-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 11, 2007 9:23:00 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Vonnegut Has Left the Building (Before There's No Longer
Any Building To Leave)
“The only difference
between Bush and Hitler
is that Hitler was elected.”
--Kurt Vonnegut
1922-2007 (R.I.P.)
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0305-27.htm
March 5, 2006 by the Columbus Free Press (Ohio)
Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"
by Harvey Wasserman
On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the
Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio
Union prompted these “apathetic” heartland college students to
start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in to the
Ohio Union. At least that many more were turned away. It was the
biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.
In an age dominated by hype and sex, neither Moore nor Vonnegut
seems a likely candidate to rock a campus whose biggest news has
been the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ joint assault on Big
Ten championships.
But maybe there’s more going on here than Fox wants us to think.
Vonnegut takes an easy chair across from Prof. Manuel Luis
Martinez, a poet and teacher of writing. He grabs Martinez and semi-
whispers into his ear (and the mike) “What can I say here?”
Martinez urges candor.
“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is
the syphilis president.”
The students seem to agree.
“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is
that Hitler was elected.”
“You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here.”
Off to a flying start, Vonnegut explains that this will be his
“last speech for money.” He can’t remember the first one, but it
was on a campus long, long ago, and this will be the end.
The students are hushed with the prospect of the final appearance
of America’s greatest living novelist. Alongside Mark Twain and Ben
Franklin, Will Rogers and Joseph Heller and a very short list of
immortal satirists and storytellers, there stands Kurt Vonnegut,
author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and SIRENS OF TITAN, CAT’S CRADLE and
GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, books these students are studying
now, as did their parents, as will their children and
grandchildren, with a deeply felt mixture of gratitude and awe.
Nobody tonight seems to think they were in for a detached,
scholarly presentation from a disengaged academic genius coasting
on his incomparable laurels
“I’m lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really
cared about ALL the people, rich and poor. That was Franklin D.
Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a
traitor.
“We have people in this country who are richer than whole
countries,” he says. “They run everything.
“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same
millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.
“So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have
no leverage whatsoever.
“I’m trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the
world is really ending! It’s becoming more and more uninhabitable
because of our addiction to oil.
“Bush used that line recently,” Vonnegut adds. “I should sue him
for plagiarism.”
Things have gotten so bad, he says, “people are in revolt against
life itself.”
Our economy has been making money, but “all the money that should
have gone into research and development has gone into executive
compensation. If people insist on living as if there’s no tomorrow,
there really won’t be one.
“As the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a
few moments. The best way to do that is with music. You should
practice once a night.
“If you want really want to hurt your parents and don’t want to be
gay, go into the arts,” he says.
Then he breaks into song, doing a passable, tender rendition of
“Stardust Memories.”
By this time this packed hall has grown reverential. The sound
system is appropriately tenuous. Straining to hear every word is
both an effort and a meditation.
“To hell with the advances in computers,” he says after he finishes
singing. “YOU are supposed to advance and become, not the
computers. Find out what’s inside you. And don’t kill anybody.
“There are no factories any more. Where are the jobs supposed to
come from? There’s nothing for people to do anymore! We need to
ask the Seminoles: ‘what the hell did you do?’’ after the tribe’s
traditional livelihood was taken away."
Answering questions written in by students, he explains the meaning
of life. “We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate
the good moments by saying ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’
“You’re awful cute” he says to someone in the front row. He grins
and looks around. “If this isn’t nice, what is?
“You’re all perfectly safe, by the way. I took off my shoes at the
airport. The terrorists hate the smell of feet.
“We are here on Earth to fart around,” he explains, and then
embarks on a soliloquy about the joys of going to the store to buy
an envelope. One talks to the people there, comments on the “silly-
looking dog,” finds all sorts of adventures along the way.
As for being a midwesterner, he recalls his roots in nearby
Indianapolis, a heartland town, the next one west of here. “I’m a
fresh water person. When I swim in the ocean, I feel like I’m
swimming in chicken soup. Who wants to swim in flavored water?”
A key to great writing, he adds, is to “never use semi-colons. What
are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You’re
reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean?
All semi-colons do is suggest you’ve been to college.”
Make sure, he adds, “that your reader is having a good time. Get to
the who, when, where, what right away, so the reader knows what is
going on.”
As for making money, “war is a very profitable thing for a few
people. Jesus used to be so merciful and loving of the poor. But
now he’s a Republican.
“Our economy today is not capitalism. It’s casino-ism. That’s all
the stock market is about. Gambling.
“Live one day at a time. Say ‘if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what
is!’
“You meet saints every where. They can be anywhere. They are people
behaving decently in an indecent society.
“I’m going to sue the cigarette companies because they haven’t
killed me,” he says. His son lived out his dream to be a pilot and
has spent his career flying for Continental. Now they’ve “screwed
up his pension.”
The greatest peace, Vonnegut wraps up, “comes from the knowledge
that I have enough. Joe Heller told me that.
“I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what
I wrote and I said ‘How the hell did I do that?’
“We may all be possessed. I hope so.”
He accepts the students’ standing ovation with characteristic
dignity and grace. Not a few tears flow from young people with the
wisdom to appreciate what they are seeing. “If this isn’t nice, we
don’t know what is.”
Not long ago we spoke on the phone. I asked Kurt how he was. “Too
fucking old,” he replied.
Maybe so. But the mind and soul are still there, powerful and
penetrating as ever. Just as they’ll ever be in his books and
stories and the precious records of his wonderful talks.
Thankfully, Kurt Vonnegut is still possessed by the genius of
seeing and describing the world as only Kurt Vonnegut can.
He is still sharp and clear, full of love and life and light. May
he be with us yet for a long long time to come.
See what's free at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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