For many of us self-proclaimed writers, Vonnegut is one of the untouchables. He’s one of those quasi-deity like figures in American lit of whom we can only hope one day to have a sliver of his talent or uniqueness or wit.
Below is a term paper assignment from his teaching stint at the University of Iowa in the mid-1960s, right around the time that Cat’s Cradle became a best-seller, but before his career defining Slaughterhouse-Five was published.
Writers, editors, teachers, and students - take note. This is how education works at the University of Vonnegut:
Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.
FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
November 30, 1965
Beloved:
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all …”
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children …”
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
poloniøus
Today was my last day with the seniors, as they move on to spend the last few days of their high school careers practicing how to walk across a stage. I’m not really the sentimental type when it comes to my job, but I did feel the need to share some brief parting pieces of advice with my seniors, those things I wish someone had told me when I was their age, before they head off into their idea of the “real world” - be it to college, the workforce, the military, or elsewhere:
- Remember that credit cards are not free money.
- Write things down. Your crazy experiences. Your funny moments. Your heartache. Your anger. A disturbing conversation you overhead from the frat boys behind you in Anthropology 101. Your mind is a trap at 18 and you remember everything. That starts to go away pretty quick into your adulthood. So, write it down.
- Help. Is dad out there working in the garden this summer? Is mom changing your car’s oil for you? Is grandpa putting up a new deck? Pick up some pruners, the oil pan, or a hammer and go help them. Ask them questions about what they’re doing. See if they’ll let you help them with something that you had no interest in doing last summer. It’ll be awkward. You’ll feel weird because it’ll be the most you’ve talked to them in three years, but do it. You won’t regret it for a variety of reasons.
- Become fluent in another language. You’re almost there anyway after three years of Spanish. Okay, okay… maybe not. I know you swore it off after your last final, but keep up on it. Don’t keep putting off the Spanish elective in college until “next semester” or you’ll never do it. Suck it up and do it. Download a Rosetta Stone to your iPod. Turn on Univision and make a drinking game out of it to see who is the best interpreter (when you’re 21, of course). The future job-hunting you will thank you.
- Go places. Take every opportunity to travel that you can. Go on adventures. Stop at restaurants that aren’t Taco Bell. Eagerly offer to help your friend move out to Mobridge, South Dakota. Meet people. Eat weird foods. It’s okay if you gag. Take that study abroad, dang it, because those few extra thousand dollars are nothing compared to the experiences that you will have. Go out of your comfort zone, remembering that no one in these places you explore will ever see you again and it’s okay to embarrass yourselves.
- Use condoms. Please.
- Read one book each month. I know, you laugh. You’re graduating high school, why would you ever pick up a book again? Heck, you didn’t read most of them anyway. But it doesn’t have to be a big book. It can even have pictures and no one will yell at you. So, if you don’t have one, go get a library card and look around for a while. You’ll be surprised when they aren’t being assigned to you how many books will catch your eye - and the knowledge you’ll gain with each book you read is invaluable. Besides… reading is sexy.
- Embrace your mistakes. You are going to screw up. You’re going to do unbelievably stupid things. For most of you, like it was for me, this will happen often. Don’t shy away from these mistakes. Own up to them. Learn from them. Then move on from them.
- Remember, when your first big breakup comes, it won’t be the end of the world. It will feel like it. You’ll probably rip some of your hair out. Your friends will be sick of your crying. You’ll be disheveled, drinking expired milk out of the carton, and wondering how the world will ever go on. Just remember: it does. And you will too. Instead of moping around, get a gym membership. That metabolism just doesn’t work like it used to anyway. Better yet, go volunteer somewhere. Coach Special Olympics. Have some coffee at the senior home. Give tours to kids at the zoo. Not only will you feel better about yourself, you might even meet a cute dude or total babe. And cute dudes and total babes love people who volunteer.
- Budget. Don’t be afraid to spend it, because you have to live a little, but be smart with your money. Remember: stopping at Starbucks before school or work will cost you $900 over the course of a year. Getting the cheap stuff at the convenience store will cost you $500 (even with those buy 8, get 1 free cards they give you). Brewing your own will cost you $150. Keep that lesson in mind for every aspect of where you’re allocating your hard-earned cash.
This is not a end-all list of advice that will lead young people to successful lives. Rather, it’s what I’ve learned along the way, a guy who was there not too long ago and wishes he knew then what he knows now.
Dear Prudence is an advice column that has existed on Slate for over a decade. It is written by the moderately prolific writer Emily Yoffe. I hate to admit that I read an advice column at all, but hell, Slate is on my RSS feed and the headline caught my eye and maybe, just maybe I’m a little bit in love with the idea of people taking advice on an absurd amount of issues from completely unqualified advice columnists.
Yoffe almost goes in the right direction with her response by stating that the woman is a predator, but then goes on to advise the worried girlfriend to simply greet that same predator with a friendly exchange. Reading the above question and Yoffe’s response, I could only wonder: what if the gender roles in this scenario were reversed and everything else from the Q&A were the same? Read it again, this way:
Q. Yikes, My Girlfriend and Her Lost Virginity: My girlfriend of two years recently told me that she lost her virginity at the age of 12 to a family friend that was 30 at the time. She swears that she is the one that seduced him and that it is a very happy memory for her; I have no reason to doubt her and she is “older” than her years and has always dated older men. But I’m very grossed out by the man in question. I’m picturing myself allowing a 12-year-old to seduce me (I’m 30) and the thought is disgusting to me. I really don’t think he is a predator and my girlfriend really does seem to have quite an effect on older men - they all just want to take their pants off for her. My question is mainly that I don’t know how I’m going to face this man - we see him about three times a year at family events and one is coming up next month. I am not great at keeping my facial features neutral so I’m worried he’s going to figure out that I know. I don’t want to “out” him. I’m definitely not going to touch a drop of booze that day because I don’t want to get tipsy and say something I’ll regret. I really just don’t know what to say to this man or how to act in front of him! Help.
A: I agree with your disgust, but I disagree that he’s not a predator. There are no circumstances under which a 30-year-old should be having sex with a 12-year-old, and I don’t care what the genders are of those involved. However, instead of seeing this as a violation, for your girlfriend it’s a lovely memory, so let it be. If you have trouble with your facial features, start practicing in the mirror. There surely are times at work when you’re saying, “That’s a great idea, boss, I’ll get right on it,” and you’re thinking, “Another idiotic request!” but you don’t want your face to give you away. You know how to be cordial to an old family friend, so make some brief polite conversation to Humbert Humbert, then walk away.
Would it seem more disturbing if these roles were reversed? Is it equally disturbing either way? Do the indifferent attitudes in this article reveal a commonly accepted portrayal of our society’s views on gender roles and rape? Can a 12 year old child ever even seduce a sane, normal 30 year old adult?
Chime in, folks. I certainly have my opinions, but I am curious to hear yours.
Why bother being polite? Call that bitch out! Hey, nice to see you again, you child rapists. How’s the raping crop this year? Diddle any interesting little boys lately?
She should be polite because her boyfriend asked her to. That’s it. If he told her it was his choice, she needs to respect that. Even if he had told his girlfriend that the family member raped him, it is never okay to forcibly out a rape victim. That is their decision, not yours. It’s beyond disrespectful to suggest otherwise.
Furthermore, I’m bothered by the age talk. At twelve years old, I wanted control of my sexuality. I was already harboring malcontent for people who told me that I couldn’t explore my sexuality with a consenting adult. And partially, the fact that authority figures ignored my potential to make my own sexual decisions made me feel weak and unprotected- I felt I already was a sexual being, and that people who said otherwise were simply refusing to protect my human rights.
Not to mention, how you personally feel about child/adult sexual relationships is irrelevant. That’s solely the business of the child and adult. If they’re both happy, they both understand what they are doing, and they aren’t harming anyone, then they have the right to do it.
Remember, despite what people like to think, there are numerous children who begin consensual body/sexual exploration very early in life, with peers. It’s normal. Time to stop ignoring that, especially because we are seeing a rise in the number of children forcing other children into sex acts. Focus on teaching children about respect and consent, not age.
We know that children who are molested will benefit from laws governing that sexual contact without consent is illegal- so give them that. And through personal experience I have learned that laws preventing 12 year olds from having full sexual autonomy can make them feel weak and discriminated against, while stopping them from having safe experiences that they want to have. So give them autonomy.
Taking away the rights of people is not an appropriate form of “protection”.
I understand your argument that the victim, now an adult, should be the one who must be comfortable with bringing the information to light, I am with you there - but arguing that a twelve year old is cognitively and emotionally capable of consenting to sex with an adult is absurd. Will 12 and 13 year old kids continue to have sex with each other? Absolutely. Which is why around that age they begin to receive proper (one hopes) sex education. And of course a horny 12 year old boy who is probably used to humping his jacket sleeve will want to have sex with a thirty year old woman. It’s the responsibility of the 30 year old to reject any “seduction” by the child though - and if they can’t, frankly, I would call them a predator.
Dear Prudence is an advice column that has existed on Slate for over a decade. It is written by the moderately prolific writer Emily Yoffe. I hate to admit that I read an advice column at all, but hell, Slate is on my RSS feed and the headline caught my eye and maybe, just maybe I’m a little bit in love with the idea of people taking advice on an absurd amount of issues from completely unqualified advice columnists.
Yoffe almost goes in the right direction with her response by stating that the woman is a predator, but then goes on to advise the worried girlfriend to simply greet that same predator with a friendly exchange. Reading the above question and Yoffe’s response, I could only wonder: what if the gender roles in this scenario were reversed and everything else from the Q&A were the same? Read it again, this way:
Q. Yikes, My Girlfriend and Her Lost Virginity: My girlfriend of two years recently told me that she lost her virginity at the age of 12 to a family friend that was 30 at the time. She swears that she is the one that seduced him and that it is a very happy memory for her; I have no reason to doubt her and she is “older” than her years and has always dated older men. But I’m very grossed out by the man in question. I’m picturing myself allowing a 12-year-old to seduce me (I’m 30) and the thought is disgusting to me. I really don’t think he is a predator and my girlfriend really does seem to have quite an effect on older men - they all just want to take their pants off for her. My question is mainly that I don’t know how I’m going to face this man - we see him about three times a year at family events and one is coming up next month. I am not great at keeping my facial features neutral so I’m worried he’s going to figure out that I know. I don’t want to “out” him. I’m definitely not going to touch a drop of booze that day because I don’t want to get tipsy and say something I’ll regret. I really just don’t know what to say to this man or how to act in front of him! Help.
A: I agree with your disgust, but I disagree that he’s not a predator. There are no circumstances under which a 30-year-old should be having sex with a 12-year-old, and I don’t care what the genders are of those involved. However, instead of seeing this as a violation, for your girlfriend it’s a lovely memory, so let it be. If you have trouble with your facial features, start practicing in the mirror. There surely are times at work when you’re saying, “That’s a great idea, boss, I’ll get right on it,” and you’re thinking, “Another idiotic request!” but you don’t want your face to give you away. You know how to be cordial to an old family friend, so make some brief polite conversation to Humbert Humbert, then walk away.
Would it seem more disturbing if these roles were reversed? Is it equally disturbing either way? Do the indifferent attitudes in this article reveal a commonly accepted portrayal of our society’s views on gender roles and rape? Can a 12 year old child ever even seduce a sane, normal 30 year old adult?
Chime in, folks. I certainly have my opinions, but I am curious to hear yours.
