Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64 (1977) | Hacker News Reader

Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64 (1977)

theparisreview.org

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Vonnegut is brilliant. I have read almost everything that he has published and love finding new interviews like this.

It is very important to remember the Dresden bombing which was a horrible war crime. Unfortunately, even up to this day there has been little self reflection on the Dresden bombing from official government sources. Same for the horrible and similarly unnecessary nuclear bombings of japan. So it is a good thing one of the best American writers ever born got to witness it, so that it cannot be swept under the rug.

Another thing I got from the interview is that it must have been so nice to have these magazines to pay writers good money for short stories. Getting the equivalent of six weeks' salary for a short story is absolutely amazing. And this mind you is not some type of government sponsorship or charitable grant it is all free enterprise -- the magazine made money giving writers so much for their short stories. Most of the best american fiction writers got started writing stories for magazines.

I do hope eventually something like this develops on the internet for the modern world.

Vonnegut is really special.

I always like coming back to his Shape of Stories talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ

Here's a longer one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc

It's interesting to see the difference in him with age. He seems to giggle more as an older man.

I recently ran across a review (from 2013) of Kurt Vonnegut's collected letters. He was working in public relations for General Electric (in the early 1950s, I gather) when he sold his first story to Collier's (a large-circulation magazine of the time). He wrote to his father that if he could sell five stories a year, he would make more than a year's pay at GE.

But he wrote in 1986, "the magazines had gone out of business, and I was suddenly in the position of having to write a whole book in order to get what used to be my fee for just one story."

My favourite American author by a long shot. He never took himself too seriously which lent his works a sense of whimsy which I felt was very engaging. And then while you were engaged, he would sneak in something profound which shook you to the core. Quite a genius

> I do hope eventually something like this develops on the internet for the modern world.

Wish-granting in process courtesy of Mozilla's Grant For The Web, dweb nerds, and the co-operative economy :)

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/shilling for a fellow co-operator's project

Regarding Dresden, it is worth noting that his source David Irving (which he also name drops in this interview) turned out to be a neo-nazi and holocaust denier. Important context for the quote about "the largest massacre in European history."

Slaughterhouse 5 is a brilliant book, but as a historical source it is only valid as far as Vonnegut personal experience goes. The information taken from Irving's book is very dubious, for example Irving wildly inflated the number of dead.

One thing I noticed is how little the interviewer spoke, and when he did, how short his questions were. Vonnegut does the majority of the talking while the interviewer just keeps laying down graceful transitions for him to expand upon. I'm part of a startup that's doing customer discovery, and this seems like a brilliant lesson in interviewing.

Customer discovery?

The process of uncovering a problem that is shared across a group of prospective customers. Usually done when you're trying to figure out if a product idea has any legs

I see. How do you make contact with these prospective customers and sit them down for long enough to chat, without them freaking out?

Usually make contact via email or Linkedin. Show your cards up front and make it clear that you're not selling anything, just looking to learn more about a specific problem you think they have. Set expectations that convo will be brief (<20 minutes).

If someone has a real problem, they will be actively looking for solutions and would be happy to chat with you.

There is a twist regarding the interviewer revealed at the very end

I appreciate you not spoiling the twist, but I wonder whether people will go back and read through the whole piece to find the interviewer’s identity. Maybe I’ll add the hint that this interviewer is intimately, uncommonly familiar with Vonnegut’s worldview.

On writing:

> INTERVIEWER

> Could you put the theory into a few words?

> VONNEGUT

> It was stated by Paul Engle—the founder of the Writers Workshop at Iowa. He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance: “Don’t take it all so seriously.”

> INTERVIEWER

> And how would that be helpful?

> VONNEGUT

> It would remind the students that they were learning to play practical jokes.

> INTERVIEWER

> Practical jokes?

> VONNEGUT

> If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.

> INTERVIEWER

> Can you give an example?

> VONNEGUT

> The Gothic novel. Dozens of the things are published every year, and they all sell. My friend Borden Deal recently wrote a Gothic novel for the fun of it, and I asked him what the plot was, and he said, “A young woman takes a job in an old house and gets the pants scared off her.”

> INTERVIEWER

> Some more examples?

> VONNEGUT

> The others aren’t that much fun to describe: somebody gets into trouble, and then gets out again; somebody loses something and gets it back; somebody is wronged and gets revenge; Cinderella; somebody hits the skids and just goes down, down, down; people fall in love with each other, and a lot of other people get in the way; a virtuous person is falsely accused of sin; a sinful person is believed to be virtuous; a person faces a challenge bravely, and succeeds or fails; a person lies, a person steals, a person kills, a person commits fornication.

> INTERVIEWER

> If you will pardon my saying so, these are very old-fashioned plots.

> VONNEGUT

> I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading.

It's funny how familiar this philosophy feels to me as a game designer. Earlier in the interview, he compares the craft of writing to engineering the Model T. Something that can be engineered, but also to be fiddled with and iterated upon in a playful, but mechanical way.

The thing with video games is, the industry has done that. We know the tricks and reward paths on a scientific level. Skinner Boxes, intermittent randomized rewards and all that.

The casual game industry has put huge amounts of work into discovering these systems, the systems that keep people playing and sometimes that keep certain people paying, in a methodical and statistical way. But in my own experience, my best work has come out from not taking the project seriously, and just having fun, tinkering at the edges. Making a game for me, or for a few people as a joke.

Anyway, it's a fantastic interview. Vonnegut is an American treasure, etc.

Do you know of any resources to learn the tricks that the casual game industry has uncovered?

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