Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope:
“Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?
And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a
woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is - we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."
Let's all get up and move around a bit right now... or at least dance.
Credit Goes To The Respective Owner
You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society. ~Kurt Vonnegut
(Book [ad]: A Man Without a Country https://amzn.to/3x9Lsrm)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) 庫爾特·馮內果給學生忠言
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:
“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 receptacals. 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
「親愛的澤維爾高中、洛克伍德女士、佩林先生、麥克菲利先生、巴頓先生、毛雷爾先生和康吉斯塔先生：
我感謝你的友好來信。 你一定知道如何讓一個真正的老人（84 歲）在他的晚年時振作起來。 我不再公開露面，因為我現在就像一隻鬣蜥。
此外，我要對你說的話不會花很長時間，即：練習任何藝術，音樂，歌唱，舞蹈，表演，繪畫，繪畫，雕塑，詩歌，小說，散文，報告文學，無論好壞，不是為了獲得金錢和名譽，而是去體驗成為，去發現你內在的東西，讓你的靈魂成長。
嚴重地！ 我的意思是從現在開始，從事藝術，並終生從事藝術。 畫一張洛克伍德女士有趣或漂亮的照片，然後送給她。 放學後跳舞回家，洗澡時唱歌等等。 在馬鈴薯泥中做鬼臉。 假裝你是德古拉伯爵。
這是今晚的作業，如果你不做的話，我希望洛克伍德女士會讓你不及格：寫一首六行詩，可以寫任何內容，但要押韻。 沒有網子就沒有公平的網球。 盡可能讓它變得更好。 但不要告訴任何人你在做什麼。 不要向任何人展示或背誦它，甚至包括你的女朋友、父母或其他什麼人，或洛克伍德女士。 好的？
將其撕成極小的碎片，然後將它們丟棄到分開的垃圾箱中。 你會發現你的詩已經獲得了光榮的回報。 你經歷了成長，更了解了你的內心，你也讓你的靈魂成長。
上帝保佑你們！
庫爾特·馮內果
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
The beliefs I have to defend are so soft and complicated, actually, and, when vivisected, turn into bowls of undifferentiated mush. I am a pacifist, I am an anarchist, I am a planetary citizen, and so on.[107]
— Kurt Vonnegut
．典範長存天地間－－1991年4月14日在愛荷華保羅．安格爾追思會上的講話
．他就是愛荷華 K．馮內果
寇特·馮內果（又譯作馮内古特、馮尼格）（Kurt Vonnegut，Jr.，1922年11月11日—2007年4月11日），美國作家，黑色幽默文學代表人物之一。
馮內果在1922年出生於印第安納州印第安納波利斯。曾在康乃爾大學取得化學學士學位。戰後於芝加哥大學取得人類學碩士學位，當時同在攻讀人類學的還有索爾·貝婁。
他著有十多本小說和許多的短文、評論，極受好評；曾被許多作家公認為美國現代科幻小說之父，英國作家格雷安·葛林亦曾公開推崇他為「美國當代最好的作家之一」。
馮內果的寫作靈感多來自二次世界大戰在德勒斯登戰俘營逃過恐怖大轟炸的親身經歷。馮內果的《第五號屠宰場》被譽為是20世紀美國評等最優的小說之一，還有《貓的搖籃》和《王牌戰將》都是膾炙人口的作品。
二次世界大戰期間，在慘烈的突出部之役後，23歲的馮內果於1945年遭德軍俘虜。馮內果被囚禁在德國東部薩克森州的德勒斯登戰俘營時，德勒斯登遭英美聯軍發動大轟炸，馮內果與戰俘躲在地下儲肉室，整座城市在炮火烈焰中被燒成廢墟，他是僅有倖存七名美軍戰俘之一。
此經歷也成了他在1969年越戰正如火如荼時出版《第五號屠宰場》故事的核心，小說出版後興起一股閱讀熱潮。這本小說描述一名士兵躲在德勒斯登地下屠宰場「流離於時間之中」的超自然人文小說，首頁一行紀念文寫道「約莫所有的事就這麼發生了」。
馮內果於1994年宣稱「上帝已經要我停止寫作」，但之後隨即出版了半自傳體的《時震》（Timequake），在書中他誓言絕不再提筆。不過他在接受訪聞時談到：「當一個作家垮掉、也就是當他真的被關進瘋人院時，才是他真的無法再提筆的時候」。馮內果在宣布封筆退隱數年後的2002年，年屆80歲的他，重新提筆進行新的寫作計劃，新小說的書名叫做《如果上帝仍在》（If God Were Alive Today），小說主角是一個出生於「嬰兒潮」世代，在紐約從事脫口秀表演的喜劇演員。
這位幽默科幻和黑色喜劇著作創始人馮內果，在2007年3月間跌倒，傷及腦部，在2007年4月11日在紐約市病逝，享壽84歲。
- 《貓的搖籃》（1963）是黑色幽默的代表作之一。其背景是個虛構的島國「山洛倫佐」。此國的統治者是宗教領袖博克儂和政治領袖、暴君麥克凱布，他們兩人表面上勢不兩立，實際上互相利用，根本目的是要把社會推入巨大的恐怖之中。書中到處都有自相矛盾、違反學理的幽默，如博克儂填寫表格時，在「業餘活動」一欄里填寫的是「活著」，而在「主要職業」下面填寫的卻是「死亡」。 曾提名雨果獎。
- 《冠軍早餐》（1973）以虛構的科幻作家Kilgore的許多荒誕的短篇小說和他的遭遇，對人類的生存狀態進行冷嘲熱諷，但在戲謔中充滿著作家嚴肅的真誠。以後現代主義的創作手法著稱，描寫了作者本人「進入小說干涉結局」的場景。全書充滿著馮內果的個人風格，堪稱該風格的代表作。
- 《囚鳥》（1979）以一個人的遭遇串起美國20世紀中期各個重大事件，包括麥卡錫主義、水門事件等，揭露美國社會的黑暗一面。
- 《時震》（1997）本人聲稱該書為封筆之作。寫的是時間突然倒回了十年，而所有人不得不把這十年裡發生的事情一模一樣的再做一遍。作品中充滿著後現代寫作手法與辛辣的黑色幽默，《冠軍早餐》中的Kilgore再次在這裡出現，以他的短篇小說為作者「代言」。
16. 對德勒斯登空襲不同的見證與記憶（三）：美國作家馮內果（Kurt Vonnegut）
A Man Without a Country Kurt Vonnegut on writing a story...
Kurt Vonnegut紅黨建黨宣言滿布著一種顯然來自於黨主席的浪漫，它引用了美國作家馮內果《沒有國家的人》一書放在卷首的一首小詩：「善，沒有理由戰勝不了惡，只要天使們能像黑手黨那樣組織起來。」
A Man Without a Country (subtitle: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush's America) is an essay collection published in 2005 by the author Kurt Vonnegut. The extremely short essays that make up this book deal with topics ranging from the importance of humor, to problems with modern technology, to Vonnegut's opinions on the differences between men and women. Most prevalent in the text, however, are those essays that elucidate Vonnegut's opinions on politics, and the issues in modern American society, often from a decidedly humanistic perspective.[1]
A Man Without a Country Quotes (showing 1-30 of 57)
“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“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.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“If you want to really hurt you 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. Practicing 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 possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“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 realize 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 Qaeda. 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. Practicing 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.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appalling powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.
In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazi's once were.
And with good reason.
In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.
Piece of cake.
In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.
Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.
Piece of cake.
The O'Reilly Factor.
So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called "In These Times."
Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic "New York Times" guaranteed there were weapons of destruction there.
Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the First World War. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.
Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?
Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people too. I am a veteran of the Second World War and I have to say this is the not the first time I surrendered to a pitiless war machine.
My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."
Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!
Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.
What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale."
George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . .
PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . .
So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.
They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and
In These Times, and kiss my ass!
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown & Williamson have promised to kill me.
But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“When a couple has an argument nowadays they may think it s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“I don't reveal to her that I love her. I keep poker faced. She might as well be looking at a cantaloupe, there is so little information in my face, but my heart is beating.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Practicing 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.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“And I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Our government's got a war on drugs....But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of time from when he was sixteen until he was forty. When he was forty-one, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Oh, a lion hunter
in the jungle dark,
And a sleeping drunkard
up in central park,
and a Chinese dentist
and a British queen
All fit together
in the same machine.
Nice, nice,
such very different
people in the same device!”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are most of all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“While we were being bombed in Dresden sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“When I got home from the Second World War, mu Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "You're a man now." So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!"
A husband, wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick, & Colon.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Si quieres lastimar a tus padres, y no tienes el valor de ser gay, lo menos que puedes hacer es convertirte en artista. No estoy bromeando. Las artes no son una manera de ganarse la vida. Son una forma muy humana de hacer la vida más soportable. Practicar un arte, no importa cuan bien o mal, es una forma de hacer crecer el alma. Cantar en la ducha. Bailar con la radio. Contar historias. Escribir un poema, aún un poema malo. Hazlo tan bien como puedas. Obtendrás una enorme recompensa. Habrás creado algo.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“Demasiadas personas necesitan recibir el siguiente mensaje: “Siento y pienso igual que tú, me preocupan las mismas cosas que a tí. No estás solo”.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country“How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, “If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country“But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut,
A Man Without a Country
美國印地安那州印第安納波利斯
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