Kurt Vonnegut Urges Young People to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Creativity, K-12, Letters, Literature | April 19th, 2014

Art not only saves lives, it casts rip­ples, as Kurt Von­negut sure­ly knew when he replied—at length—to five New York City high school stu­dents who’d con­tact­ed him as part of a 2006 Eng­lish assign­ment.  (The iden­ti­ties of the oth­er authors select­ed for this hon­or are lost to time, but not one had the cour­tesy to respond except Von­negut.)

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lock­wood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Bat­ten, Mau­r­er and Con­gius­ta:

I thank you for your friend­ly let­ters. You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na.

What I had to say to you, more­over, would not take long, to wit: Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly, not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seri­ous­ly! I mean start­ing right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a fun­ny or nice pic­ture of Ms. Lock­wood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on. Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.

Here’s an assign­ment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lock­wood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood. OK?

Tear it up into tee­ny-wee­ny pieces, and dis­card them into wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ti­cals [sic]. You will find that you have already been glo­ri­ous­ly reward­ed for your poem. You have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Von­negut

Von­negut’s kind wish­es and Yoko Ono-esque prompt have been wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed on the Inter­net, which is no doubt where stu­dents at Hove Park School in Brighton, East Sus­sex caught the scent. Work­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in nar­ra­tive-dri­ven work, they lit­er­al­ized  the assign­ment in the video above, and while I might have pre­ferred a sneak peek at the poems and draw­ings such a task might yield, pre-shred­ding, I loved how they acknowl­edged that not every­one heeds the call. (The cast­ing of that one could have gone either way…wouldn’t be sur­prised if you told me that that boy has a punk band that would’ve ripped Von­negut’s ears off.)

via Kate Rix

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is spend­ing tonight’s Night of Von­negut in Los Ange­les rather than her home­town of Indi­anapo­lis. So it goes. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Roving Typist: A Short Film About a New York Writer Who Types Short Stories for Strangers

in Creativity, Film, Writing | February 21st, 2014

C.D. Her­melin, a lit­er­ary agency asso­ciate with a degree in Cre­ative Writ­ing, is the self-pro­claimed Rov­ing Typ­ist. It’s an apt title for one who achieved fame and for­tune — okay, rent mon­ey — by appear­ing in var­i­ous pub­lic spaces around New York City, type­writer in lap. Direc­tor Mark Cer­sosi­mo’s short film, above, intro­duces him as a mild-man­nered, slight­ly awk­ward soul. Engag­ing with strangers lured by the sign taped to his type­writer case is where Her­melin comes into his own.

The sign promis­es “sto­ries while you wait,” a con­cept that recalls the “Poems on Demand” author and writ­ing guru, Natal­ie Gold­berg, who com­posed poems to raise funds for the Min­neso­ta Zen Cen­ter. (Her­melin got his idea — and per­mis­sion to imple­ment it — from a guy he saw doing some­thing sim­i­lar in San Fran­cis­co.)

He’s open to requests, and pay­ment is left to the dis­cre­tion of the recip­i­ent. He seems to take extra care when his cus­tomer is a child.

A harm­less enough pur­suit in an era where sub­way musi­cians and car­i­ca­tur­ists lin­ing the path to the Cen­tral Park Zoo hus­tle hard­er than ‘90s-era shell game artistes.

It’s rea­son­able to assume that inno­cent­ly blun­der­ing onto a cel­lo play­er’s turf is the worst trou­ble a guy like Her­melin’s like­ly to stir up.

Instead, he became the tar­get of a mass cyber­bul­ly­ing cam­paign, after a stranger post­ed a pho­to of him and his type­writer parked on the High Line on a swel­ter­ing day in 2012. Cue an avalanche of hip­ster-hat­ing Red­dit com­ments, in addi­tion to a meme at his expense.

Rather than suc­cumb to the vast neg­a­tive out­pour­ing, the Rov­ing Typ­ist con­front­ed the sit­u­a­tion head on, pub­lish­ing his side of the sto­ry in The Awl:

Orig­i­nal­ly, it felt sil­ly label­ing my ven­ture a “cause” while I defend­ed myself to an anony­mous horde—but now it feels any­thing but. The expe­ri­ence of being labeled and then cast aside made me real­ize that what many peo­ple call “hip­ster­ism” or, what they per­ceive as a slav­ish devo­tion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme, rad­i­cal sin­cer­i­ty. I think of Brook­lyn-based “hip­ster” brand Mast Broth­ers Choco­late, which uses an old-fash­ioned schooner to retrieve their cacao beans, because the ener­gy is clean­er, because they think that’s how it should be done. I think of the legions of Etsy-type hand­made artist shops, of peo­ple who couldn’t make mon­ey in their pro­fes­sion, so found a way to make mon­ey with their art.

Sub­ject a whim­si­cal project to the forge, and it just might become a voca­tion.

Be sure to check out the bonus out­take “I Was  A Hat­ed Hip­ster Meme” and don’t fret if your trav­els won’t take you near New York City any­time soon. Her­melin and his type­writer are spend­ing the win­ter indoors, ful­fill­ing the pub­lic’s on-demand sto­ries via mail order.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra in NYC

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the long run­ning zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Free Guided Meditations From UCLA: Boost Your Awareness & Ease Your Stress

in Creativity, Health, How to Learn for Free, Psychology | February 11th, 2014

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we’ve writ­ten about a grow­ing num­ber of cul­tur­al fig­ures who prac­tice tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, with Paul McCart­ney, David Lynch, Leonard Cohen, Ellen Degeneres, and Sheryl Crow being ardent sup­port­ers. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, while less known, has also steadi­ly increased in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past half-decade. In part, there’s its inher­ent appeal: mind­ful­ness cul­ti­vates an all-accept­ing aware­ness of the present moment, there­by dis­solv­ing anx­i­eties about the future or pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with thoughts of the past. There’s also the grow­ing momen­tum of mind­ful­ness research in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, with stud­ies sug­gest­ing that mind­ful­ness-based ther­a­peu­tic approach­es may ben­e­fit a host of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues. Its use to alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and stress is par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing.

“Sounds tempt­ing,” you say, “but where does one try this mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion busi­ness, any­way? Can I try it with­out going any­where?” You’re in luck, my friend! UCLA’s Mind­ful Aware­ness Research Cen­ter (MARC) has uploaded a set of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions to iTune­sU, where the series is present­ly the #1 down­load. “I’m too busy,” you say, open­ing a Face­book tab. Not so fast! Most of the med­i­ta­tions are under 10 min­utes long, with the com­plete series clock­ing in at two hours.

We’ve had trou­ble lis­ten­ing to the lec­tures on the UCLA site, so if you’re inter­est­ed, head over to iTune­sU to down­load Mind­ful Med­i­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise, if you live with­in a rea­son­able dis­tance of UCLA’s Ham­mer Muse­um, drop in for free week­ly med­i­ta­tion ses­sions (record­ings for most of these are avail­able here).

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

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The Notecards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Lolita: A Look Inside the Author’s Creative Process

in Creativity, Literature | February 5th, 2014

nabokovnotes1

If you picked up The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Vladimir Nabokov’s final nov­el, you’ll have seen his dis­tinc­tive index card-based writ­ing method in action. Hav­ing died in 1977, Nabokov nev­er com­plet­ed the book, and so all Pen­guin had to pub­lish decades lat­er came to, as the sub­ti­tle indi­cates, A Nov­el in Frag­ments. These “frag­ments” he wrote on 138 cards, and the book as pub­lished includes full-col­or repro­duc­tions that you can actu­al­ly tear out and orga­nize — and re-orga­nize — for your­self, “com­plete with smudges, cross-outs, words scrawled out in Russ­ian and French (he was trilin­gual) and anno­tat­ed notes to him­self about titles of chap­ters and key points he wants to make about his char­ac­ters.” That comes from a post by Dominic Basul­to at Big Think, who high­lights cards with “a full-on dis­cus­sion of the pre­cise word that Nabokov would like to describe a female char­ac­ter (fille, in French) and how best to ren­der that word in Eng­lish, while keep­ing the con­no­ta­tions and mean­ing of the word in French.” Review­ing The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Alexan­der Ther­oux describes the cards as a “portable strat­e­gy that allowed [Nabokov] to com­pose in the car while his wife drove the devot­ed lep­i­dopter­ist on but­ter­fly expe­di­tions.”

nabokovnotes2

Nabokov could thus, between thoughts of his winged objects of inter­est, use the cards for “insert­ing words, writ­ing mem­os to him­self, scrib­bling after­thoughts: ‘invent trade­name [for a med­i­cine], e.g., cephalop­i­um.’ ” They also served him ear­li­er in his career; at the Library of Con­gress’ site for its Man­u­script Divi­sion’s Nabokov col­lec­tion, you can see a cou­ple of the cards on which he wrote his best-known nov­el, 1955’s Loli­ta. Asked about his work­ing meth­ods by Her­bert Gold in the Paris Review, he described the method forth­right­ly: “The pat­tern of the thing pre­cedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the cross­word at any spot I hap­pen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the nov­el is done. My sched­ule is flex­i­ble, but I am rather par­tic­u­lar about my instru­ments: lined Bris­tol cards and well sharp­ened, not too hard, pen­cils capped with erasers.” For every craft, the prop­er tool, and Nabokov remains, frag­men­tary last book and all, one of west­ern lit­er­a­ture’s most respect­ed crafts­men of lan­guage — or, rather, lan­guages, plur­al.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a free 30 Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Alfred Hitch­cock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Let­ters and Ideas for a Film Col­lab­o­ra­tion (1964)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos

in Creativity, Life, Radio | February 4th, 2014

”All of us who do cre­ative work,” says Ira Glass, cre­ator This Amer­i­can Life, quite pos­si­bly the most respect­ed pro­gram on pub­lic radio, “we get into it because we have good taste.” Yet despite this dis­cern­ment, or indeed because of it, “there’s a gap: for the first cou­ple years that you’re mak­ing stuff, what you’re mak­ing isn’t so good. [ … ] Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re mak­ing is kind of a dis­ap­point­ment to you.” For this rea­son, Glass argues, the taste­ful often fail at their cre­ative endeav­ors entire­ly. “Most every­body I know who does inter­est­ing cre­ative work,” he con­tin­ues, “they went through a phase of years where they had real­ly good taste, and they could tell what they were mak­ing was­n’t as good as they want­ed it to be.” This astute diag­no­sis of a “total­ly nor­mal” syn­drome comes extract­ed from Glass’ talk on the craft of sto­ry­telling, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

For­tu­nate­ly for those of us strug­gling with the very taste-abil­i­ty mis­match Glass describes, a solu­tion exists. If you want a quick fix, though, pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. “Do a lot of work,” he flat­ly advis­es. “Do a huge vol­ume of work. Put your­self on a dead­line so that every week or every month you know you’re going to fin­ish one sto­ry. Because it’s only by actu­al­ly going through a vol­ume of work that you’re actu­al­ly going to catch up and close that gap.” These words have proven inspir­ing enough that they’ve sure­ly spurred lis­ten­ers on to plow paths of sheer pro­duc­tion through their cho­sen rocky yet fer­tile cre­ative fields. Two lis­ten­ers in par­tic­u­lar, David Shiyang Liu and Frohlocke, appar­ent­ly found them­selves imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized to work with the words them­selves, result­ing in the typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions above. Only one ques­tion remains: how large a vol­ume of typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions of Ira Glass’ words did they have to cre­ate before they could make ones this impres­sive?

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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On Christmas, Browse A Historical Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

in Archives, Creativity, Education, History, Life | December 25th, 2013

paratroops in action

The Strong Nation­al Muse­um of Play, locat­ed in Rochester, NY, is a fun children’s muse­um. But the insti­tu­tion also has seri­ous research archives, stuffed with toys, games, and records of the toy indus­try. Its online col­lec­tions, which cur­rent­ly boast 55,068 objects, take a hol­i­day brows­er on a trip into a fig­u­ra­tive grandma’s attic, chock-full of the play­things peo­ple loved in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies.

The online archives are divid­ed into four cat­e­gories: “Toys”, “Dolls”, “Games”, and “More.” Each of these four sec­tions is fur­ther sub­di­vid­ed into top­i­cal­ly-spe­cif­ic groups, cho­sen by the archivists.

The collection’s strength is also its weak­ness: there are so many toys that it can be easy to get over­whelmed. The sub­ject divi­sions are help­ful here. As some­body with an inter­est in gen­der and child­hood, I found myself fas­ci­nat­ed by the house­keep­ing toys—kids used to use ovens that were heat­ed with real coals!—and that was an easy way to nar­row down my browse.  Sub­ject group­ings for toy sol­diers, celebri­ty dolls, and board games also piqued my inter­est.

It’s fun to look around for toys from your own child­hood (I found a few), but if you’re inter­est­ed in his­to­ry, you might find the echoes of his­tor­i­cal events to be even more intrigu­ing. Late-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry kids played with a paper doll inspired by the cir­cus celebri­ty Tom Thumb; chil­dren of the 1930s had licensed dolls of the media-sen­sa­tion Dionne Quin­tu­plets; a play­set from 1940 fea­tured grim, suit­ed-up “Para­troops in Action.”

Mou­s­ing over the thumb­nails will allow you to see the item’s name. If you see a blue “Learn More” tag, be sure to click through; that means that the item’s image will be accom­pa­nied by an inter­pre­tive his­tor­i­cal note writ­ten by the Strong’s archivists. These vary in length, and con­tain intrigu­ing tid­bits. Did you know, for exam­ple, that Hol­ly Hob­bie was a real per­son: the artist Hol­ly Ulinkas Hob­bie? Or that the famous artist Charles Dana Gib­son had a now-for­got­ten fol­low­er, Nell Brink­ley, who illus­trat­ed the flap­per era?

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson Explains How Apple’s iPhone Was A Remixed Creation

in Creativity, Technology | December 17th, 2013

In Every­thing is a Remix, dig­i­tal film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son has cre­at­ed a four-part seri­al­ized ode to remix­ing as inno­va­tion. Fer­gu­son sees all artis­tic pur­suits as deriv­a­tive of their pre­de­ces­sors to some degree, and in parts 1 and 2, he method­i­cal­ly demon­strates how cre­ative endeav­ors con­sid­ered rev­o­lu­tion­ary in their fields are often high­ly reliant on the ground­work laid by their fore­run­ners. It’s all about “stand­ing on the shoul­ders of giants.” Heavy met­al pio­neers Led Zep­pelin were thor­ough­ly indebt­ed to the blues, bor­row­ing lib­er­al­ly from Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” on “Lemon Song,” while Star Wars’ shots can be matched, with a sur­pris­ing­ly high degree of cor­re­spon­dence, to scenes from Flash Gor­don and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa films.

Fer­gu­son believes that all cre­ation is the result of copy­ing, trans­for­ma­tion, and com­bi­na­tion, and the series’ third and fourth install­ments show Apple to be the ide­al exam­ple of this process. Xerox had ini­tial­ly devel­oped the scroll bar, pop-up menus, and the desk­top-inspired inter­face. Apple, how­ev­er, copied Xerox’s work, trans­formed the inter­face by sim­pli­fy­ing the user expe­ri­ence, and com­bined the com­put­er with the idea of a home appli­ance, yield­ing its icon­ic Mac­in­tosh mod­el. It was Apple’s low­er price point and focus on every­day usabil­i­ty that made the Mac­in­tosh vast­ly more pop­u­lar.

In the most recent addi­tion to the Every­thing is a Remix series, above, Fer­gu­son returns to Apple, and uses its iPhone as a stand­alone case study in inno­va­tion. Apart from the size­able engi­neer­ing prob­lem of cre­at­ing a viable mul­ti-touch screen, Apple was forced into unchart­ed waters in phone design by remov­ing the iPhone’s key­pad and replac­ing it with screen area. To make the nov­el device seem acces­si­ble to con­sumers, Apple incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments of old tech­nolo­gies: users saw a reel to reel tape deck in the pod­cast app, heard type­writer clicks when they entered text, and flipped vir­tu­al pages in iBooks. Fer­gu­son demon­strates that it is pre­cise­ly the cou­pling of the iPhone’s pecu­liar new touch screen with famil­iar visu­als and inter­faces that allowed Apple to woo a lead­ing share of cus­tomers to its phone.

The most inter­est­ing devel­op­ment arrived by 2010, when mul­ti-touch screens had become a smart­phone stan­dard, and Apple was forced to inno­vate in dif­fer­ent ways. No longer need­ing to famil­iar­ize users with the tech­nol­o­gy, the com­pa­ny was free to work sole­ly with­in the medi­um, which allowed the lat­est iter­a­tion of its mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem, iOS 7, to have dra­mat­i­cal­ly few­er fea­tures ground­ed in real-world design. Instead of look­ing for mate­r­i­al inspi­ra­tion in tapes and type­writ­ers, Apple assessed its com­peti­tors and inte­grat­ed their phones’ best attrib­ut­es into iOS 7. This new iOS bor­rowed its con­trol cen­ter and pull-down noti­fi­ca­tions fea­tures from the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem, while its mul­ti­task­ing paid homage to Win­dows, Android, and per­haps even Palm Pre phones. The visu­als, too, were dra­mat­i­cal­ly sim­pler, flat­ter, and less real­is­tic, in line with a style that’s become large­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Win­dows phone. All in all, just anoth­er exam­ple of remix­ing as inno­va­tion.

To watch Ferguson’s com­plete series on remix­ing as a form of cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion, as well as more of his work, head to our pre­vi­ous post Every­thing is a Remix.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Kurt Vonnegut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Disgust with Civilization

in Creativity, Literature | December 15th, 2013

vonngeut ideas
This past week, we referred you back to Neil Gaiman’s essay where he tried to explain the almost unex­plain­able: the source(s) of his great ideas. The sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy writer had always strug­gled to put his fin­ger on those sources, and he could nev­er real­ly find an ori­gin in one par­tic­u­lar spring. But, it turns out that Kurt Von­negut nev­er had that prob­lem. On Twit­ter, one of our fol­low­ers (@Iygia_Maria) flagged for us an illus­trat­ed quote by Von­negut. He writes:

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goof­ing around in Ger­many like every­body else, and all of a sud­den this stuff came gush­ing out of him. It was music. I was goof­ing around like every­body else in Indi­ana, and all of a sud­den stuff came gush­ing out. It was dis­gust with civ­i­liza­tion. (Back­wards City Review, 2004.)

If you’re won­der­ing where that dis­gust was com­ing from, I prob­a­bly only need to a high­light a pre­vi­ous post of ours: 22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”. There you can read all about how he was tak­en pris­on­er dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge; spent time in a Dres­den work camp known yes, as “Slaugh­ter­house Five;” sur­vived the Dres­den bomb­ing; saw many oth­er atroc­i­ties along the way, reveal­ing civ­i­liza­tion at its worst. You can hear Von­negut read from Slaugh­ter­house-Five here.

H/T @Iygia_Maria)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Von­negut Writes an Off­beat Con­tract Out­lin­ing His Chores Around the House, 1947

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