shoutout Dr. Gurumurthy. you were right about a lot more things in than I’d have given you credit for in high school. thanks for getting me where i am literature-wise.

The essays made me depressed because the writing is so good. How can someone write so cleanly? The speeches made me depressed because the content was so sad. How can someone live always so pessimistic (and perhaps, realistic)? The Playboy interview made me depressed because your heroes never are as clever in real life as you want them to be. How can you call a sandwich a hero when you could call it a hoagie?

I read this soon after watching the documentary about Kurt Vonnegut Jr. There I was shown an imperfect man, yes he was great at a laugh, but he had troubles, made mistakes, betrayed people he loved, and some could even say was selfish. But in a way, these are perhaps journeys he had to go through to write what he writes.

This book serves well to augment the his documentary. Here we learn that he is not a showperson that hides behind a good literary eye, but in fact his wit is quick off the page. I especially enjoyed the interview with Playboy, and how he handled very strange questions from them with very insightful answers. Clearly he is a man that is more than his writing, and each story in the book serves to paint the person he is off the page. The light is sometimes dim, at times staggeringly bright, but I would re-read this for certain, if not to mine a little deeper into Mr. Vonnegut's wacky and intellectual and compassionate lense of the world.

Забавна книга, но сега не ми се четат подобни неща.

* * *

В изпълнената с чудеса ера на трансплантациите на органи и други форми на терапевтичната вивисекция би било погрешно от моя страна да протестирам срещу факта, че ме режат, докато все още съм жив. Двама симпатични колежански професори, Джером Клинковиц от Университета на Северна Айова, и Джон Сомър, от Канзаския щатски учителски колеж, правят с мен точно това. Те издадоха един, както изглежда, посмъртен том, „Посланието на Вонегът“ — сборник есета за мен. Предложиха да направят и още нещо — сборник от всичко, което някога съм писал и което досега не е било слагано между твърди корици.

Представиха на издателя ми ужасяващо пълна библиография. Не водя статистика за работите си и с радост бях забравил голяма част от тях. Клинковиц и Сомър освежиха паметта ми със списъка си. Намеренията им бяха добри. Мислеха за себе си като за археолози, които изравят примитивни произведения, които биха могли да обяснят това, което съм станал, каквото и да е то. Някои от най-грозните произведения обаче съвсем не са така отдавнашни. Когато прегледах всички боклуци, недвусмислено свързани с тялото ми, не се почувствах като призрака на Тутанкамон. Почувствах се като човек, който е кошмарно жив, все още, и справедливо обвиняван за дребни престъпления.

* * *

Събрах това томче от онези боклуци. Нямаше да мога да го направя, без помощта на Клинковиц и Сомър, които знаеха къде са скрити почти всички трупове. Има само три или четири мои работи, за които те не знаят нищо. И най-страшното китайско мъчение на земята не може да ме принуди да кажа къде са публикувани или кога.

Това не е книга с нещата ми за пране, така да се каже. Приятно ми е, че повечето работи са се запазили. Има няколко къси разказа, които никога не са били публикувани в сборник. Оставям ги така, без възражения, освен „Сила“ — незаснет сценарий за кратък научнофантастичен филм. Това е единственото творение на фантазията в тази книга.

Всичко останало тук ме показва как се опитвам да кажа истината гола, без орнаментите на измислицата, за едно или друго. Което води до дискусията за мястото на „новата журналистика“, спрямо художествената литература, в литературата на новите времена.

I began this week with a collection of essays by and interviews with the late Kurt Vonnegut entitled Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons. The title confused my friendly community librarian. Vonnegut introduces the book with an explanation:

"Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A "wampeter" is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. "Foma" are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A "granfalloon" is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.">

The book is difficult to comment on, particularly the first half. Reading Vonnegut is like making your way through a literary funhouse -- you don't really know where you're going and the rules, if any, are completely unknown to you. So unpredictable is Vonnegut that when he wrote a chapter on his experience living in Biafra, I thought he had made up a country to make some human-interest point. As it turns out, Biafra was a real country. The book is a collection of various pieces of Vonnegut's work -- a few speeches, a book review, a short play, a travel account, and a few essays. Vonnegut comments: "It is, after all, a sort of map of places I've supposedly been and things I've supposedly thought during a period of about twenty years. I have arranged these clues in a supposedly chronological order. If time is the straight and uniform string of beads most people think it is, and if I have matured gracefully, then the second half of this book should be better than the first half."

It is difficult to characterize a compilation of miscellaneous works like this, but I did notice that a common idea seemed to penetrate Vonnegut's writing and interviews in the second half of the book -- the idea that human beings are meant to live in small social groups and that we are uncomfortable in other situations.

"Until recent times, you know, human beings usually had a permanent community of relatives. They had dozens of homes to go to So when a married couple had a fight, one or they other could go to a house three doors down and stay with a close relative until he was feeling tender again. Or if a kid got so fed up with his parents that he couldn't stand it, he could march over to his uncle's for a while. And this is no longer possible Each family is locked into its little box. The neighbors aren't relatives. There aren't other houses where people can go to and be cared for. When Nixon is pondering what's happening to America -- "Where have the old values gone?" -- and all that -- the answer is perfectly simple. We're lonesome. We don't have enough friends or relatives anymore. And we would if we lived in real communities. [...] Human beings will be happier -- not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia. That's what I want for me."

The above quotation is from his Playboy interview where he articulates this idea most directly. It reminds me of a lecture I heard recently by James Kunstler on "Life After Peak Oil": he predicts that as the automobile becomes a smaller part of our lives, communities will become smaller and life will become more local again -- back to small, intimate communities. Outside of this idea that pops up several times in the later half of the book, there's not that much cohesion to the book outside of the broad title he gave it. There are a number of pieces of interest:

-"Science Fiction": Vonnegut recalls that he is categorized as a science fiction author simply because some of his stories feature technology. "I didn't know that. I supposed I was writing a novel about life. [...] 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."

-"Yes, We Have No Nirvanas": Vonnegut writes about the rise of transcendental meditation. According to him, he looked into it after his wife and daughter became Transcendentals. He writes about his efforts to find out what it was about, and the essay turns into a critique of the "religion-that-is-not-a-religion-but-a-technique" and the Mariashi that created it. I found it humorous.

-"Excelsior! We're Going to the Moon! Excelsior!": He writes on the space program's reception with people and science fiction. He quotes Isaac Asimov's perception that there are three stages to science fiction: adventure dominant, technology dominant, and sociology dominant.

-"The Mysterious Madame Blavatsky": an essay on one of the founders of Theosophy that proved to be interesting.

-"Biafra: A People Betrayed": This is Vonnegut's account of his experiences in Biafra, before it was conquered by the Nigerian army. I actually thought this essay was about a fictional place.

-"Address to Graduation Class at Bennington College", 1970. Vonnegut describes becoming a cultural pessimist and instructs the graduating class to go back to believing that humanity is at the center of the universe, the greatest concern of the gods: perhaps then they will be motivated to treat people decently. He also urges them to not buy into the idea that their generation must change the world: he tells them to relax, to "skylark", to enjoy life. One day they will be in charge, and then they can worry about saving the planet.

-"Address to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1971": Vonnegut expounds on his idea that we are made of nothing more than chemicals that make us yearn for community.

How lucky you are to be here today, for I can explain everything. Sigmund Freud admitted that he did not know what women wanted. I know what they want. Cosmopolitan magazine says they want orgasms, which can only be a partial answer at best. Here is what women really want: they want lives in folk societies, wherein everyone is a friendly relative and no act or object is without holiness. Chemicals make them want that. Chemicals make us all want that. Chemicals make us furious when we are treated as things rather than persons. When anything happens to us which would not happen to us in a folk society, our chemicals make us feel like fish out of water. Our chemicals demand that we get back into water again. If we become increasingly wild and preposterous in modern times -- well, so do fish on river banks, for a little while."

-"In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself: reflections on politics.
-"Address at Rededication of Wheateon College Library, 1973": Vonnegut writes on the importance of books and the meaning of social narratives.

-Playboy Interview: one of the longest parts of the book.

As you can see, there's a lot here. I rather enjoyed the experience of reading it, particularly the interviews and speeches. I'll end this with one of my favorite quotations from the book. I don't know why I like it, but I do.

"You have called me a humanist, and I have looked into humanism some, and I have found that a humanist is a person who is tremendously interested in human beings. My dog is a humanist. His name is Sandy. He is a sheep dog. I know that Sandy is a dud name for a sheep dog, but there it is."

At least once a year I find myself in need to fire up the bookmobile and drive up to Indiana to visit my Uncle Kurt.

I have an eclectic literary family, wild old Uncle Bob Heinlein in Missouri, cousins Ray Bradbury and Poul Anderson, Ursula and Phil out in Berkley. Seems we can never all get together.

But driving up the Middle America street to Kurt Vonnegut’s urbane but kooky house always makes me smile.

Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons is Kurt’s 1974 collection of essays, sketches, speeches, interviews and musings. As always, his writing educates, amuses, entertains, and promotes thinking and most otherwise makes for a worthwhile reading experience.

But here’s the thing:

I call him “uncle” because his style of writing and his expressiveness has always seemed, to me at least, more or less avuncular. But being born in 1922 and a veteran of World War II, he is of my grandfather’s generation, what many have deemed “the greatest generation”.

What seems clear to me now, looking back on having read Vonnegut for about 30 years, is to highlight that he was of the greatest AMERICAN generation, and that he is of course a great American.

What stands out in these pages and from a perspective of reading much of his work is his affinity for all things American. It is no accident that this Midwestern Hoosier, of immigrant German lineage, was a WWII veteran, an upper middle class professional who came to writing later in life and who is fiercely American in his writings.

And of course as any frequent reader of Vonnegut will know, he is not of the flag waiving, parade walking, chest thumping nationalistic / jingoistic variety, Heavens no!, he is rather of the old school democratic, progressive, and critically observant category, the kind of American who sees it as his civic duty to critique when necessary.

Another observation that should be made in this humble and insufficient review, is that Vonnegut was NOT the model for Billy Pilgrim from his seminal work Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut was not a bumbling, accidental soldier wearing poorly sized uniforms, not so – Vonnegut was a forward scout and a prisoner of war who was beaten by his German guards when he told them - in German – what he would do to them when he was liberated by the Russians.

What shows through so enormously, so peremptorily (though with a sly wink and a nod, a subtle Midwestern barb) was more than his Americanism but rather the greatness of his humanism. Vonnegut truly liked people and was genuinely offended by war and crime and political / corporate shenanigans and other forms of bad manners, and in his homely but funny way he poked fun at those to whom fun needs poking, to those who need a reminder about civility and decency, and with a wry smile and a long drag on the ubiquitous cigarette, asks us (like Thoreau to Emerson) why we aren’t hopping mad too.

“Joking,” he explains, “is his response to misery I couldn’t do anything about.”

So, here’s to you, Uncle Kurt, its always nice to visit.

****2019 re-read

Every time I read this book it makes me smile.

Vonnegut’s 1974 anthology contains essays and speeches (and one short work of fiction) all written in the late 60s and early 70s after Breakfast of Champions and before his novel Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!.

What stands out in all of these twenty or so chapters is Vonnegut’s easy humanism and his scathing cynicism for all things impure and unkind. A prisoner of war, Vonnegut would become famous for his pacifism. A humorous writer, he was for a time a popular choice for college graduation speeches and several of these are featured.

He sets out how, because he mentions and uses technology, he was early on categorized as a science fiction writer. This annoyed him, first of all because it was inaccurate when you compare his works to real SF writers like Asimov and Heinlein, but also because it gave some critics a reason to discount the importance of his work.

In his account of Biafra, we see first-hand the devastating political and military defeat of a proud people and a brief modern nation in Africa. Kurt Vonnegut met writer Chinua Achebe in Africa during this tragedy.

Finally, the collection ends with his 1973 Playboy interview. This was a great dialogue that sheds important light on who Vonnegut was and why he thought the way he did. Interestingly, he alluded to his “upcoming” book which was Slaptick and now I’m off to read that one.

Hi Ho!

This was pretty interesting. I actually got out my pen and highlighted a bunch of shit which I *never* do with my books, so that counts for something. There are interesting through-lines too (Nixon, Vietnam, Freud, human desire, pessimism and hope) that tied the whole thing together nice and neat. Still — and maybe this goes without saying — I prefer his fiction! 7/10

Vonnegut is always entertaining; always has a unique perspective on things. His collection of essays here do not disappoint though a warning that they are all very much steeped in the politics of the 1970s so a reader needs a general understand of Vietnam, Richard Nixon, and the protest movements of that time to fully grasp his musings.

My favorite essays/speeches/interviews were:

Teaching the Unteachable
Address to Graduating Class at Bennington College
Address at Rededication of Wheaton College Library
There’s a Maniac Loose Out There
Playboy Interview

All good stuff.

Rating: 10/10
I'm not much into Vonnegut's fiction, but his collections of essays and speeches, as seen in this book, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, Fates Worse Than Death, and A Man Without a Country, are literally the best books I've ever read across all genres. They are my Sacred Texts. They're the only books that I'll insist my children read when they're a bit older.

A fantastic collection of Vonnegut's unpublished works and thoughts. I found the Playboy Interview at the end to be the capstone of the book since it summarized all opinions presented quite nicely. I have to say, Vonnegut's perspective on the world is refreshing and agreeable. He puts moral issues and dilemmas in the simplest terms and isn't afraid to say what is right and wrong.

I really liked these. guy had the right ideas

Vonnegut is different in nonfiction - he seems uncomfortable outside his thinly veiled version of our real world. And yet, he is very good, especially in the interview at the end. He’s a bit more manic, a bit more messy, and a bit more human in ways I might not have known from his meticulously dry fiction. I find that I love him now as a person, rather than an oracle. Skip the first couple pieces and go back to them after you’ve had a taste of the better stuff - even a big fan might struggle to enjoy exacting descriptions of a yacht.