we have a cat name sigmund who likes to get under the covers with me, he's a breast and arm kitty. he kneads for as long as i am able to handle it. he's pretty strong. but then there is schroeder who stretched up from behind me as i sat on the bed and reached the top of my back and started to knead it. she was being so precious. could she do it the way this kitty is doing it. i wish. she is really getting into the whole experience. but then again so do my kitties. jennifer
Kurt Vonnegut: How To Get A Job Like Mine
commentary by jennifer kiley
Kurt Vonnegut
A humorous talk by Kurt Vonnegut of storytelling and adlibbing, completed in five parts with each video about 10 minutes long. For those unfamiliar with Kurt Vonnegut, he was born November 11, 1922 and Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007 after falling down a flight of stairs in his home and suffering massive head trauma. So it goes. He was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat’s Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical leftist intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. He was definitely outspoken.
He had a marvelous short story collection Welcome To the Monkey House, with an assortment of stories that would bend your mind. He had recurring characters, there are also recurring themes and ideas. One of them is ice-nine in his novel Cat’s Cradle. You should read his book to find out what ice-nine is exactly. Quite an interesting concept. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim “has come unstuck in time” where he has so little control over his own life that he cannot even predict which part of it he will be living through from minute to minute.
Vonnegut frequently addressed moral and political issues but rarely dealt with specific political figures until after his retirement from fiction. He was a dissident and spoke honestly of what he believed.
In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:
1.Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4.Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5.Start as close to the end as possible.
6.Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7.Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8.Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
An earlier list: How To Write With Style (Go to this link for the full explanation.)
1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers
And now for the presentation from Kurt Vonnegut at his absolute funniest. Reminds me a bit of Mark Twain. Enjoy!
