how we trick ourselves into believing in sometimes hollow things, cementing the conviction that our way is the right one.
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As Vonnegut admits, he has a way of wrapping the bitterest pills in a sugary coating, making this a poignant yet satisfying read. The chapters are short, and they pack a lot of feeling. Reflecting on the recent wars and other recent news events, Vonnegut is left with little hope for humanity, and yet he wants to believe. Indeed, he asserts that humanity is actually built to believe. But how easily this drive to believe can be persuaded into heinous action or inaction when the circumstances are right.
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This book offers an interesting look into a creative mind. Self effacing and yet extremely unapologetic in his opinions, Vonnegut can't help but laughing even though the world around him is not offering much levity. He longs for community as he believes we all do, but he mourns the fact that we can never go back to folk societies, or in other words, societies who are entirely dependent on each of their members, and whose members are all working towards the same goals and who all share the same knowledge.
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Despite this apparent dead-end that he perceives, Vonnegut is not without hope. He just seems to find hope in small things, like getting invited on vacations, aspiring to self improvement, or perhaps in books.

The standout article in this collection is Biafra: A People Betrayed. "Grandpa" Kurt goes full on serious and writes an achingly heartsick piece about the suffering of the Biafrans. Where we're used to his japery and bile venting, he is tender and compassionate towards this tiny fledgling nation, and I feel this has more impact than anything else in this volume.

I've kind of reached saturation point with his non-fiction, but then I think I've read most of it now. It's all excellent but I've read several of the anecdotes more than once now. I'm going to steer towards his fiction again, for a while.

It's a decent starting place if you haven't read any of his non-fiction before. You just have to remember that this collection was published in the early 70s. Do it, though! You won't regret it.

Wampeters--An object around which the lives of otherwise unrelated people revolve, e.g., The Holy Grail.
Foma--Harmless, comforting untruths, e.g., "Prosperity is just around the corner."
Granfalloons--A proud and meaningless association of human beings, e.g., The Veterans of Future Wars.

Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of essays, book reviews and speeches written over the years by Vonnegut. This review will contain a lot of excerpts, because I can think of no better way to clue any of you uninitiated in to just how wonderfully this man writes.

The book starts off with an essay entitled Science Fiction in which Vonnegut discusses the genre. When his first book, Player Piano, was published, he was surprised that reviewers referred to him as a "science fiction writer."

I didn't know that. I supposed that I was writing a novel about life, about things I could not avoid seeing and hearing in Schenectady, a very real town, awkwardly set in the gruesome now. I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "science fiction" ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
The way a person gets into this drawer, apparently, is to notice technology. The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and know how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city.

In Teaching the Unteachable, he recounts his time spent teaching writer's workshops.

I tried to help those good students become what they were born to become, and to avoid intimidating them with masterpieces written by great men much older than they were. In an alarming manner of speaking, I tried to reach into their mouths without being bitten or tripping their epiglottises. Again, in a manner of speaking, I wanted to take hold of the end of a spool of ticker tape in the back of each student's throat. I meant to pull it out inch by inch, so the student and I could read it.

There are several terrific addresses to various organizations, and a moving essay about Biafra, however, I found the 1973 Playboy interview to be the most interesting. Here Vonnegut talks off the cuff about the importance of family and community, war, the 1972 Presidential Election, and his writing.

VONNEGUT: What's happened to me, though, is a standard American business story. As I said, my family's always been in the arts, so the arts to me are business. I started out with a pushcart and now I've got several supermarkets at important intersections. My career grew just the way a well-managed business is supposed to grow. After twenty years at a greasy grind, I find that all my books are in print and selling steadily. They will go on selling for a little while. Computers and printing presses are in charge. That's the American way: If the machines can find a way to use you, you will become a successful businessman. I don't care much now whether the business grows or shrinks. My kids are grown. I have no fancy uses for money. It isn't a love symbol to me.

PLAYBOY: What is a love symbol for you?

VONNEGUT: Fudge is one.

As usual, the man leaves me with a big old smile on my face.

So full of interesting thoughts and insights. You get transported to America during the Vietnam War, to Biafra during its war, to the election of Nixon. But many of the ideas have even more punch today, in a merciless kind of way. It's a collection of essays, speeches and an interview, so it's not entirely even, but there are many, many parts that made me pause and think. What more could you want from a book?

If you've read Vonnegut, you won't be surprised at much of what he says in these short essays and writings. Still, it's interesting to read a somewhat unfiltered Vonnegut: to hear straight from him without the covering of plot and character and all that. There are still stories and plays and such but he speaks more directly. His a voice worth reading and contemplating, for sure.

With selections from V’s speeches, letters and articles from 1965 through 1973, this material is not exactly timely but is nonetheless engaging, honest and thought-provoking. It’s Vonnegut, so of course there is absurdity as well. How else do we deal with horrible things over which we have little control but to laugh at them? Never cheery laughter, but not entirely without hope. Although, I suppose “hope” is not the right word. Vonnegut is not hopeful. He’s seen how it all ends and is just trying to encourage the rest of us to be kind to one another as the world spirals down.

I had never heard, for instance, of the Soviet and West-supported suppression of the Republic of Biafra, which began and ended before my birth as West Africa’s first and only legitimate citizen-driven government in modern history. With Western weaponry and cheers from all-white conservative governments in the UK et al, it quickly descended into a genocide. We couldn’t have former slaves choose their own borders and governments. Oh dear, no. Shall we hate the Nigerians and their armourers for this unspeakable horror? No. More hate is never the solution. V’s solution, unsurprising to his “sci-fi” readers, is not more information nor more science, but less selfishness.

I am a huge Vonnegut fan. Read him all through high school and have enjoyed his essay books as an adult (check out A Man Without a Country, one of my favorites). This book of collected essays and such is good but quite dated (from the late 1960s to the early 1970s). But there is some appalling relevance. Note this quote from the introduction..."Mr Nixon...is the first president to hate the American people and all they stand for. He believes so vibrantly in his own purity, although he has committed crimes which are hideous...He is a useful man in that he has shown us that our Constitution is a defective document, which makes a childlike assumption that we would never elect a President who disliked us so. So we must amend the Constitution in order that we can more easily eject such a person from office and even put him in jail." Wait, what? I guess we didn't learn anything from the end of Nixon. Human beings are pretty hopeless. But at least we have (had) writers like Vonnegut to make us laugh.

Sometimes you just want to have a long conversation with somebody with a cynical but big heart - and since mumbling to yourself in public is frowned upon, this is the next best thing.