The Daily Banner, Greencastle, Putnam County, 4 November 1968 — Page 8
Page 8
The Daily banner, Greencastle. Indiana
Monday, November 4. 1968
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Novelist Kurt Vonnegut will appear at DePauw Nov. 4-5
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.sculpture wliicli is 10-feet Ions', •and represents New Kn'dand enterin''. the air ae.e. It hans-.s in Lot’.an airport in Boston, lie also writes book reviews for Life magazine and the New York Times.
nest-selling novelist Kurt Vonnegut will spend Nov. 4-5 .-peaking to DePauw University classes and to the public. During that two-day visit he will make his public appearance Monday (Nov. 4) at 7:15 p.m. in the Roy O. West Library auditorium, reading some of his works. (No admission will be charged for the program.) Vonnegut, who was born in Indianapolis but lias spent most of the past 20 years in the East, comes to DePauw through the University’s English lectureship series. His newest novel, Slaughterhouse Five, will lie published in March. It is currently being serialized in Ramparts maga-
zine.
Vonnegut has been publishing regularly since he sold six short stories in six months some 15 years ago. He didn’t plan to be a writer. He planned to be a biochemist and he probably would have been if World War II hadn’t interrupted things. However, his scientific study, the war and a job in industry have served him well by supply-
ing ideas and background for books and some 100 short stories. One of the earliest themes was the growth of automation and its effect on people. In his “Player Piano,” society had three parts: Machines which did most of the work and made all the decisions; managers, engineers and other jprofessionals, and the rest of the people who were fed, clothed and housed under a cradle to grave program. A revolution against the rigidity of the system, in which a person’s status was determined by his IQ, ended in
failure.
In 1952 this book must have really seemed like science fiction. When it was first issued he was told by friends who are engineers that it was written 10 years too soon for it to have a good public reception. He’s curious to see the reception now in a day when unemployment because of automation is a threat to many. He did no rewriting on the book before the new printing. He said, “I see no revision in the trend •toward machines. They’re making more and more decisions.” He doesn’t think “we have much opportunity to govern our fate; people who make the decisions are technicians; this is logical though not necessarily
right.”
Vonnegut sees the trend continuing. “It will happen because machines are so much better than humans; they are so much better to get work done if that’s what we want done.” He believes protest against automation is futile; that instead people have to change and invent ways of being happy without working.
Though
futile, he “for the
books.
Vonnegut sold his first story to now-defunct Collier’s magazine while he was on the General Electric public relations staff. He quit this job when he started to make more money as a short story writer than he was making as a public relations man. Vonnegut went from Indianapolis to Cornell University intending to become a scientist.
he thinks protest is protests nevertheless record” through his
He had an older brother who was a scientist and his fattier, who was an architect, thought this was a good career for him. Me majored in biochemistry. He said, “I believed in it. When I started I took it seriously, but I wasn’t very good at it.” His job as editor of the college newspaper was something he liked better. “It was a whole lot more fun than anything I was doing in class.” Three years later (1942) he joined the Army and was sent to the Carnegie Institute of Technology to study mechanical engineering. A need for infantry replacements in Europe cut this short and he was sent to Europe. This also proved to be the end to any scientific career. His unit was wiped out in the Battle of the Bulge. Vonnegut was taken prisoner and sent to Dresden, Germany, along with 35,000 other prisoners. When Dresden was destroyed by fire bombs dropped from American and British planes, he and others took shelter in a meat locker beneath a slaughter house where they were billeted. “When we came up, there was nobody else left. Everything organic was consumed by fire. It was a nightmare.” Still a prisoner, he was detailed to dig out bodies. One night in the closing days of the war, the German guards disappeared. The next morning the prisoners were liberated by Allied troops. For the next three years (until 1948) Vonnegut attended the University of Chicago and worked as a police reporter for the Chicago News Bureau. The General Electric job was next. From this background have come the ideas. He has completed work on a book on the destruction of Dres-
den.
“I saw the whole thing smashed up in one night. It was like watching a pyramid destroyed, it was astonishing.” He describes Dresden before the destruction as the “most beautiful city I ever saw.” He thinks a varied background is essential for a writer because “you’ve got to have information about life along with what is taught in English departments.” Once a writer has the idea for a book and the necessary backSportscaster injured ST. LOUIS (UPI)—Radio and television sportscaster Harry Car ay, a member of the broadcasting team at the 1968 World Series, was critically injured early Sunday when struck by a car on St. Louis' West Side. Caray suffered compound fractures of both legs, a fracture and dislocation of the right shoulder, chest contusions, face lacerations and a fractured nose. He underwent two and one-half hours of surgery and was moved to the intensive care unit of Barnes Hospital, where his condition remained critical Sunday afternoon. Caray was struck by the car of Michael Poliquin, 21, Overland, Mo., who was not charged as a result of the accident. Poliquin told police his car skidded on wet pavement and he was unable to swerve away from Caray.
ground, what happens next? Vonnegut just sits downs and begins to write. He does not
work from notes.
He starts without knowing how the story will end. “The thing has a life of its own and you
realize you have told the story and you write the end.” The beginning is the hardest. “It is hard to start properly, there are stacks and stacks of beginnings that you have to throw
away.”
But once he gets the proper beginning Vonnegut stays with it
until he is done.
He frankly says that how fast he writes depends on “my finan-
cial situation.”
Asked what happens when
people discover his occupation, Vonnegut smiled and said, “They stop talking to me. They don’t
know what to say.”
He believes the majority of people have no interest in books, that the book reading group is
quite small and composed mostly
of students,
Vonnegut’s talent isn’t limited to one area. He lias written several plays which have lieen staged; he paints in oils and he produced a piece of welded
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