Full Details
RYO Review: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I loved Vonnegut in high school. In my Modern American Lit class, we read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, and of course Slaughterhouse Five. On my own, I read Jailbird and Slapstick. Picking up one of his earliest novels thirty-five years later, I realized I had forgotten what a bizarre, dark writer he was.
The Sirens of Titan has a crazy, convoluted plot that is quite difficult for me to describe. It’s about Malachi Constant, one of the richest but also most spoiled and morally bankrupt people on earth. When his fortunes collapse, he takes an offer to go to Mars to become an officer in their army. Constant’s adventures on Mars, and later Mercury and Titan seem to be manipulated by Winston Niles Rumfoord, a man who apparently knows the future, and moves through space making appearances on earth every 50-some-odd days. Besides Constant, Rumfoord manipulates the people of earth, starting a new religion, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, turning Constant into a sort of anti-messiah. Also in this mix is Rumfoord’s suffering and spoiled wife Beatrice, and a robot alien named Salo from the planet Tralfamadore (Vonnegut uses this planet in several of his works). And, well, let’s just say, you have to read the book to really get it.
2BR02B Starring Paul Giamatti? Yes, Please.
2BR02B, one of Kurt Vonnegut‘s early short stories, is being turned into a film! At least it will be if these guys can get the funding they need through their Indiegogo campaign to pull it off.
“This film takes a look at something all of us can relate to – starting a family. But, what happens when there are too many families, with too many children, and not enough space? What do we do then? Kurt Vonnegut had a theory of what might happen. He called it the Federal Bureau of Termination. Let us show you his theory.”
Adding considerable weight to this campaign is Oscar nominated actor Paul Giamatti who wants to play the role of Dr. Hitz in the film. He is a 2BR02B fan, and having him on board is a huge coup for the production team. I could watch Paul Giamati watch paint dry and this story is painted by Kurt Fucking Vonnegut!
If you’re not familiar with the story, you can read it for free over at Project Gutenberg and you can learn more about the movie effort over at Indiegogo and on their Facebook page.
2BR02B, that is the question. You could be the answer.
Kurt Vonnegut Rises
Members of Ball State University’s Immersive Learning Group have digitized his life:
The group’s completed projects include a digitization of Vonnegut’s physical manuscripts; creation of a film archive and oral history of the author, a traveling exhibit and new products for its gift shop; and development of a marketing plan to help KVML become self-sustaining.
What is immersive learning? Ball State explains the reason for the new pedagogical philosophy:
The end product of immersive learning is that our graduates move into careers with skills beyond textbook learning. Not only do they have a strong intellectual knowledge base, they know how to work with others and how to drive projects to completion. They’ve been engaged in real-world problems with real budgets and deadlines. They know how to develop priorities in a team, how to lead a team, and how to collaborate as a team member.
Hey, if it means I get to read the original manuscript of Slaughterhouse-Five, I’m all for it.
Vonnegut Unbanned (sort of)
We have an update on that school board in Missouri that banned Slaughterhouse-Five from a high school libary. In case you missed it, the Republic school district had banned two books (including Vonnegut‘s masterpiece) after a citizen (who did not have children in the district) complained that they contradicted his interpretation of the Bible. Since then, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library has offered to give away 150 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five, and the ACLU has expressed interest in litigating the policy.
After all of the blinding national attention, the board reconsidered its position and is allowing the books to return to library shelves. It isn’t a complete victory for free speech advocates, as they will only allow parents to check out the books on behalf of their children. This may mean that students may still read the book in the reading room, as well (this has not yet been tested). What do you think of this compromise?
All of this comes just in the nick of time for Banned Books Week, which starts this Saturday. In celebration, we suggest that you get to work on the Banned Science Fiction & Fantasy Books list that we introduced in July. You can kick things off by reading any of Vonnegut’s banned books for only $3.99 on Kindle.
By the way, if you know of a banned SF/F book that has not made our list, please let us know in the comments. We’ll add it right away.
Kurt Vonnegut on the Cheap
Amazon is offering 18 Kindle edition Kurt Vonnegut titles for $3.99 each through the end of September. The regular list price for these books is up to $15 a piece so you can get three for the price of one. Seems a great time to stock up on some Vonnegut so get ’em while they’re hot!
This is also perfect timing for Banned Books Week starting on the 24th. Three of Vonnegut’s books are on our Banned Science Fiction & Fantasy Books list: Cat’s Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House and Slaughter-House Five. You may remember back in July how Slaughter-House Five was banned yet again.
Vonnegut Banned – Again
“A book is a loaded gun.”
– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
We like to think that the banning of books is a thing of the past or, better yet, the stuff of fiction. These days, banned books are celebrated across the world, even (perhaps especially) in public school libraries. One Missouri school board, however, didn’t seem to get the memo, banning Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five both from the curriculum and from the local high school library after a local resident (with no children in the district) complained that it contradicted his interpretation of Christianity. The WWEnd staff Some of the WWEnd staff would like to respond is considering responding. While we figure out the best way whether to protest, we’ll leave you with the best response of all: Vonnegut’s.
In 1973, another board (Drake Public School Board in North Dakota) reacted to a parental complaint by banning Slaughterhouse-Five, going to so far as to collect student copies and set them ablaze. Here’s a copy of a letter that Vonnegut sent to the board in response:
Dear Mr. McCarthy:
I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.
Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.
I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?
I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
After I have said all this. I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.
I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books–books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.
Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.
Please return to this blog in the coming days.
