Wrapping Up

Kurt Vonnegut in August 2006, less than a year before his death.

Here's a collection of obituaries and tributes to Vonnegut filed after his death in April 2007. While we won't have the luxury of setting aside an entire class for these, they might help frame your experience of his work this term, and also sharpen your ideas for your final:

• The New York Times

• The Guardian

• The Los Angeles Times

• The San Francisco Chronicle (an obit written many years before KV's death)

• NPR's Morning Edition remembers Vonnegut

• Time Magazine

• The Washington Post

Finally, here's one of Vonnegut's last televised interviews, with PBS' NOW in 2005:

So it goes, and you go as well, from the confines of this class on to (I dare to hope) a life-long relationship with literature. There are two types of students during winter break: those who are glad not to have to look at books for a month and those who are excited to finally have the time and freedom to pursue their own reading interests. Despite having read so much Vonnegut over the past calendar year I'm eager to read more — maybe Hocus Pocus, and my partner just got me Ginger Strand's book on the brothers Vonnegut during their time at GE — and perhaps you are as well. While Galápagos serves as a fitting summation to our semester, Timequake is his actual final novel, and it's no more or less thorny and interesting than Breakfast of Champions (which we read in its place). Bluebeard is also quite a rewarding read, especially if you liked the books in the second half of the term.

You might want to consider the short story collections as well. I did consider using Welcome to the Monkey House for this class, but my feeling was that a) it can be difficult for students to transition from the macro-scale of novels to the micro-scale of stories, and b) those stories are conceived more for popular audiences, so they're not quite as substantive as Vonnegut's other writing. If you're interested in some short attention span delights, however, there are several additional volumes, including Bagombo Snuff Box and the two posthumous editions published in recent years. What might be a better place to go are the volumes of essays, speeches, interviews, etc.: Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons; Palm Sunday; Fates Worse than Death; or a particular favorite: A Man Without a Country.

Also, since it's been such a good resource for us over the course of the semester you might want to take a look at Charles J. Shields wonderful biography, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut — A Life. Be forewarned that while it's a fantastically thorough document of the author's life and times, and provides all sorts of useful background on Vonnegut, his family, his writing process and much more, it doesn't spare you from the full brunt of Vonnegut's personality, which is sometimes less than lovable. I think you're probably ready for that now, however. Likewise, I can happily recommend Gregory Sumner's Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels, which I've been reading alongside the books this term.

English Department Survey

In addition to our regular course evaluations, which we'll dispense with on Wednesday, the English Department is conducting a brief survey of students as part of our ongoing efforts to anticipate and meet the needs of our students. Please take a few minutes to respond to the questions, which you'll find here. You'll also need our class code, which is F1099, and take note that this course fits under the LCS heading.

Updated Schedule and Skype URL

Thanks again to everyone for your understanding regarding the changes we've had to make to our schedule this semester. Here's an updated breakdown of our final classes:

• Mon. November 21: Skype video chat on conclusion of Deadeye Dick
• Weds. November 23: No Class — Pre-Thanksgiving
• Fri. November 25: No Class — Thanksgiving
• Mon. November 28: Galápagos book 1, ch. 1–25 (respondents originally scheduled for 11/18 and 21 will present)
• Weds. November 30: Galápagos book 1, ch 26–book 2, ch. 2 (respondents originally scheduled for 11/28 will present)
• Fri. December 2: Galápagos book 2, ch 3–14 (respondents originally scheduled for 11/30 will present)

Monday's video chat is optional — I understand everyone might not be able to make it to a computer at that time or be familiar with Skype — but at the very least I wanted to present an opportunity for everyone to talk about the end of Deadeye Dick and for those scheduled to present to share their thoughts. It might be helpful to gather several people together around one laptop. At any rate we'll play it by ear.

We'll keep the same time-slot as our regular class, though I'll pop in a few minutes early. Here's the Skype URL for the group chat I've set up: https://join.skype.com/wLZZEwt9NnZS.

Your Final Projects

Like all good things, our semester with Vonnegut will soon come to an end, but not unlike the "cleaning-up" that Billy Pilgrim and his fellow POWs find themselves doing in Dresden as World War II wraps up, we (well, you) have a little more grim and dirty work ahead of you.

It's a final essay, but it's not . . .

In a literature class like this, one would expect to be asked to write a scholarly essay making some sort of critical argument that's supported by (con)textual evidence from the quarter's readings (all of which is properly cited in MLA format). Vonnegut's work, however, doesn't necessarily call for the same response as other authors and so instead of a straightforward essay, I'd like you to produce a creative piece that — for all intents and purposes — achieves all of those same goals.  

Let's leave form aside for a second and focus on function instead. Vonnegut's been dead for nearly a decade now, though he was as fiery a social commentator in his final years as he'd ever been . . . even more fierce, perhaps. What I'd like you to do in your final project is to pick up his gauntlet and carry on in his stead. Choose a contemporary issue that's important to you and write a creative piece that aims to capture your best estimation of what Vonnegut's stance on the topic would have been, in his style, and using anecdotes, examples, characters, etc. from the nine novels you've read this quarter as evidence to support that position. You could easily have a field day with election year politics, or choose a very recent topic like Black Lives Matter, the refugee crisis, gay marriage, reproductive rights, or work in a more general direction addressing perennial favorites like civil rights, censorship, the military-industrial complex, etc. Find something that gets you riled up and channel Vonnegut's perspective to analyze and propose solutions to the issue at hand.

How about some examples?

So how do you get the creative and the critical components working together? First, pay attention to some of the hybrid writing the Vonnegut's doing in the latter years of his life. The epilogue to Jailbird is an excellent model for your work, as are Vonnegut's bookend chapters (nos. 1 and 10) of Slaughterhouse-Five, Jonah's more meta-narrational moments in Cat's Cradle, the preface to Deadeye Dick, and Vonnegut's own presence in Breakfast of Champions. A part fiction/part nonfiction approach will serve you well. Remember that you don't need to tell a fully-formed story with a beginning, middle and end — think of it more in the mode of occasional storytelling, as if you happened to sit down next to a stranger at a bar and struck up a conversation, and don't forget Vonnegut's very helpful writing tip of having one particular person in mind when you're writing (he often wrote to his sister Alice).

The most useful tactic at your disposal, and a very Vonnegut-ian one, is to make extensive use of allegory in your work. Of course, not only is Vonnegut an agnostic humanist who can see the value of faith for others and quote extensively from the bible, but he's also a big believer in one of Christ's favorite literary devices: parable. There's perhaps no better (and more commonly used) example of this in Vonnegut's writing than Kilgore Trout, whose stories serve to make points in a more vivid way than mere explication ever could. Likewise, think of the tangential characters who aren't directly connected to a storyline but serve an important purpose furthering the ideas behind the novels — like Powers Hapgood and Sacco and Vanzetti in Jailbird, or the brief mention of RFK and MLK in Slaughterhouse-Five. Use Vonnegut the way he uses Kilgore Trout, or use Trout the way Vonnegut uses Trout, or use Vonnegut's other characters in the same fashion.

Another approach, particularly if you've never written fiction before. Channel Frank and Newt Hoenikker staging bug battles inside a mason jar: pick a few characters, pick a location to drop them in, and shake the jar a bit. See what happens.

In terms of the argument you're going to make, you'll have to work through precedent — points of view expressed in the works we've read that you feel are applicable to the issue you're addressing. Vonnegut's certainly opinionated and not at all shy about sharing his ideas, so you should have plenty of material to make use of in your piece.

Aside from all of the texts mentioned above, here — to give you a taste of Vonnegut's most pointed writing in a political mode — are a few superlative selections from Vonnegut's last book published during his lifetime, A Man Without a Country (2005), which collected a number of essays he penned for the news magazine, In These Times:

• "State of the Asylum," which includes a dialogue between Vonnegut and Trout
• "Cold Turkey," perhaps the most famous of Vonnegut's ITT pieces
• "Requiem for a Dreamer," the final dialogue between Vonnegut and Trout, who committed suicide soon thereafter (disregard the fact that he died in Breakfast of Champions, or that according to Jailbird he's a pseudonym for Dr. Robert Fender)
• "American Xmas Card 2004"

Additionally, if you're looking for tips on how to write like Vonnegut, why not take a look at his own advice about writing?


Anything else I should know?

Here are a few important guidelines for your final projects — fail to meet these requirements and, well, you'll fail(!):

• Length: 6–8 double-spaced pages minimum — that's full pages, and not counting your works cited list, so to be safe, make sure your piece goes on to page 7. Another reasonable minimum would be 2000 words. If the spirit moves you and you find yourself writing a longer piece, please don't feel constrained by the 8 pg. limit (that's just a general ballpark length to aim for). On the other hand, if you hand in a paper that's less than 6 full pages, you'll automatically receive an F (so don't do that).

• Formatting — particularly since you're sending your file to me electronically, it would not be wise to play around with margins, get cutesy with font sizes, etc. 12 point Times New Roman is lovely and easy on the eyes, to boot. Barring that, Cambria or a similar serif typeface (serifs, don't ya know, are those little decorative doohickeys at the ends of the letter) will be fine. I'm partial to the restrained elegance Goudy Old Style (but that's just me).

• MLA citations and works cited list — you'll find links to MLA resources here. Don't forget that you need to cite paraphrases and summaries of source texts in addition to direct quotations. This is not easy to do for an assignment like this, but give it your best shot and it'll be fine.

• No block quotes — there is, perhaps, no greater comfort to the unprepared last-minute writer than the block quote — just cram it all in there, making no attempt to trim the text (or disguise the fact that you're cutting and pasting from Wikipedia). In formal essays of lengths longer than what you're being asked to deliver here, I might allow students to use one block quote in their essay, but there's no reason whatsoever for block quotes in a final project like this. Trim quotes to their essentials and/or interweave them throughout your sentences.

• Due date — Tuesday, December 6th at 6:00PM. Please send your final to me at my gmail address (which is my last name [dot] my full first name at gmail.com) as an attachment. When I get your paper, I'll download it to make sure that it opens without issue and then write you a little note confirming that I've received it. Don't forget that late assignments will be docked accordingly. The absolute latest I can accept a paper is Saturday, December 10th.

Weeks 13–15: Galápagos

Over the course of our last few readings, we've seen a very different Vonnegut — one who's coming to terms with both the process of aging and his own shifting role in American arts and letters, and responding in kind with a strong pair of novels (Jailbird and Deadeye Dick) that are humanistic, character-driven affairs that stay largely within the realm of conventional (though still wild) reality. This pattern will continue in Bluebeard, the third of four books marking a late high-point in Vonnegut's career (sandwiched between two of his worst offerings: Slapstick and Hocus Pocus), however, in Galápagos, the author is more than happy to cast off the fetters of everyday existence and explore a fantastic, science-fiction future.

Nonetheless, Galápagos is very much a novel of its time: the worldwide financial woes that set the stage for the book's narrative speak to real-life stagnation in the early and mid-80s and it's no stretch to read the bacterial disease that makes all women but those on Santa Rosalia infertile as Vonnegut's attempt to address the AIDS crisis. The Galápagos islands, likewise, serve not only as a setting for the novel but as a symbolic tie to Charles Darwin, who formulated his theory of evolution after investigating the novel ways in which the species native to the islands had developed in isolation.  In Jailbird, Vonnegut ruminates on the nature of the island and its occupants while describing scene at the Hotel Royalton's Coffee Shop on Walter's fateful first full day of freedom in NYC:

I thought to myself, "My goodness — these waitresses and cooks are as unjudgmental as the birds and lizards on the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador."  I was able to make the comparison because I had read about those peaceful islands in prison, in a National Geographic loaned to me by the former lieutenant governor of Wyoming.  The creatures there had had no enemies, natural or unnatural, for thousands of years.  The idea of anybody's wanting to hurt them was inconceivable to them.

So a person coming ashore there could walk right up to an animal and unscrew its head, if he wanted to.  The animal would have no plan for such an occasion.  And all the other animals would simply stand around and watch, unable to draw any lessons for themselves from what was going on.  A person could unscrew the head of every animal on an island if that was his idea of business or fun (123-124 in my first edition hardcover, 174-175 in your paperbacks).

At the same time, while forces beyond human control do their part to shape the novel, it's worth noting that Vonnegut also finds fault within human action and intention — big brains and big ideas cause big problems. While the novel's characters undergo physical transformations as they evolve, their brains change as well, getting smaller, and as far as Vonnegut is concerned (cf. this somewhat bombastic Los Angeles Times article), this is all for the best:

The big trouble, in Kurt Vonnegut's view, is our big brains. 

"Our brains are much too large," Vonnegut said. "We are much too busy. Our brains have proved to be terribly destructive." 

Big brains, Vonnegut said, invent nuclear weapons. Big brains terrify the planet into worrying about when those weapons will be used. Big brains are restless. Big brains demand constant amusement. 

"Our brains are so terrifically oversized, we have to keep inventing things to want, to buy," Vonnegut said with a shudder. "If you think of the 8 million people of greater New York charging out of their houses every day in order to monitor the planet, it is a terrifyingly destructive force. [...] 

"Among other things," he said of this giant computer lodged between humanity's collective ears, "it is capable of creating the Third Reich of Germany, which in fact so demoralized the world that I don't think we'll ever recover." 

The brain: "I think stupidity may save us," Vonnegut said. "I think we are too damned smart."

Finally, take note that the events of the novel take place in 1986, just one year after its completion, and the proximity is intentional on Vonnegut's part — if we don't wise up, he reasons, such fantastic events are not at all out of the realm of possibilities for the human race.

Here's our reading schedule for Galápagos:

• Fri. November 18: book 1, ch. 1–14
• Mon. November 21: book 1, ch. 15–25
• Weds. November 23: No Class — Pre-Thanksgiving
• Fri. November 25: No Class — Thanksgiving
• Mon. November 28: book 1, ch 26–book 2, ch. 2
• Weds. November 30: book 2, ch 3–14

And here are a few supplemental links:

• "How Humans Got Flippers and Beaks," The New York Times' review of Galápagos: [link]
• "Vonnegut Explores the Big Brain Theory," Los Angeles Times' review of the novel: [link]
• a second LAT review of the book: [link]
• an interview with Hank Nuwer that's largely concerned with Galápagos: [link]
• an NPR essay by Ron Currie, Jr., who names Galápagos one of his "Three Books to Help You Enjoy the Apocalypse": [link]
• "Evolutionary Mythology in the Writings of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.," Gilbert McInnis' 2005 essay, which originally appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction: [link]

Weeks 11–13: Deadeye Dick

In our post for Jailbird, I found myself returning to the opening lines of Slaughterhouse-Five's final chapter as an elegant evocation of 1970s cultural malaise that began with a few violent acts in the late 60s. Now, as we begin our time with Vonnegut's 1982 novel, Deadeye Dick, we return to it once more — not to memorialize Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, but rather for the mention of Kurt Vonnegut's father and his gun collection, which factors heavily into the setting of Deadeye Dick.  

As we've discussed in regards to several of the novels we've read this semester, Vonnegut had issues with both of his parents that made their way into his writing. Still, it's not until we reach Deadeye Dick that we have Vonnegut's most sustained critique of his upbringing and his parents' failings, mixing thinly-veiled autobiography with fictional inventions to create the KV-analogue, Rudy Waltz. This frankness was a long time coming — Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. died in 1957, but it's notable Vonnegut kept the "Jr." suffix through Breakfast of Champions (a novel that represents, appropriately, a death-of-the-self). Conversely, it's fascinating to read the Waltz family against the hypothetical depiction of Vonnegut and his parents in heaven that begins Jailbird (which, though frustrated at times, does start with the touching wish that Vonnegut and his father might be better friends in the afterlife than they were on earth). Also, take note that once again we find ourselves in Midland City, the setting for Breakfast of Champions, and while the Waltzes don't appear in the earlier book we will encounter several families we already know: the Hoovers, the Barrys, the Maritimos.

In a long and lavish review of Deadeye Dick for The New York Times — one marked, appropriately enough, by a retrospective mood  — Benjamin DeMott addresses Vonnegut's detractors and offers a lovely summation of what marvelous gifts he offers to readers of all kinds, along with a prediction of how their (and perhaps your) appreciation for his work might evolve in time:

I know that on some days this very odd writer is good medicine, whatever one's age: on the day when, for instance, you hear that the shelling hasn't stopped, or that the liveliest young mind in your acquaintance can't find work, or that it's been decided, in the newspapers, that the operations mutilating a loved one are no longer regarded as correct procedures. One reason for this is that Vonnegut's inexplicables are admirably plain, homely, abundant, up front; there's no epistemological complication, few philosophical conundrums, just the improbable mess of any probable human week. And the other reason is that there's no cruelty in the man. He is, evidently, playing; take away the ever-present question (namely, How on earth can you explain this?) and his activities might not be easily distinguishable from those of a child setting up and batting down toy soldiers on a rug. But gloating and meanness are excluded from the game, and the observing eyes are sad, humorous, kind.

I predict that many Vonnegutians will grow up and away from their favorite author. I also predict that, a decade or two after they do so, many will grow back. The old rule applies: As soon as you put on weight on this earth, you discover it makes a kind of sense to lose it.

Here's our reading schedule for Deadeye Dick:

• Fri. November 4: preface–ch. 9
• Mon. November 7: chapters 10–18
• Weds. November 9: No Class — Prof. Conference
• Fri. November 11: No Class — Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day; also Kurt Vonnegut's birthday) 
• Mon. November 14: chapters 19–25
• Weds. November 16: ch. 26–epilogue

And here are a few supplemental links:

• full text of Benjamin DeMott's New York Times review: [link]
• Walter James Miller interviews Vonnegut, focusing on Deadeye Dick, "a story of 'gun nuts and nukes,'" on WNYC-FM in 1983: [link]
• Vonnegut discusses Deadeye Dick with novelist Martin Amis (via the British Library): [link]
• Impress your friends with your knowledge of dreadful 90s one-hit-wonders — the band Deadeye Dick, best known for their 1994 single "New Age Girl," has obviously read Vonnegut: [link]

Weeks 10–11: Jailbird

It's a lean decade from 1969's Slaughterhouse-Five to 1979's Jailbird. Why? Well, as we've discussed several times in class, after the disheartening lean years leading up to Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut had a very difficult time dealing with his success, fan's expectations of him and his desires to remain financially solvent (along with the dissolution of his marriage to Jane Marie Cox and his son Mark's institutionalization). In essence, the author lost touch with himself and his talents, transforming himself into a popular persona à la Mark Twain that was a mere caricature of his former self (to get some sense of this change, along with some of the hypocrisies of this new self, you can read this excerpt from Charles Shields' excellent KV bio from the bottom of pg. 297 to 301). As a result, he followed the critical and popular success of Slaughterhouse-Five with two of his most poorly-received novels (both in terms of critics' opinions and his own appraisal): Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday! (1973) and Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! (1976). While we'll try to find redeeming qualities in for former, there's perhaps no hope for the latter.

During this same time, America was undergoing its own identity crisis as the hopeful politics of the 1960s dissolved into hopeless malaise as the 70s unfolded. For a population already reeling from the the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Manson murders, race riots, and the long quagmire of the war in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal was the last straw. Taken together, these internal and external dilemmas form the context for Jailbird, wherein Vonnegut, approaching his sixtieth birthday, seeks answers in the lessons and convictions of his past. Walter F. Starbuck, the novel's protagonist, who's just been released from prison after serving time for minor crimes as part of Watergate, finds himself in the exact same situation, and his (and Vonnegut's) retrospective soul-searching will cross paths with a veritable pantheon of secular American saints cut from the same cloth as Eliot Rosewater, including Eugene V. Debs, Powers Hapgood, Sacco and Vanzetti, and others.

In a 2003 interview with David Barsamian in The Progressive, Vonnegut talks about the strange interplay of socialism and Christianity within his ethics, mentioning some of the historic figures who factor positively into Jailbird:

Vonnegut: It’s perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It’s perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments. There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, and I can’t anymore. I cast my first vote for a socialist candidate—Norman Thomas, a Christian minister. I had to cast it by absentee ballot. I used to have three socialist parties to choose from—the Socialist Labor Party, Socialist Workers Party, and I forgot what the other one was.

Q: You take pride in being from Indiana, in being a Hoosier.

Vonnegut: For being from the state that gave us Eugene Debs.

Q: Eugene Debs of Terre Haute on the Wabash.

Vonnegut: Where Timothy McVeigh was executed. Eugene Debs said (and this is merely a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount, which is what so much socialist writing is), “As long as there’s a lower class, I’m in it; as long as there’s a criminal element, I’m of it; as long as there is a soul in prison,” which would include Timothy McVeigh, “I am not free.” What is wrong with that? Of course, Jesus got crucified for saying the same thing.

Q: With two million souls in prison today in the United States, Debs would be very busy.

Vonnegut: Debs would’ve committed suicide, feeling there was nothing he could do about it.

Q: There is another Hoosier you write about who is unknown, Powers Hapgood of Indianapolis. Who was he?

Vonnegut: Powers Hapgood was a rich kid. His family owned a successful cannery in Indianapolis. Powers was radicalized. After he graduated from Harvard, he went to work in a coal mine to find out what that was like. He became a labor organizer. He led the pickets against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. I got to know him late in his life when he’d become a local CIO official. There was some sort of dustup on a picket line, enough to bring the cops into play. Hapgood was testifying in court about what was to be done about CIO members who had made trouble. The judge stopped the proceedings at one point and said, “Hapgood, why would a man with your advantages, from a wealthy, respected family, Harvard graduate, lead such a life?” Powers Hapgood replied, “Why, the Sermon on the Mount, sir.” Not bad, huh?

While we're on the topic of Vonnegut's moralists, it's worth noting that good old Kilgore Trout appears in Jailbird as well, however in very different circumstances that we have (or will) see him elsewhere. Try not to get too hung up on the differences — not unlike the radical differences between the Diana Moon Glampers you met in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and her namesake in "Harrison Bergeron" or the two Francine Pekfos, we can, perhaps, chalk this up to authorial carelessness.

Here's our reading schedule for Jailbird:

• Weds. October 26: prologue–chapter 3
• Fri. October 28: chapters 4–9
• Mon. October 31: chapters 10–18
• Weds. November 2: chapter 19–epilogue

And here are some supplemental readings:

• John Leonard's New York Times review of Jailbird: [link]
• full text of Vonnegut's 2003 interview with David Barsamian in The Progressive: [link]
• Kirkus Reviews' appraisal of the novel: [link]
• Wikipedia page on the Watergate scandal: [link]
• Walter James Miller interviews Vonnegut, focusing on Jailbird, "his Watergate novel," on WNYC-FM in 1979: [link]