Hollow Laughter: Kurt Vonnegut on writing

[NoJo]

This is the G-I/B-E story diagram Vonnegut refers to: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2006/01/13/vonnegut.gif

Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realise some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by al-Qaida. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I want to share with you something I've learned. Let a vertical line represent the G-I axis: good fortune - ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here - great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle.

Let a horizontal line - extending from middle of G-I axis - be the B-E axis. B for beginning, E for entropy. Okay. Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand.

Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don't like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here at the top of the G-I axis. You will see this story over and over again. People love it and it is not copyrighted. The story is "Man in Hole", but the story needn't be about a man or a hole. It's: Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again [line A - see top].

It is not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began. This is encouraging to readers.

See more of the extract from his memoirs, publsihed in the Guardian here.

 

[Mercurius]

The Kafka diagram made me laugh out loud.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Heard about a book today called "Torture The Artist". It's about how they discover that all art comes out of human suffering, and so they decide the way to get great art is to torture artists. People with talent are drafted by an agency that proceeds to make their lives as miserable as possible, then markets the result.

As if people would pay for art.

 

[NoJo]

Heard about a book today called "Torture The Artist". It's about how they discover that all art comes out of human suffering, and so they decide the way to get great art is to torture artists. People with talent are drafted by an agency that proceeds to make their lives as miserable as possible, then markets the result.

As if people would pay for art.

I suffer a lot when I write, mainly because of the typos.

 

[NoJo]

The Kafka diagram made me laugh out loud.

Here's Kurt on the Kafka diagram:

Now there's a Franz Kafka story [line C - see top].

A young man is rather unattractive and not very personable. He has disagreeable relatives and has had a lot of jobs with no chance of promotion. He doesn't get paid enough to take his girl dancing or to go to the beer hall to have a beer with a friend. One morning he wakes up, it's time to go to work again, and he has turned into a cockroach. It's a pessimistic story.

 

[R. Richard]

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

While I am sure that the above is very amusing, particularly if you went into the arts, you might think about the system wide consequences.

What if you have no talent at all in the arts? Do the people who teach the arts in the schools give you a pass? [Answer: They not only don't give you a pass, they will attempt to force the arts on the student. The arts ARE a way to make a living, provided you are a teacher in the schools where the arts are forced upon all students.]

What if you don't like the arts? [Answer: You don't have to like the arts. Tghe arts are forced upon students in the US school system. If you try to pretend that you like the arts just a little bit and you have nay intelligence at all, the people who teach the arts will immediatly try to force an arts major on you. The people who teach the arts have to sell the arts and sell them hard. Something that yields no financial rewards is very hard to sell.]

What if you are poor and don't like being poor? [Answer: The arts are not about earning a living, except for those who teach the arts. The people who teach the arts don't give a damn about the student's poverty, they only want to insure their own income. And, by the way, they need more money to teach these important subjects to their students.]

Do you like the concept of slavery? [Answer: Teach the arts in the school system. You don't have to sell the arts, they are required classes.]

JMNTHO.

 

[NoJo]

While I am sure that the above is very amusing, particularly if you went into the arts, you might think about the system wide consequences.

What if you have no talent at all in the arts? Do the people who teach the arts in the schools give you a pass? [Answer: They not only don't give you a pass, they will attempt to force the arts on the student. The arts ARE a way to make a living, provided you are a teacher in the schools where the arts are forced upon all students.]

What if you don't like the arts? [Answer: You don't have to like the arts. Tghe arts are forced upon students in the US school system. If you try to pretend that you like the arts just a little bit and you have nay intelligence at all, the people who teach the arts will immediatly try to force an arts major on you. The people who teach the arts have to sell the arts and sell them hard. Something that yields no financial rewards is very hard to sell.]

What if you are poor and don't like being poor? [Answer: The arts are not about earning a living, except for those who teach the arts. The people who teach the arts don't give a damn about the student's poverty, they only want to insure their own income. And, by the way, they need more money to teach these important subjects to their students.]

Do you like the concept of slavery? [Answer: Teach the arts in the school system. You don't have to sell the arts, they are required classes.]

JMNTHO.

I found your post almost impossible to follow, so I'll have to agree with it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I found your post almost impossible to follow, so I'll have to agree with it.

Since the arts are not taught much anymore in the American school system... Not unless the local PTO can raise the money.

 

[BlackShanglan]

You may have my semicolons when you pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

(But I do love Vonnegut.)

 

[Guest]

You may have my semicolons when you pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

Gracias, caballito.

Perdita

 

[BlackShanglan]

And he's doing narratology. So there.

 

[Guest]

While I am sure that the above is very amusing, particularly if you went into the arts, you might think about the system wide consequences.

What if you have no talent at all in the arts? Do the people who teach the arts in the schools give you a pass? [Answer: They not only don't give you a pass, they will attempt to force the arts on the student. The arts ARE a way to make a living, provided you are a teacher in the schools where the arts are forced upon all students.]

What if you don't like the arts? [Answer: You don't have to like the arts. Tghe arts are forced upon students in the US school system. If you try to pretend that you like the arts just a little bit and you have nay intelligence at all, the people who teach the arts will immediatly try to force an arts major on you. The people who teach the arts have to sell the arts and sell them hard. Something that yields no financial rewards is very hard to sell.]

What if you are poor and don't like being poor? [Answer: The arts are not about earning a living, except for those who teach the arts. The people who teach the arts don't give a damn about the student's poverty, they only want to insure their own income. And, by the way, they need more money to teach these important subjects to their students.]

Do you like the concept of slavery? [Answer: Teach the arts in the school system. You don't have to sell the arts, they are required classes.]

JMNTHO.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Pull your ignorant, inflated head out of your overly tight ass.

Your information is about 25 years old.

Not only are the Arts NOT required in public schools today, they're being eliminated at an incredibly rapid rate in school districts across the country. It has become necessary to remove the "fluff" in order to find enough funding for NCLB.

An interesting side note dug up from a few collegiate buddies, however, is that test scores have invariably gone down in those districts without a successful fine arts program.

 

[carsonshepherd]

You may have my semicolons when you pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

(But I do love Vonnegut.)

But what about your ellipses.............?

 

[CharleyH]

This is the G-I/B-E story diagram Vonnegut refers to: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2006/01/13/vonnegut.gif

Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realise some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by al-Qaida. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I want to share with you something I've learned. Let a vertical line represent the G-I axis: good fortune - ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here - great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle.

Let a horizontal line - extending from middle of G-I axis - be the B-E axis. B for beginning, E for entropy. Okay. Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand.

Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don't like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here at the top of the G-I axis. You will see this story over and over again. People love it and it is not copyrighted. The story is "Man in Hole", but the story needn't be about a man or a hole. It's: Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again [line A - see top].

It is not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began. This is encouraging to readers.

See more of the extract from his memoirs, publsihed in the Guardian here.

LOL - I really hope you know how beautiful and sexy you are MystR. E. (Mysterious Einstein).

 

[Guest]

This is the G-I/B-E story diagram Vonnegut refers to: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2006/01/13/vonnegut.gif

Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realise some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by al-Qaida. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I want to share with you something I've learned. Let a vertical line represent the G-I axis: good fortune - ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here - great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle.

Let a horizontal line - extending from middle of G-I axis - be the B-E axis. B for beginning, E for entropy. Okay. Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand.

Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don't like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here at the top of the G-I axis. You will see this story over and over again. People love it and it is not copyrighted. The story is "Man in Hole", but the story needn't be about a man or a hole. It's: Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again [line A - see top].

It is not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began. This is encouraging to readers.

See more of the extract from his memoirs, publsihed in the Guardian here.

Did you see Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School?"

Vonnegut himself actually appeared when Rodney's character hired him to write a term paper - on himself. The professor (Sally Kellerman) flunked Rodney, however, because she knew he hadn't written the paper.

And her parting shot was "and whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Vonnegut."

 

[Huckleman2000]

I love Vonnegut, but haven't read him in ages.

I think of him every time I see an asterisk. They remind me of his drawing of an asshole, in Breakfast of Champions, I believe.

 

[BlackShanglan]

But what about your ellipses.............?

You may have all but three of them.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Heard about a book today called "Torture The Artist". It's about how they discover that all art comes out of human suffering, and so they decide the way to get great art is to torture artists. People with talent are drafted by an agency that proceeds to make their lives as miserable as possible, then markets the result.

As if people would pay for art.

Actually, people pay tons of money for art but only to a very few artists. I am referring to musicians and singers and actors and some writers, especially of fiction.