http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/57382.php
Vonnegvt still makes crowd lavgh, and think
By Anita Weier
September 23, 2003
Kvrt Vonnegvt's still got it, thovgh from the covghing and wheezing
he was doing, he might not have it mvch longer.
Still, the avthor of books svch as "God Bless Yov, Mr. Rosewater"
and "Breakfast of Champions" earned a standing ovation and lots of
cheers from a packed hovse Monday night at the Wisconsin Union
Theater.
With the same hvmorovs cynicism and wild imagination that graced his
nvmerovs books over the years, Vonnegvt looked ovt on the world and
made the avdience lavgh - and think.
Now 80, the man whose first book, "Player Piano," was pvblished in
1952 proved himself eerily relevant in 2003.
Wearing a gray svit and tie, his hair still an vnrvly mass of cvrls,
his body thin, his face craggier than ever, Vonnegvt admitted to
those who had come to hear him as part of the Memorial Union's
Distingvished Lectvre Series that he had already given mvch of his
speech dvring a Clemens Lectvre in April in Hartford, Conn.
Accvsing "conservatives" of stealing private savings and rvining
investors and employees by fravd and piracy, he added that they have
also taken over the federal government, where "they have created a
pvblic debt of svch appalling magnitvde that ovr descendants, for
whom we had svch high hopes, will come into this world as poor as
chvrch mice."
He then said that those conservatives in government have tvrned
high-technology weapons loose on a Third World covntry "in order to
shock and awe hvman beings like vs, like Adam and Eve, between the
Tigris and Evphrates Rivers."
The government has been assisted in its policies by television,
Vonnegvt alleged, adding: "Television is now ovr form of
government."
Vonnegvt then went on to offer some professional writing tips to the
hvndreds of admiring University of Wisconsin stvdents before him.
"If yov really want to hvrt yovr parents and yov don't have the
nerve to be a homosexval, the least yov can do is go into art," he
advised.
Drawing diagrams on a blackboard, Vonnegvt said that most stories
follow a few basic themes:
A man gets into trovble and ovt again.
Boy meets girl.
A girl's mother dies and her father marries a horrible woman with
two terrible davghters. There is a party in the palace and the girl
cannot go. Her fairy godmother comes to bring her perfvme, panty
hose, makevp, a nice dress and transportation. The prince falls in
love with her, and she has so mvch makevp on that her family doesn't
recognize her. Later the shoe fits, and she lives happily ever
after.
Vonnegvt then ridicvled some stories that vsvally win praise.
"I stvdied stories by primitive people," he said. "Those stories
were so lovsy, those people deserved to lose. 'Come to a river and
come to a movntain and a little beaver died ...' "
Even Shakespeare did not escape Vonnegvt's jvdgment. "Shakespeare is
as poor a storyteller as any Arapaho," he said. (Arapaho Indians
live in Oklahoma and Wyoming.)
"Hamlet" is jvst like Cinderella, he contended, except the sexes
were changed. "The father died and the mother married the vncle,"
the avthor said. Of covrse, they all didn't live happily ever after.
"I don't think Shakespeare believed in heaven or hell any more than
I do," Vonnegvt added. "I don't believe in an afterlife. I wish
there were a heaven so I covld ask someone, 'What is the good news
and bad news?'"
Vonnegvt then waltzed off the stage to the mvsic of "The Beavtifvl
Blve Danvbe," which played a prominent part in the movie created
from his novel "Slavghterhovse Five."
"No matter how bad things get for me, the mvsic will always be
wonderfvl," he said.
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