Love him or not, he's one crazy mofo... Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory" 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 again 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 ****ing 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. Harvey Wasserman read CAT’S CRADLE, SIRENS OF TITAN and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE in college, sought Boku-Maru, and has never been the same. http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060306090609596
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Just found this thread. What a great read, Thanks, mc mark. That we can produce people like Kurk Vonnegut is a miracle we should cherish. One of the first novels I got from joining the Science Fiction Book Club (without my parent's knowledge) was The Sirens of Titan. After that, I was hooked. I was about ten years old. Here's a man unafraid to speak truth to power. Vonnegut's health is not the best. I hope he hangs around for a long time. Keep D&D Civil.
After reading Breakfast of Champions, I finally understood Gulliver's Travels, both books satires on their respective times. It's rather sad now to see a mind that was once so quick and adept at the ironic skewering of the absurdities of life, be given over to absurdities of its own, and of the most banal partisan, political kind. I felt the same way seeing springsteen cross that line.
Vonnegut continues to possess sharpness of wit, unwavering commitment to truth, and the ability to express himself better than virtually anyone else on the planet. The only thing "absurd" is the quoted text above.
Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure' March 31 (Bloomberg) -- William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush's presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure. ``Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,'' Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. ``If he'd invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn't get him out of his jam.'' Buckley said he doesn't have a formula for getting out of Iraq, though he said ``it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.'' The 80-year-old Buckley is among a handful of prominent conservatives who are criticizing the war. Asked who is to blame for what he deems a failure, Buckley said, ``the president,'' adding that ``he doesn't hesitate to accept responsibility.'' Buckley called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a longtime friend, ``a failed executor'' of the war. And Vice President Dick Cheney ``was flatly misled,'' Buckley said. ``He believed the business about the weapons of mass destruction.'' National Review Buckley, often called the father of contemporary conservatism in America, articulated his beliefs in National Review magazine, which he founded in 1955. His conservatism calls for small government, low taxes and a strong defense. Both Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater said they got their inspiration from the magazine. In the interview, Buckley criticized the so-called neo- conservatives who enthusiastically embraced the Iraq invasion and the spreading of American values around the world. ``The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country,'' Buckley said. While praising Bush as ``really a conservative,'' he was critical of the president for allowing expansion of the federal government and never vetoing a spending bill. The president's ``concern has been so completely on the international scope that he can be said to have neglected conservatism'' on the fiscal level, Buckley said. Appraising Presidents Buckley also offered his perspectives on other recent presidents: -- Richard Nixon ``was one of the brightest people who ever occupied the White House,'' he said, ``but he suffered from basic derangements,'' which precipitated his own downfall. -- Ronald Reagan ``confounded the intellectual class, which disdained him.'' Every year though, Buckley said, ``there is more and more evidence of his ingenuity, of his historical intelligence.'' -- Bill Clinton ``is the most gifted politician of, certainly my time,'' Buckley said. ``He generates a kind of a vibrant goodwill with a capacity for mischief which is very, very American.'' He doubted that ``anyone could begin to write a textbook that explicates his (Clinton's) political philosophy because he doesn't really have one.'' Buckley exalted in what he sees as the conservative success stemming from his call a half century ago in the National Review to ``stand athwart history and yell stop.'' That, he remembered, was when Marxism was widely considered ``an absolute irreversible call of history.'' The folly of that notion was demonstrated by the demise of communism a decade and a half ago, he said. Buckley said he had a few regrets, most notably his magazine's opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. ``I think that the impact of that bill should have been welcomed by us,'' he said. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=anN._IfoJo1M&refer=us
Democrats have long lived up to that admittedly major error,as well as the SC packing. When are the Repubs going to admit the errors this administration has foisted on the world? Hell, I'll even settle for one critical point with the Reagan administration. And by the way, the only one advocating something similar these days is Michelle Malkin, darling of the Right and favorite pin-up of the Wingnuts. If you're really upset about this, ask yourself why it happened. God o some reading. That should lead you to some interesting ideas about today.
It's interesting for the fact that it's still legal. A Congressional apology or a District Court ruling doesn't override the SCOTUS.
Yea its still a scary fact. The Supreme Court did officially apologize but has never actually overruled the Korematsu and Ex Parte Endo decisions that legalized the internment of an entire group of individuals solely on their race and nationality. And it has been one of the legal justifications used by the court to uphold current detention policies.
