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August 14 - November 9, 2021
Wilfred Sheed said of Vonnegut, “He won’t be trussed up by an ism, even a good one.” He preferred to “play his politics, and even his pacifism, by ear.”1 Vonnegut was prone to seeing the other side of the coin, ambiguity, and contradiction.
He would appreciate this palindrome by Swiss artist André Thomkins: “dogma i am god.”
But the part that has stuck with me for forty years is his final chapter, “Endarkenment.” It begins, “Sometimes my striving toward growth becomes the object of amusement to the part of me that is watching me.”
The results of the Endarkenment workshops were startling. They were as effective as regular workshops in raising people’s awareness of the human comedy, and in realizing that they themselves chose what they did and that therefore they could make other choices.
Fetishism of famous writers, he suggested, occurs because “it’s such heavy-lifting to actually read books.”
Most important of all was his advice that I should not follow any of his suggestions ‘just because I suggested them.’ He emphasized that I should only carry out those suggestions ‘that ring a bell with you.’ He said I should not write or change anything simply because he (or any other editor or writer) suggested it unless the suggestions fit my own intention and vision for the book.” Wakefield says it was “one of the most valuable editorial lessons I ever learned.”
Kurt Vonnegut said: When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.3 Is this advice? It is for me. It says: You can do it. Every writer feels inept. Even Kurt Vonnegut. Just stick to your chair and keep on typing.
And so it goes as good advice for teachers who despair of teaching, for readers who don’t understand a difficult text, for anybody tackling anything and feeling inadequate to the task. That just about takes in all of us. Carry on! Cheer up! Have a good laugh! We’re all inadequate to our tasks!
When I teach—and I’ve taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a couple of years, at City College, Harvard—I’m not looking for people who want to be writers. I’m looking for people who are passionate, who care terribly about something. —kurt vonnegut, Like Shaking Hands with God
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about [italics mine]. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
The point is, writing well, even an ordinary letter or a well-considered e-mail, demands the generosity of your time, effort, and thought. You have to care enough that it’s worth your energy, weighing that cost against the cost of not doing it.
It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.11
The second suggestion Vonnegut makes in “How to Write with Style” is “Do not ramble.” I won’t, as he said he wouldn’t, “ramble on about that.”
The third is “Keep it simple.” Some of the most profound lines in all of literature, he points out, are the simplest: “‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”
“Why is ‘readable’ such a bad thing to be these days?” Some people “are gratified by the struggle to make sense of what they read… I am more often gratified by a writer who has accepted the enormous effort necessary to make writing clear.”
How do you keep from rambling? How do you “keep it simple”? Take Vonnegut’s fourth piece of advice: “Have the guts to cut.”
If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.16
If you have a tendency to blather or croon or lavish on the detail, one way to handle those impulses is to go right ahead—prattle, garnish and glitter. Rather than strangle the inclinations, curbing the flow and squelching the possibility of unearthing the diamonds that might result, scratch out the excess after your first draft’s wanderings and flourishes.
A piece of advice I myself would give anyone about writing anything is to separate the composing process from the editing process. First write full tilt, without examining what you’re writing. Let it alone for a period of time. Then read it with fresh eyes, edit and revise it. Repeat this process, ad infinitum if necessary, until you’re satisfied that it’s finished.
Why have the guts to cut? For strength. Uncluttered by distracting riffraff, fewer words, when accurate, pack more punch.
Vonnegut’s fifth item of advice is “Sound like yourself.”
“I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say,” Kurt explains under his sixth piece of advice: “Say what you mean to say.”
They hoped that I would become understandable—and therefore understood…
Hence Vonnegut’s seventh rule: “Pity the readers”: Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify.
So a writer is someone who is willing to be uncomfortable enough—or is uncomfortable enough by nature—to wonder where people are, where they’re going, and why they’re going there. A writer is willing to take risks for that wondering. A writer cares that much about his or her subject.
I learned to stand outside of my own society and people have said that I am like a Martian visiting the Earth.… It was easy for me to stand outside my own culture. I have discovered that many people are totally incapable of doing this.… They assume that their culture is so immutable that it’s like their skin and they assume that my asking them to stand outside their culture is like asking them to stand outside their skin.54
Be kind to yourself. Give yourself room. There are years to go. Don’t pummel yourself with expectation. Go easy. Your material will eventually find its way to voice.
vonnegut’s breakthrough-cluster converted into advice: 1. Make a commitment. 2. Trust fate, your Fairy Godmother Collaborator. 3. Tell the truth. 4. Keep on truckin’. 5. Surrender perfection. Heed what you need. Alter to fit your own left foot.
There’s scientific evidence that being motivated by intrinsic interest results in the greatest success, even more than when combined with practical incentives.102
Writing is a generosity, even to yourself.
“Writing that describes traumatic or distressing events in detail and how we felt about these events then and feel about them now is the only kind of writing about trauma that clinically has been associated with improved health.”
Fiction requires the mask of character: that is, taking on an imagined character’s view. That lends to empathizing. “Give a man a mask,” Oscar Wilde said, “and he will tell the truth.”
I argued that it was a teacher’s duty to speak frankly to students of college age about all sorts of concerns of humankind, not just the subject of a course as stated in the catalogue. “That’s how we gain their trust, and encourage them to speak up as well,” I said, “and realize that all subjects do not reside in neat little compartments, but are continuous and inseparable from the one big subject we have been put on Earth to study, which is life itself.”183
I define a saint as a person who behaves decently in an indecent society.186
Most of the sexism, like Vonnegut’s in these anecdotes, came from a cultural blind spot. Vonnegut was a product of his generation and culture, even as he strived against being so in many ways. He was not intentionally sexist or hurtful. Such blind spots, to phrase it most benignly, occur in every culture. You may harbor some yourself. Sexism, racism, ageism, nationalism. Homophobia. Political and regional prejudices. Your teachers, being human, will have such blind spots. They may not, as Vonnegut’s own mentor did not, recognize your value, remember you, or care about you. That doesn’t mean
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Four pieces of advice: Recognize the blind spot. Call it out. Keep your eyes on your own prize. Expect change.
What he taught was more important than writing. He led us to abhor war, to be compassionate toward our characters, to respect people, to question rigid constructs, to care deeply, to try to be decent, to laugh. To tell useful lies. He taught these things by his responses to people’s stories, by his anecdotes, by his quiet remarks, by his treatment of us, by being himself.
The language is holy to me.… Literature is holy to me.… Our freedom to say or write whatever we please in this country is holy to me. It is a rare privilege not only on this planet, but throughout the universe, I suspect. And it is not something somebody gave us. It is a thing we give to ourselves.215
What is “failure” anyhow? A different outcome than expected, in this case.
1509 Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture, hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy (or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison). My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings! My haunches are grinding into my guts, my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
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Vonnegut calls the reader “my indispensable collaborator.”274 His rules for “Creative Writing 101” in Bagombo Snuff Box, adapted from his classroom admonishments, begin with courtesy toward them. Rule #1: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.275 In other words, “You’re in the entertainment business.”
So “hooking the reader” means employing an “arresting lead.” Not dramatic hyperbole or obfuscation, but arousing curiosity through informing.
Vonnegut’s “Creative Writing 101” Rule #8: Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.277
“Throw out the first two pages!” Vonnegut would say over and over in class, responding to a story. Later he converted that into “Creative Writing 101” Rule #5: “Start as close to the end as possible.”281 “Throw out the first two pages” is better advice, to my mind.
Vonnegut’s “Creative Writing 101” Rule #3: Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.295 Wanting something, anything, triggers curiosity. And suspense. Will the character get what she desires or not?
A single, core conflict is at the heart of the structure of a story. No conflict equals no plot. Motivation and conflict are the engines that initiate a story, keep it moving, and form its particular shape.
A classic short story is like a geometry proof. Or like a sneeze. Ah-ah-Ah-aH-AH-AH-CHOO! with a little spray of recovery at the end. Or orgasm.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” my mother used to say. After a pause, she’d add, “But satisfaction brought it back to life again.” Whether gambling, watching a ballgame, or reading a mystery, according to researchers, “people are invested in learning the outcome… but they do not wish to learn the outcome too quickly.”
This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound.312
That’s the horrible part of being in the short-story business… you have to be a real expert on ends. Nothing in real life ends. “Millicent at last understands.” Nobody ever understands.
