Vonnegut at 80
Peggy
He still hasn't lost his edge.
Peggy
From:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14919
Vonnegut at 80
By David Hoppe, NUVO
January 10, 2003
Asked how he's doing, Kurt Vonnegut says, "I'm mad about being old
and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK."
Vonnegut has just turned 80. Although he claims he's retired from
writing, he has just finished an introduction for a book of anti-war
posters by artist Micah Ian Wright. Vonnegut continues to be a
cultural presence, speaking out against war with Iraq to 10,000
protestors at a rally in New York's Central Park and making a
spoken-word contribution to the new multimedia world music
production, One Giant Leap.
While Vonnegut has always owned his Indianapolis sense of place, he
has seemed less interested in grounding himself to a particular
locale than in using place as a portal to some greater, universal
understanding of life. Vonnegut has long argued that we are,
ultimately, planetary citizens -- whether we realize it or not.
As extraordinarily popular as Vonnegut's work has proved to be -
virtually everything he's written is still in print -- he's hardly a
bringer of reassuring tidings. History, he seems to suggest, is
important not, as per Santyana, so that we can avoid past mistakes,
but as a predictor of what we corrupt souls are likely to do to one
another.
Vonnegut, after all, is an avant-garde artist, whose "aggressively
unconventional" (his words) approach to storytelling would likely
put readers off if it weren't for the wryly aphoristic,
conversational tone of his voice. He has said he learned to
effectively write the way he talked by having to phone in stories
during his days as a reporter for the Chicago News Bureau.
Kurt Vonnegut recently took some time to talk from his home in New
York City about how he thinks things are going these days:
In 1991, you spoke to the Wordstruck Festival in Indianapolis right
after the end of the Gulf War against Iraq. During your speech you
remarked on television footage you'd seen of Iraqi soldiers who'd
been taken prisoner and said, "Those men are my brothers."
Vonnegut: All soldiers are.
And here we are on the brink of another war with Iraq.
I don't want to belong to a country that attacks little countries. I
don't want to belong to that kind of a country. I wrote a piece for
7 Stories Press here in New York. They're about to publish a book of
anti-war posters by a guy nobody's heard of before -- he's a pretty
good artist and so I was asked to write a piece for it. Would you
like me to read it?
Please.
(Reading) "These anti-war posters by Micah Ian Wright are
reminiscent in spirit of works by artists like Kathe Kollwitz and
Georg Grosz and on and on during the 1920s, when it was becoming
ever more evident that the infant German democracy was about to be
murdered by psychopathic personalities -- hereinafter P.P.s -- the
medical term for smart, personable people who have no conscience.
P.P.s are fully aware of how much suffering their actions will
inflict on others but do not care. They cannot care.
"The classic medical text about how such attractive leaders bring us
into unspeakable calamities is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey
Cleckley. An American P.P. at the head of a corporation, for
example, could enrich himself by ruining his employees and investors
and still feel as pure as the driven snow. A P.P., should he attain
a post near the top of our federal government, might feel that
taking the country into an endless war with casualties in the
millions was simply something decisive to do today. So to bed.
"With a P.P., decisiveness is all. Or, to put it another way, we now
have a Reichstag fire of our own."
What's become of conscience?
Again, as Cleckley says, these people are around and do rise. Women
are attracted to them. I mean, this is a defect, but women are
attracted to them because they are so confident. They really don't
give a fuck what happens - not even to themselves. But this is a
serious defect and, no, we haven't been invaded and conquered by
Martians. We have been conquered by psychopathic personalities who
are attractive.
Has television played a part in this?
We have no idea what technology has done to us. Last night I went to
a party for Gordon Parks, a black genius. Walter Cronkite was there.
Cronkite's an old friend. I said to him, "You know, the country you
did so much to shape seems so shapeless now." One thing about TV is
you don't have to do anything ...
We become spectators.
Yes. And that's enough. We're thanked for that: "Thank You For
Watching ..." (laughs)
Ratings are becoming more important than votes.
Well, technology has fucked us up in many ways. What I've said about
the computer revolution is that it's allowed white collar criminals
to do what the Mob would have loved to do -- put a pawn shop and a
loan shark in every home!
Technology changes us, yet it's very difficult for us to recognize
the changes because we're in their midst.
Of course it does. Life asks us for this and asks us for that: Go
get yourself some food. You have tasks, it turns out, in order to
get satisfied. But you don't have to do them now. You can sit at
home and it's simply done to you. So we're not terribly interesting
animals anymore.
You've talked about how the Bush Administration seems driven by
revenge.
It's a story to tell. He's in the same business I'm in. He's telling
stories. It turns out this is the simplest of all stories to tell. I
mean, I want to hold attention when I write something. What he wants
to be is interesting. And revenge is interesting. I've said there
are two radical ideas that have been introduced into human thought.
One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort
of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea.
It's an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along
with the radical idea of forgiveness. That was radical. If you're
insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is
as radical as Einstein's.
You've placed a high premium on what you call decency.
One kid said he had the key to all my books and he put it in a
sentence. He said, "Love may fail but courtesy will prevail." Love
does fail all the time, you know, and it makes people vicious.
That's interesting because it seems that psychopathic personalities
tend to give courtesy a bad rap. They find it weak.
They are decisive. They are gonna do something every fuckin' day and
they are not afraid.
You've used satire as a tool to defend against the world's insanity.
Can it also work to change things?
I guess it works some. Just telling people, "You are not alone.
There are a lot of others who feel as you do." We're a terribly
lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a
few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is
happening to us now. George Bush has hydrogen bombs if he needs
them. It really matters who's around and who's holding attention. I
don't think television will let anybody else hold attention.
Why is that?
During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever
been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this
country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all
aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to
be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.
(laughs)
Powers Hapgood was an internationally known Indianapolis radical and
socialist. You met him didn't you?
Oh, yes. He was an official of the CIO then. He was a typical
Hoosier idealist. Socialism is idealistic. Think of Eugene Debs from
Terre Haute. What Debs said echoes the Sermon on the Mount: "As long
as there's a lower class I am in it. As long as there is a criminal
element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not
free."
Now why can't the religious right recognize that as a paraphrase of
the Sermon on the Mount? Hapgood and Debs were both middle-class
people who thought there could be more economic justice in this
country. They wanted a better country, that's all. Hapgood's family
owned a successful cannery in Indianapolis
and Hapgood turned it over to the employees, who ruined it. He led
the pickets against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Hapgood was
testifying in court in Indianapolis about some picket-line dust-up
connected with the CIO and the judge stops everything. He says, "Mr.
Hapgood, here you are, you're a graduate of Harvard and you own a
successful business. Why would anyone with your advantages choose to
live as you have?" Powers Hapgood actually became a coal miner for a
while. His answer to the judge was great: "The Sermon on the Mount,
sir."
My God, the religious right will not acknowledge what a merciful
person Jesus was.
Why are they so intent on making god a punisher?
Because they enjoy punishment. It's a form of entertainment. The
reason we still have the death penalty in this country is because
it's a major form of entertainment -- a way of holding attention.
You left Indianapolis for the East Coast. But you've also said
there's good reason for staying put.
You leave home because of lonesomeness, no spiritual reason. You're
not going to be able to have shop talk. So you're going to be
terribly lonesome. So yes, you go to Greenwich Village or somewhere
else where people are talking all the time. The turning point in my
life, even though I was an established writer, was when I went to
the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. We were talking
about literature all the time! On Cape Cod there was nobody for me
to talk to. It's a very simple social reason. Of course, I've also
said the more provincial a story is, the more universal it becomes.
That just happens to be true.
Why is that? Attention to detail?
Yes. It's going to be a totally human story which people are going
to recognize as such and so they'll resonate with it. I mean: Madame
Bovary - how provincial can you get?
Your work moves people across generations. How do you account for
that?
I don't have to. All I know is it happened.
David Hoppe is associate/arts editor of Nuvo, a weekly newspaper in
Indianapoli
Peggy
From:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14919
Vonnegut at 80
By David Hoppe, NUVO
January 10, 2003
Asked how he's doing, Kurt Vonnegut says, "I'm mad about being old
and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK."
Vonnegut has just turned 80. Although he claims he's retired from
writing, he has just finished an introduction for a book of anti-war
posters by artist Micah Ian Wright. Vonnegut continues to be a
cultural presence, speaking out against war with Iraq to 10,000
protestors at a rally in New York's Central Park and making a
spoken-word contribution to the new multimedia world music
production, One Giant Leap.
While Vonnegut has always owned his Indianapolis sense of place, he
has seemed less interested in grounding himself to a particular
locale than in using place as a portal to some greater, universal
understanding of life. Vonnegut has long argued that we are,
ultimately, planetary citizens -- whether we realize it or not.
As extraordinarily popular as Vonnegut's work has proved to be -
virtually everything he's written is still in print -- he's hardly a
bringer of reassuring tidings. History, he seems to suggest, is
important not, as per Santyana, so that we can avoid past mistakes,
but as a predictor of what we corrupt souls are likely to do to one
another.
Vonnegut, after all, is an avant-garde artist, whose "aggressively
unconventional" (his words) approach to storytelling would likely
put readers off if it weren't for the wryly aphoristic,
conversational tone of his voice. He has said he learned to
effectively write the way he talked by having to phone in stories
during his days as a reporter for the Chicago News Bureau.
Kurt Vonnegut recently took some time to talk from his home in New
York City about how he thinks things are going these days:
In 1991, you spoke to the Wordstruck Festival in Indianapolis right
after the end of the Gulf War against Iraq. During your speech you
remarked on television footage you'd seen of Iraqi soldiers who'd
been taken prisoner and said, "Those men are my brothers."
Vonnegut: All soldiers are.
And here we are on the brink of another war with Iraq.
I don't want to belong to a country that attacks little countries. I
don't want to belong to that kind of a country. I wrote a piece for
7 Stories Press here in New York. They're about to publish a book of
anti-war posters by a guy nobody's heard of before -- he's a pretty
good artist and so I was asked to write a piece for it. Would you
like me to read it?
Please.
(Reading) "These anti-war posters by Micah Ian Wright are
reminiscent in spirit of works by artists like Kathe Kollwitz and
Georg Grosz and on and on during the 1920s, when it was becoming
ever more evident that the infant German democracy was about to be
murdered by psychopathic personalities -- hereinafter P.P.s -- the
medical term for smart, personable people who have no conscience.
P.P.s are fully aware of how much suffering their actions will
inflict on others but do not care. They cannot care.
"The classic medical text about how such attractive leaders bring us
into unspeakable calamities is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey
Cleckley. An American P.P. at the head of a corporation, for
example, could enrich himself by ruining his employees and investors
and still feel as pure as the driven snow. A P.P., should he attain
a post near the top of our federal government, might feel that
taking the country into an endless war with casualties in the
millions was simply something decisive to do today. So to bed.
"With a P.P., decisiveness is all. Or, to put it another way, we now
have a Reichstag fire of our own."
What's become of conscience?
Again, as Cleckley says, these people are around and do rise. Women
are attracted to them. I mean, this is a defect, but women are
attracted to them because they are so confident. They really don't
give a fuck what happens - not even to themselves. But this is a
serious defect and, no, we haven't been invaded and conquered by
Martians. We have been conquered by psychopathic personalities who
are attractive.
Has television played a part in this?
We have no idea what technology has done to us. Last night I went to
a party for Gordon Parks, a black genius. Walter Cronkite was there.
Cronkite's an old friend. I said to him, "You know, the country you
did so much to shape seems so shapeless now." One thing about TV is
you don't have to do anything ...
We become spectators.
Yes. And that's enough. We're thanked for that: "Thank You For
Watching ..." (laughs)
Ratings are becoming more important than votes.
Well, technology has fucked us up in many ways. What I've said about
the computer revolution is that it's allowed white collar criminals
to do what the Mob would have loved to do -- put a pawn shop and a
loan shark in every home!
Technology changes us, yet it's very difficult for us to recognize
the changes because we're in their midst.
Of course it does. Life asks us for this and asks us for that: Go
get yourself some food. You have tasks, it turns out, in order to
get satisfied. But you don't have to do them now. You can sit at
home and it's simply done to you. So we're not terribly interesting
animals anymore.
You've talked about how the Bush Administration seems driven by
revenge.
It's a story to tell. He's in the same business I'm in. He's telling
stories. It turns out this is the simplest of all stories to tell. I
mean, I want to hold attention when I write something. What he wants
to be is interesting. And revenge is interesting. I've said there
are two radical ideas that have been introduced into human thought.
One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort
of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea.
It's an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along
with the radical idea of forgiveness. That was radical. If you're
insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is
as radical as Einstein's.
You've placed a high premium on what you call decency.
One kid said he had the key to all my books and he put it in a
sentence. He said, "Love may fail but courtesy will prevail." Love
does fail all the time, you know, and it makes people vicious.
That's interesting because it seems that psychopathic personalities
tend to give courtesy a bad rap. They find it weak.
They are decisive. They are gonna do something every fuckin' day and
they are not afraid.
You've used satire as a tool to defend against the world's insanity.
Can it also work to change things?
I guess it works some. Just telling people, "You are not alone.
There are a lot of others who feel as you do." We're a terribly
lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a
few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is
happening to us now. George Bush has hydrogen bombs if he needs
them. It really matters who's around and who's holding attention. I
don't think television will let anybody else hold attention.
Why is that?
During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever
been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this
country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all
aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to
be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.
(laughs)
Powers Hapgood was an internationally known Indianapolis radical and
socialist. You met him didn't you?
Oh, yes. He was an official of the CIO then. He was a typical
Hoosier idealist. Socialism is idealistic. Think of Eugene Debs from
Terre Haute. What Debs said echoes the Sermon on the Mount: "As long
as there's a lower class I am in it. As long as there is a criminal
element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not
free."
Now why can't the religious right recognize that as a paraphrase of
the Sermon on the Mount? Hapgood and Debs were both middle-class
people who thought there could be more economic justice in this
country. They wanted a better country, that's all. Hapgood's family
owned a successful cannery in Indianapolis
and Hapgood turned it over to the employees, who ruined it. He led
the pickets against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Hapgood was
testifying in court in Indianapolis about some picket-line dust-up
connected with the CIO and the judge stops everything. He says, "Mr.
Hapgood, here you are, you're a graduate of Harvard and you own a
successful business. Why would anyone with your advantages choose to
live as you have?" Powers Hapgood actually became a coal miner for a
while. His answer to the judge was great: "The Sermon on the Mount,
sir."
My God, the religious right will not acknowledge what a merciful
person Jesus was.
Why are they so intent on making god a punisher?
Because they enjoy punishment. It's a form of entertainment. The
reason we still have the death penalty in this country is because
it's a major form of entertainment -- a way of holding attention.
You left Indianapolis for the East Coast. But you've also said
there's good reason for staying put.
You leave home because of lonesomeness, no spiritual reason. You're
not going to be able to have shop talk. So you're going to be
terribly lonesome. So yes, you go to Greenwich Village or somewhere
else where people are talking all the time. The turning point in my
life, even though I was an established writer, was when I went to
the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. We were talking
about literature all the time! On Cape Cod there was nobody for me
to talk to. It's a very simple social reason. Of course, I've also
said the more provincial a story is, the more universal it becomes.
That just happens to be true.
Why is that? Attention to detail?
Yes. It's going to be a totally human story which people are going
to recognize as such and so they'll resonate with it. I mean: Madame
Bovary - how provincial can you get?
Your work moves people across generations. How do you account for
that?
I don't have to. All I know is it happened.
David Hoppe is associate/arts editor of Nuvo, a weekly newspaper in
Indianapoli