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>> Host of the KQED,
a nationally syndicated radio program forum.
For those of you who love satellite radio
like I do, Sirius XM as well.
So, many, many of you are probably here because you listen
to him on a regular basis.
But many of you don't know
that he's also kind of a literary expert.
So, we're going to start and then I think what he was
in mind is that after he's through with his comments
that maybe this could be a little more interactive.
So, so excited to be here,
so excited that the Bob Kelly Endowment could fund this
for us.
So, thank you to our emeritus colleague.
Okay.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you and it's a pleasure to be here.
I know we're competing with the Giant's game.
And in many ways that's big competition for me too
because I happened to be a very strong fan of the Giants,
it's hard to believe they're in the World Series.
It's also wonderful that they're in the World Series.
And so I hope-- wonderful that I can come here and talk to you
about "Slaughterhouse-Five" and Kurt Vonnegut.
I should tell you that literary expert, well,
I don't know, I'm a literary guy.
I have a PhD in English and American literature.
I've been teaching it for more years
than I care sometimes to reflect on.
And I thought I could perhaps do what is not
by any means an onerous task of talking about
"Slaughterhouse-Five" in both the literary
and historical context, and then maybe give you some notion
of my own personal context with Kurt Vonnegut
who I had the good fortune of interviewing at least
on three occasions, once on stage and two other times
on the radio which can be found in our archives.
It's not a plug just a fact.
And I should mention that it's also--
I think something that ought to be brought to your attention
that this novel and particularly the novels
of Kurt Vonnegut were considered kind of-- one time underground.
It seems rather hard to believe now because he's so much a part
of the mainstream and he's taught in so many courses
in universities not only here but abroad.
But there was some of us who sort of discovered Vonnegut,
we thought we were pretty hip in having discovered him.
"Slaughterhouse-Five"is probably by most lights his best novel
and his most accomplished novel.
But he has many others as well as short stories.
And some of you know was a writer
of pretty wide range and depth of work.
There was a fellow that I did my PhD work with by the name
of Jerome Klinkowtiz, the name that used
to make people kind of-- what a name that is.
But he went on to be perhaps one
of the best known scholars on Vonnegut.
And we thought we were cult readers of Vonnegut.
Jerome Klinkowtiz will always be memorable in my imagination,
in memory for the fact that he told me that he
and his wife were going to get pregnant
by drinking raspberry tea.
And he had sent for these raspberry tea leaves,
he suddenly made the connection
between raspberry tea leaves and fertility.
And came in the mail and the postal authorities came
to his home ready to I guess do some constabulatory action
'cause they thought the raspberry tea leaves
were cannabis.
So that's one of those things that stays in one's memory.
But he went on to write a great deal about Vonnegut.
In fact he did.
Some of you may know this little Twain books
that profile different writer
and his is the Twain book on Vonnegut.
And we were kind of miffed and a little bit thinking of ourselves
as radical and heterodoxical on the fact that we saw Vonnegut
as an important writer.
And we really thought that he was.
And certainly by the time "Slaughterhouse-Five" came out,
1970, he had pretty well established himself and had come
from this underground upward.
And like I said, it's pretty much memorable as perhaps
by many lights his best work, by most critical lights.
It's also a work of metafiction.
It kind of-- it really breaks down the third wall
and it does some things that are quite innovative
and experimental as I'm sure many of you know.
First of all, you have an intrusive narrator
who comes in who is Vonnegut.
And you have that narrator who speaks directly to you,
that's what I mean by breaking down the third wall.
Now this has a long tradition in literature written
in the English language, it goes all the way back for those
of you who know the history of the novel to writers
like Fielding and de Vaux who would say
and "now gentle reader," and make themselves or make you
as a reader aware of their presence.
There is that sense of also however the avant-garde
and the experimental, and the innovative
in particularly a work like "Slaughterhouse-Five".
It's not because it's science fiction.
In fact there was and probably remains a lot
of what I would describe as snobbery about science fiction.
There was even snobbery about American literature
which I'll get to perhaps in the course of my lecture to you.
But-- and I do not want only to lecture to you, by the way,
I want to bring you into this and I'll tell you how I'm going
to do that as we move along here.
But there was-- and continues to be a notion
that science fiction doesn't really make it
in a literary hierarchy in the higher echelons
of literary hierarchy.
The science fiction is something, in other words,
that shouldn't be taken seriously.
Now, many of you who are science fiction lovers may find
that offensive and particularly if you like writers
like Ray Bradbury or some
of the more notable science fiction writers.
But there was at this time really only one science fiction
book that had made its mark
in the universities was widespread taught,
and that was a novel by Ursula Le Guin called "Left Hand
of Darkness" that certainly had become a part of most curricula.
And was a novel interestingly enough also
about seeing the future and also a novel
that had a good deal of fatalism in it.
I want to talk about what we-- what to look for first of all
when we ready any work of literature, let alone a novel
to maybe somewhat innovative or experimental.
First of all, we go all the way back to the Romans,
Horace who said any work
of literature should instruct and please.
Different ways of translating that,
but that's basically what he had to tell us.
And it has come down to us as something as important
as let's say Aristotle's use of literature
or any traditional views of literature that we teach.
And the idea of a book like "Slaughterhouse-Five"
or any work of Vonnegut's in terms
of entertainment is pretty clear.
Some of you really were entertained by the novel
and found yourself-- I mean entertained in a sense
of being caught up in a plot and wanting to read further
and engaged by it, stimulated by most of you I presume
and that is indeed most hands going up.
Then you get in the question of how do novels
or how does any work of literature instruct us.
And I want to talk about that.
I want to address that in the course of my talking about
"Slaughterhouse-Five" and Kurt Vonnegut.
But I also want to talk first with you
as an old veteran teacher of literature
about really what comes down in my mind as four ways to look
at any work of literature.
If the literature-- a work of literature suppose to please
and instruct us as Horace said, then how do we look at a work
of literature critically?
Well, I mean there are a lot of ways, there are a lot of schools
of criticism, you know, if you look at a literature
from a feminist lens, from a psychoanalytic lens,
from a Marxist lens, and from what they call new criticism
and deconstruction there, a whole variety of methodologies
that apply to what we call critical theory.
But I like to break it down to four things.
I like to break it down to the text itself
and not only the text and what we read in the text
and how we interpret it and analyze it and go
through what we call sometimes
as old fashion explication de texte,
that is explaining the text
and what it means metaphorically and literally.
But also intertextuality, how is this text related to other text?
What's its connection to other text?
And I want to talk about that too to an extent.
But we also look at a text in terms of the author
and the author's life.
Let's call the genetic approach to literature.
And certainly it's hard to escape this when looking
at "Slaughterhouse-Five" because as most of, you know,
Kurt Vonnegut was indeed held as a prisoner war
in a slaughterhouse in Dresden and was able to move
from that experience but of course how does one move
from autobiographical experience when one is writing fiction,
which is essentially a lie, made-up story.
Well, it's somehow a melding or a hybridization.
And that I think is important to keep in mind, that is--
there are elements of Vonnegut's own experience
in "Slaughterhouse-Five".
But don't mistake it as Vonnegut is Billy Pilgrim
because Billy Pilgrim is really a kind
of alter ego for Vonnegut.
Billy Pilgrim can be seen in the light of a story, a tale,
a novel, and imagination takes over in fiction.
The imagination as I said is a precursor to essentially a kind
of alternate state of consciousness or being
where the author is making up things.
He may be using a certain fulcrum to do with his own life,
but nevertheless it's fiction, that's we why call it fiction.
Could be close to-- in fact sometimes is what we call a
roman a cle, it's so close to the actual autobiography
or the truth that you can see people disguised as real people
in a novel, but that's not "Slaughterhouse-Five".
And yet, we learn a lot about Vonnegut from this novel.
We learn a lot about his way of thinking, about his philosophy.
And to some extend that's where the didactic comes in,
that's where he has things to teach us
and really wants to teach us things.
It's not to say that he's getting on his high horse
or his podium or talking to us as I say
in the Vatican ex cathedra, from the seat of authority,
it's just that literature can indeed and should embody ideas
and "Slaughterhouse-Five" does.
And I want to talk about those ideas as well.
But I want to also talk
about the other two ways of looking at a work.
If you can look at a work that it's textually
and intertextually, just the language and the work itself,
characters, the plot, all of the elements of the work.
Or if you look at it from the author's life,
what other ways you imagine you can look at it?
If you break it down, I would submit to you that you can look
at it in terms of what we call the mimetic
that is what does the work tell us about what we call reality?
What does it reflect as a mirror to life or as a way of conveying
or representing or characterizing elements
that we understand and need to feed our own sensibilities
as well as our own education and understanding.
That's a didactic again.
And one other element is called reader response,
how the work affects you.
You, it's not the author, it's not the work itself,
it's not necessarily even reality, it's you as the reader.
And I want to get into this later with you and talk
about ways that
"Slaughterhouse-Five" might affected you
and I think there are ways that perhaps I can perhaps maybe be
of some assistance or guidance here, I hope so,
but it's important to realize
that in many ways Vonnegut is tempting us to read this book
in a very didactic way.
Why? He gives the characters allegorical names,
even Billy Pilgrim, you know, echoes John Bunyan's
"Pilgrims Progress" or it echoes Chaucer's pilgrims going
to Canterbury.
It has all of that intertextuality flavor to it
and even when you think about it,
Vonnegut gave it the subtitle, which I'm sure some of you know,
"The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death" and--
by the way, I can't help thinking of something personal.
This book affects me 'cause when I was a boy I had a grandfather,
may he rest in peace, who is a butcher and who took me
to a slaughterhouse and he said,
"This is what life is really about."
Whoa, you know, to put that on a kid.
But to some extent, you know, and so it goes.
I mean, death after death, carnage after carnage, I mean,
the subtitle even evokes for us,
a history that we have to understand.
The Children's Crusade was an actual 15th century event
where children marched or were marching from France
and Germany, from Europe to Jerusalem and they were going
to join the crusades and they were going to die in battle
and we were talking about children, like fight in Africa
and [inaudible] and places like that
in this day and age of ours.
And it was just a complete and utter catastrophe
as what might imagine, led by Nicholas Cologne.
And "A Duty-Dance with Death" comes from,
some of you perhaps know Celine
and what it particularly heightens is Vonnegut's
recognition of something that became preeminent in the period
that this book was written, and this gets
into the book's historicity.
And that is the recognition of not only the inevitability
of death because we've always probably recognized
that going back to ancient times, but the pervasive sense
of death's randomness and the sense of death's being able
to hit anyone at any time in a random way.
And particularly of course one sees this in war.
Some of you who have read your Hemingway may remember
in "A Farewell to Arms" character gets wounded
because he's taking cheese to somebody, you know,
and then he's decorated for that
and all he's doing is bringing cheese to someone but, you know,
you can get hit by a stray bullet,
you can get hit now by a drone.
I mean war is essentially something
that knows no boundaries in terms
of the individuals who are killed in it.
But it's also really an existential recognition
and you have to understand this book in many ways as result
of the time it was written.
It's not only that it was written in time of war,
Vietnam War, but it-- I'll get to that, but it was also written
at a time when existentialism became more and more dominant,
predominant in many ways in terms of cultural thinking.
It started of course in France
and it had a breeding ground there
but it was very much a transatlantic way of thinking.
How many of you are familiar or have read Sartre or Camus,
I mean-- and Nietzsche, any readers of Nietzsche?
I mean Nietzsche is really sort of embedded
in what Billy Pilgrim learns from those strange aliens
or a shape like toilet plungers about the nature
of eternal return, how things just keep going back over
and over again in recurrence,
Nietzsche called that eternal return.
But it's the existential ideas and the ideas not only
of the inevitability of death but the absurdity
of life in the face of death.
You know, Camus who wrote "The Myth of Sisyphus" used
that myth, a myth that some of you may be familiar
with where Sisyphus is condemned to of course to roll
that huge boulder up a hill and every time he gets to the top,
it catapults him down and he has to do that throughout eternity.
Talk about eternal return.
You imagine just rolling a boulder up a hill
and just being cast down every time and having to roll it over
and over again ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
That's at the heart of this novel in many respects,
that idea of not only repetition but the absurdity of life.
And the absurdity of life was really what Camus described
as the human condition.
Remember it is a time when "Waiting for Godot"
and so many works were having influence on the imagination
and on human consciousness and a lot of them had to do
with just this existential sense of how random life could be
and how death could strike one violent death at any time.
And there really is not only that sense of violence
and death that's obviously pervasive
in "Slaughterhouse-Five" but also of apocalyptic recognition.
I mean, we're in the nuclear age, we're in an atomic age
and idea that the future may indeed hold destruction,
not only for Billy but for civilization
and for the Tralfamadorians is implicit in reading this novel.
So you ask yourself if the novel is all
about this existential models that we have of death
and violence, what is it that gives us pleasure in the novel?
What do we recognize as something that we enjoy?
That's what gets into the effect in part question
or the reader response part question and--
although there's also a very simple and kind
of categorical answer to that, it's funny.
I mean, Vonnegut was one of the--
not one of the first but one
of the really first contemporary practitioners
of what [inaudible] to be known as black humor,
that doesn't mean Chris Rock by the way, you know.
Black humor means instead
of fortune use the word black perhaps but it means humor
that comes out of a sense of darkness, despair, anguish,
the human condition being tied to mortality that is inevitable
and random in the way that it selects its victims and so forth
and also the recognition of war.
And this recognition of war has also some real intertextual
roots, goes back to Stephen Crane in American literature
or if you want a more modern example, Norman Mailer,
and of course Hemingway before him.
Vonnegut is writing out of a tradition,
it's an American literature tradition.
He's also writing out of a philosophical tradition that's
been established vis-a-vis existentialism
and the existential thinkers and he writes an allegory,
he writes in other words a novel that wants to teach
and it has a moral exempla behind it for you the readers.
Now why is this period so existential
and so almost bordering on nihilistic
with the views of absurdity?
It's because we not only had the wars that we were ravaged by.
The First World War which is one of the stupidest wars
of mankind, the Second World War which was a war of horror
and of course, Vietnam War.
And Vonnegut as a German-American was also mindful
of course of all those innocence who died in the firebombing
at Dresden, and that was a story that was not necessarily told
that much because you have your narratives that are told
by the victors and you have different narratives have been
told by those who were vanquished.
He was an American soldier, he was a POW but he was also
of German ancestry and identified
with his German heritage.
So where the time when Vonnegut very much is a product
of his own cultural and historical time and where laws
of religion and more secularization was endemic,
was really a part of the veritable landscape
that we're looking at at this time and the historical reality
of German suffering was something that he wanted
to teach us, to have us learn.
Now, by the way, the 135,000 civilians that died
in the firebombings of Dresden is probably a figure that's
inflated, it's been repudiated in fact as not being fact,
came from a historian by the name of David Irving,
I say historian advisedly.
Anybody know about David Irving?
Who he was?
He was a holocaust denier, he went on trial
in the United Kingdom
for denying the holocaust, was found guilty.
Nevertheless, he did some good historical work.
And the numbers here get sort of strange, I mean, one,
the innocent death is too many, if you'll forgive me
for sermonizing, but there's more likely probably 24
to 40,000 people who died in the destruction of Dresden.
And Billy Pilgrim comes out of it in the same way
that Vonnegut came out of it, you know, Vonnegut was
in a meat locker in the basement.
And again, there's a kind of well, perhaps attraction to this
in many people's minds to say, "Oh, it happened to Vonnegut,
so again Billy Pilgrim is just Vonnegut disguised for us."
But, no, not the case at all.
Vonnegut by the way enlisted, as some of you may know,
in the war at-- soon after his mother's suicide.
He not only survived the firebombing, he survived--
and as a prisoner, but he survived the duties
that were assigned to him which eventually came
out as burying those bodies, it had to be found and burned.
And you can imagine, or perhaps you can't imagine.
I mean living here in Santa Rosa,
many of you don't want living a fairly--
life we hope free of strife and trauma.
What these kinds of traumas can do to one?
What they can do to turn the imagination,
it's not only the existentialism in other words
that we're talking about here.
I said you look at a novel and you look at it in terms
of its biographical and autobiographical influences,
the cultural influences and the historical influences.
All of this may be outside of the realm of the text,
but it's exceedingly important and Vonnegut was clearly damaged
by what he went through.
But you know like Rilke said, the great poet, Rainer Rilke,
a German poet, "My devils are my angels."
And if it hadn't been for what he had been through, the trauma,
the horror, probably
"Slaughterhouse-Five" never would have been written.
And he had to give himself a lot
of writing before he even could get to "Slaughterhouse-Five".
He had to write not only a number of novels but some
of the stories that he became famous for and so forth.
So, when you're in an existential world
and when you're in a world as ubiquitous
with random death occurring and violence occurring
and maybe the only thing that comes out of that is the--
the only salvation is a kind of dark humor that we find
in "Slaughterhouse-Five".
And by the way, this dark humor could--
has to [inaudible] in American literature as well,
Nathanael West and Flannery O'Connor,
but even more contemporary figures
like Thomas Pynchon, Bruce Jay Friedman.
You're also stuck with the whole question of freewill.
And you can see Vonnegut really engaging that question
to a great degree in "Slaughterhouse-Five".
I remember an interview I did
with a Nobel Laureate writer Isaac Bashevis Singer a number
of years ago on stage at the Herbst Theatre.
And I was young interviewer and young broadcast journalist
or whatever you want to call it, talk show host.
And I said to him with utter seriousness,
"Mr. Singer do you believe in free will?"
And he, "I have no choice."
What we're talking about here is not only the whole complex
conundrum, you know, the very difficult to solve riddle
and mystery of free will when we reach "Slaughterhouse-Five",
free will versus determinism.
I mean, here was a kind of deterministic universe
that we're given by Kurt Vonnegut.
And you have to ask yourself what is he trying
to teach us there?
What is he trying to show us
about the nature of our free will?
Perhaps how irrational the universe is,
which is pretty much consonant
with what the existentialist believe.
How-- going back all the way to the Greeks, there is a sense
of determinism shaping our destiny
and pretty much controlling our future whether we
like to think so or not.
But I want you particularly to be aware
of the absurdity that's communicated in the novel,
and the sense of trauma that comes through as well,
because World War II was a trauma.
It was a trauma for the Jews, it was a trauma
for the Roman people, the gypsies, it was a trauma
for the Japanese who are bombed of course in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, and it was a trauma for the Germans.
And a trauma really for so many throughout Europe,
for the Russians who had it not been for their winter once again
like Napoleon would have perhaps been defeated,
we know now for most of our historians.
And here is Vonnegut bringing us
into this whole sensibility really in "Slaughterhouse-Five,"
as well as using his imagination in an inspired way
to give us a story that we become involved in,
and also once again breaking a number of conventions.
Believe it or not, I mean Billy Pilgrim is what we call
an antihero.
You know, the antihero was a figure that kind of came
on the scene rather abruptly with a novel that is one
of the best selling novels of all time
by J. D. Salinger called "Catcher in the Rye"
and Holden Caulfield being kind
of a prime example of the antihero.
But suddenly, the whole idea, the hero going back
to Aristotle, you know, falling from a high place like King Lear
and Oedipus, is transform.
You know, you have late-- right after the Second World War,
you have Willy Loman by Arthur Miller "Death of a Salesman".
Hardly a hero, a low man,
but nevertheless someone whom we are made to sympathize with,
the kind of antihero every man.
And that's I think--
it's difficult to talk about author intention because again,
I'll put on my literary scholarly hat here.
There was a paper that came out in the late '50s by a couple
of critics name Beardsley and Wimsatt and they said,
they called it the intentional fallacy.
"How can we really know," they said,
"what an author's intention is?"
Have you really defined that?
You don't know, even if the author says, right?
They're fiction writers, they're liars.
So the other says, this is my intention, you know,
you can't necessarily find it incredible.
And I like the idea of the intentional fallacy,
but I think you can see where some of the intentionality is
on Vonnegut's part, where he's trying to give you an antihero.
He's trying to give you a whole satirical view.
I mean when you look at Billy's life in suburban America,
you know, with the Cadillac and the Barbershop Quartet
and that whole world of optometrist and everything,
this is satire, this is satire
that in some ways anticipate some of the satire achiever
and [inaudible] and some
of those really important contemporary figures.
I'm not saying Vonnegut is not important, he certainly is,
but who became even more important
because of the way they portrayed the suburbs.
This is also an apocalyptic problem.
Apocalyptic, why?
Well, have any of you read "Cat's Cradle?"
And it's not the only apocalyptic novel of Vonnegut's,
but notice what he foresees, you know,
hydrogen bomb by the Chinese.
There's the atomic age again universe,
according to the Tralfamadorians destroyed
by one of their test pilots.
But also within the novel, within--
you don't have to be futuristic or go ahead
into the fantasy of the novel.
Within the novel there's, you know, a plane crash,
a car crash, whatsoever.
And the refrain is so it goes.
You know it's almost a kind
of resignation that's an acquiescence to faith,
to the power of faith and to the inability of those of us
who the free will, regardless
of how much we think we have the strength and the vibrancy
and the power of free will
to overcome our destiny, which is death.
Which is death that can come with its cold hand at any time,
any place, anywhere, whether we like or not, and particularly
in times of war and places of war.
This is an antiwar novel.
If there's something to teach us at the same time
that we're entertained, it's the horror of war
and the unacceptability of war in a moral way.
And make no mistake about it, it's a moral novel.
It in fact instructs us in a moral way.
Like I said, it has all the elements of allegory to it.
And what is it instructing us in?
It's instructing us in something that we need to know,
or perhaps ought to constantly remind ourselves of,
and that is the horror of war.
But there's also the sense of disorder and randomness,
and again that gets back to the existentialism,
the jumble of time, the whole nature of trying to grapple
with the metaphysics of time and how spontaneous it is,
and how it's experienced in a kind of spontaneous way.
And in a sense, Vonnegut is not reinventing the novel,
but he's creating his own universe.
I mean it was Hegel who said to us that a work of art is
like a universe onto itself and exist as a universe onto itself.
I just had a rather spirited conversation again
at Herbst Theatre earlier this week
with two Nobel Prize winning physicists, and Saul Perlmutter
and George Smoot if you know those names.
And they were talking about the end of the universe
and they were speaking about the fact that, well,
this is heavy duty stuff, you know,
it can make your head spin,
it's like talking about string theory.
They're speaking about the end of the universe in terms
of cosmology, you know, and the whole idea is now pretty
scientific about being able to measure the universe, going back
and measure the Big ***, and go back, go forward,
and find out to what extent the sun is no longer going
to have its power, and those kinds of things.
And they can actually quantify these sorts of things.
Now, Vonnegut, you know, not a scientist but he's looking,
in the light of not only atomic energy, but in the light
of entropy and the discovery of laws of physical nature
and laws of the universe.
Universe was believed to be slowing down,
now we have this physicist saying,
well, no it's accelerating.
But still there's thermodynamics to deal
with which pretty much give evidence to the notion
that the universe is perhaps moving toward some kind
of ultimate destruction, unless you believe
like the string theorists
that are how many universes out there?
Who knows?
There may be a parallel universe now
in which the Giants loss the first game and,
you know, I don't know.
I don't know, I can't vouch for it.
But, you know, there's a fourth dimension
and there's time travel and all those kinds of things
which cosmologists and physicists have been speculating
about for so long now.
Then, make no mistake about it, we don't know.
And here's Vonnegut experimenting writing
about non-linearity in time, writing really
through characters who are not that well developed
because they're more allegorical characters,
they're what Ian Forrester called flat characters
or cartoon characters.
And I don't mean that to take away from the accomplishment
of the novel, but there's a sense that Vonnegut is there
to tell us a story that will, as I said, not only entertain us,
keep us amused, keep us turning pages, compel us,
but also have some lessons for us as well.
And, so it goes.
Even Billy Pilgrim's death, it's absurd, you know,
it's almost the kind of satire of revenge being sweet and all
of that sort of thing, the *** by Paul Lazzaro.
There is, in other words, a strong moral sense in this novel
of the stupidity of violence and the methods and the means
that violence and conflict representing those forms
of violence have come down on a one to one level
or on the bigger more macro scale of wars.
Also, I think it's safe to say that this is a good story,
it's a good tale, and it draws us in and it entertains us,
but it also keeps us reading because there's a story to tell.
In other words, I don't know how many of you have tried your hand
at writing fiction, let alone a novel, I have.
And I can tell you like my colleague Terry Gross
in public radio once said to me.
She said, "I was an inspiring novelist."
And I said, "Really, so was I.
What happened?"
And she said, "Well, I guess I didn't hear those voices."
And I said, "Well, I guess I didn't either."
I mean when you write a story, when you write a good story,
a good narrative, a compelling narrative and, you know,
it can be schlocky too.
I just read Bond Girl when I was in Spain.
Best selling novel, but boy, it keeps you moving the pages
and everything, you get caught up in it.
You identify with the characters
and you wonder what's going to happen next.
Vonnegut can tell a good story.
I mean there's a gift there.
There just a talent there that can't be denied.
But I think it's also important to realize that there is a sense
of trying to create a different kind of novel.
And going beyond the boundaries of what's considered
or what not only is conventional.
I talked about the intrusive narration and those kinds
of things, but also what's considered high literature.
Because science fiction wasn't given that accord,
and still isn't to a great extent.
I've been teaching
at San Francisco State teaching literature courses for many,
many years and I have a colleague, George Tuma,
who also happens to be a minister.
And he will tell you
that there's a snobbishness among our colleagues
about the fact that he teaches science fiction courses,
and includes
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by the way.
This is an important novel, it's important novel
in the American canon
and it deserves more respect in my judgment.
But it's also a good tale, a good story.
And Vonnegut has that gift,
that talent of being a good storyteller.
And I've got to ask Mark their score in the game.
Check that if you'd be so kind.
Well, we'll find out soon enough.
It's-- I mean, I like talking to you about "Slaughterhouse-Five"
and everything but, you know.
[laughter] I had said that there are inventions in this novel
in different ways of using the form that I want
to call your attention to.
There was at this time a notion that the novel had kind
of reached the end of the road.
John Barth, in fact, some of you may recognize the name,
"The Floating Opera" and "Giles Goat-Boy" famous
and highly regarded literary figure
in American literature said, "We can't push this form any more
than we already have."
Ulysses by James Joyce is recognized as kind
of the sine qua non, you know, the best,
the most [inaudible] novel took us to the end
and how could the novel be reinvented?
Vonnegut is trying, I think ambitiously to sort
of reinvent the novel in his own way.
Or not only tell a good story but also give us a sense
of breaking with conventions and using methods
that were considered frankly high literature.
It's not only because it's science fiction and because,
you know, you have these absurd things like aliens looking
like toilet plungers and all that.
But also because-- and the names, I mean not only Billy--
Richard Weary, you know, the [inaudible] guy.
You have names that are right out of an allegory and it's
like he wants to fuse the allegorical with a lot
of the more conventional kinds of literary techniques
and methods that are used in the novel
and that became common place in the novel.
I said that I wanted to talk also a little bit
about my own experiences with Vonnegut,
and I had the good fortune to interview him a number of times,
three times actually, all at different faces,
and I asked them about "Slaughterhouse-Five" and talked
to him at some length about it both on stage and on air
and off the air, and off stage.
And let me just say by way of introduction
that he's a very genial man.
You know, there are certain people that you cut into and you
like right away because they seem to you to be--
this is my judgment perhaps but it may be yours as well.
They just seem to be nice people, you know.
They seem to be kind people and reasonable.
It's funny because "Slaughterhouse-Five" is all
about the lack of reason, you know,
it's all about the irrationality in the world we live in.
And not only the wars but the irrational violence
and senselessness of so many things that happen randomly.
But he seems not only a reasonable man.
He seem not only a reasonable man,
but he was a reasonable man.
And it was the kindness that struck me
on all occasions of interviewing him.
Plus, as you might imagine, an ironic sense.
Now, I did a whole book a number of years ago
that Stanford Press published called "Off Mike" subtitled
"A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life".
And I was writing about how you meet writers in the flesh
and they're very different than when you meet them
in the text, or vice versa.
You meet a writer of the text
and they don't necessarily strike you in real protoplasm,
in their human forms as the way they come
across in their artist literary forms.
But Vonnegut I always thought probably was a genial good soul
and he came across that way, and also ironic and skeptical.
Some writers who are funny are not funny when you meet them.
Vonnegut was funny.
And yet there was a kind
of particularly toward the last interview, there was a kind
of weltschmerz or world-weariness about him.
He is a chain smoker by the way, and it's tough to have someone
in the studio for an hour who is a chain smoker because they kind
of go out of their minds without smoking.
Sean Penn would not do an interview with me
because he said he couldn't sit for an hour
without having a cigarette.
We have rules against smoking
at the NPR Station KQED where I work.
So I could tell, you know, Vonnegut as soon as he got
out of there, he went out like at full speed and got
to where he could smoke.
But more power to him to put up with the hour, I guess,
or less power to him that he was still a habitual smoker.
Anyway, kind man and a man who had an irony about himself
and also a sense of, well, in the third interview
which is perhaps in some ways the most memorable one,
'cause it was really right before his death he said,
"I don't think I'm going to write anymore.
I think I've written all that I have to write.
I want to do gardening and hang
around with my brother and so forth."
But yet his last novel came out soon after that.
And he made some jokes about that as well.
Well, that was our last interview.
Let me tell you something and early on in reading Vonnegut
who stayed with me for a lifetime.
I mean there are certain writers who give you that precious gift
of an aphorism, or a character,
or something that's particularly memorable.
And since I happen to be in the process now
of writing another book, I found myself thinking
about this particular line of Vonnegut's which has come
down to me and I simply want to pass it on to you.
I mean, how many of you now, for example,
find your self thinking before I tell you what that line is.
You read about deaths or you read about, you know,
shootings in Iraq or Syria
or whatever is it, so it goes, right?
I don't know if you had that response.
But I've had that response through the years.
It's almost that sense of irony and fatalism that's
so characteristic of coming away from reading a book like
"Slaughterhouse-Five".
And by the way, it's--
let me just be intertextual for a moment, it's something
that we find to a great degree in a writer like Mark Twain.
I mean in fact there are a lot of analogies between Vonnegut
and Twain both in terms of parody and satire and humor
and the irony that they work in.
But also with their sense of the stupidity of the human animal,
stupidity for the irrationality and the violence especially.
That what can you do, you have that resignation,
you shrug your shoulders and you say, so it goes.
Well, the line for me from Vonnegut was,
"You are who you pretend to be."
And why has that always stayed with me?
Because in many respects, if you think about it,
the self that you form, and there are many levels of self
and the self is [inaudible] and the changes, and you know,
is multiple and all that.
But if there's a core to our self, we form it often
on the basis of how we present ourselves, self-presentation.
And the idea that if you're going to pretend to be someone
or something that you are not and you have to pretend that,
before you become that, then that's what you become.
Does that make sense to you?
I mean it's almost, you know, a little bit mysterious,
I think more mysterious than I believe it is
in the way I'm presenting it.
But you are who you pretend
to be simply means you take a certain role in life
and you become that role.
You make certain choices to be let's say, a student, a teacher,
a fireman, a police woman, whatever it may be.
And suddenly you're in that role.
Suddenly you have to become whatever it is
that you're supposed to be.
And in a sense there's a pretending
that goes on about that.
Marlon Brando was also a great teacher.
He said, you know, acting was easy.
Well, it's not.
But he said, all you have to do is pretend
to be something and then be it.
And that's true about many things in life.
Okay, what I want to ask you I was told--
I'm sorry, I'm talking longer than I should have.
We still talk about I think 30 minutes or so, but I really want
to hear from you how-- going back to the effect of the novel
which I said is one way to judge it.
And by the way, make no mistake about this.
You not only want as readers to critique a novel, to be critical
about it, to interpret it,
to analyze it, but also to judge it.
Don't be afraid of judging a novel.
I'm not asking you so much to make a judgment here.
I'm asking you how did this novel affect you.
When you really get down to the core of how you responded
as a reader, did it have an effect on you?
And if so, can you describe it, can you characterize it?
Can you delineate it for me, what that affect was?
How did it affect your imagination, your sensibility,
your consciousness, your inner life or your interior life,
your emotions, or your thoughts?
Obviously, I'm trying to convey to you the importance
of what this novel has to teach from Vonnegut's point of view
if we know intentionality which we ultimately don't perhaps
but can guess it and be reasonable about it.
What does the novel have to teach you?
Or, in what ways did it affect you?
Just feel free and uninhibited here to let everybody know,
if you would be so kind.
When you think about the novel, when you look at it
in retrospect, what was its effect on you?
This is what we call reader response.
How do you respond to it?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Like you came a little bit on stuff, are you telling?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
But that's a great response.
I mean because indeed I think, and again we're looking
at the possibility of intentionality here.
He wants you to feel that.
>> Yeah.
>> That's exactly what the novel does.
How do you do that if you felt that?
Are you jumping around in time and the novel is doing to you
as a reader when [inaudible] is doing to Billy.
Exactly what the point, okay.
Now, let's say-- now let's say it's [inaudible],
we'll ask you how it affect you.
Did you like it?
Well, ask yourself simple question.
If you liked it, why did you like it?
If you didn't like it.
Well it's [inaudible] to you, you know,
that [inaudible] emotion.
Tell me what affected you either way.
Yes.
>> The first time I read it when I was a young woman,
I got really-- I got totally turned off by the [inaudible].
And so, I would literally, you know how you skip around a novel
and you're like, oh, just kind of turned off
of this 'cause I really was the other part seems
so vivid, and this part.
I mean I was sitting, you know, on a raining night
in my bathrobe and like--
then I just went way longer than I should have
and I totally got-- I started to understand.
I started to become pretty
and really interested in this planet.
[laughter]
I mean the aliens and they became as real to me
as a very vivid prisoner of war going in the snow.
You know, divide you know, the train scene.
And that happens really interesting.
And I don't know [inaudible] to make of it.
>> Was it the bathrobe, you think, you think?
[Laughter]
>> It was just interesting, I thought, okay,
[inaudible] why now am I willing to entertain,
you know, a planet and aliens?
>> What was it-- what was the year difference in [inaudible],
the two reading [inaudible]?
>> I would say probably 30 years [inaudible].
>> So, what's going to happen--
first of all, you might be a better reader
and a more observant reader.
And by the way, if you read Hamlet in high school
and you're reading it now in college, it's a different play.
I mean as you [inaudible] to learn
as you get older you read any work of literature,
it's going to have a different effect on you.
But what happened to you is pretty dramatic
and what happened to you in terms
of reader response may have had to do
with just being attuned more to the language, perhaps in part
for reading it the first time.
And suddenly things are [inaudible] strapping your
memory and filaments are kind of igniting your memory.
And when in fact your first time is displeasure,
it's suddenly more pleasurable as a reader.
I think it's a terrific response.
Yes?
>> Well, I keep saying to myself there is something I shouldn't
forget that's what-- that's mine.
It gets fun.
There's something really important that I might--
that I might overlook and I should forget it.
That's--
>> So, you felt that you were missing something there
and in part couldn't quite grasp it or you're going to hold--
>> No, no, no.
Not, not that I shouldn't forget about the novel
but then I shouldn't forget about World War II
or I shouldn't forget about man and humanity.
>> Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you're saying there's something
I should get, something you should [inaudible]--
>> Working, that I should-- working.
Something that I shouldn't forget, forget.
>> And that's the kind of lesson on then humanity and war, yeah?
>> Yeah, that I was in danger
of overlooking that, this opportunity.
>> Of course it can be painful sometimes too to bring
that graphic recognition into your mind and mention the--
since we're talking about American writer,
I mentioned Rilke, I mentioned another German writer Bertolt,
correct?
Do you know the name?
Famous epic theater playwright in Germany after the war
and he said, "The man who laughs has not
yet been told the terrible news."
And that's a pretty troubling thing to reckon with.
But what he meant was over the papers and what do you see.
I mean you see just this mindless violence all
over the map globally, every region of the world,
and war is going on everywhere, and people dying.
You know, what they used to call there in Vietnam,
this grace became important.
I say Vietnam and besides you can highlight it 'cause
remember, one of those writing on that particular time span
in that particular period.
It was called collaborative damage.
Have you heard that phrase?
Collaborative damage, a drone goes
into Pakistan and collateral--
>> Collateral.
>> Collateral.
>> Collateral damage, I'm sorry, thank you.
Now, I'm just hearing you, I'm just speaking to myself.
[laughter] Collateral damage means, you know,
we have known they were using that term
to describe people who are killed.
You know, who happened to be where they were dropping bombs
and *** and remember the fact they have been.
And we still hear that phrase now with drones.
I mean whatever your feelings are about the selection--
I'm not trying to call on anybody's ideas and anything.
It's-- this is by no means a brief [inaudible] core
against President Obama.
President Bush seems to be a lot of [inaudible] worker too
that has become much more common for us.
President, you know, Obama took us out of two wars
and that's been a main part of his election campaign.
He took us out of Iraq
and Afghanistan [inaudible] south of Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, he's setting drones into Pakistan
and setting drones into Somalia, into Sudan,
the southern part of Sudan.
And what does this mean?
It means that innocent people, collateral damage, are dying.
And how much do we need to be aware of this?
How much can we absorb this kind?
Yes.
>> Well, collateral damage is kind
of like saying so [inaudible].
>> Yes.
>> Paraphrase, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Beyond the surface just reading the book.
They're really enjoying the journey,
just the journey through the pages.
But what I take away from it was the ending point of view
that moments of time people just will always exist
in those moments that have passed.
So, if we pay attention to present,
we can better preserve other people in these moments
if we choose to be that way.
>> If we choose.
And there is where maybe free will comes in actually.
We can make that choice.
We have that opportunity to make that choice.
Again, the next would be-- yeah.
>> It was-- I read this I believe and the absurdity,
the obscenity, and the humor all mixed together.
It was a reflection of who I was.
I left the United States for-- during--
for about 7 years and it was right around the time I read
"Slaughterhouse-Five" and then I knew nothing about Dresden.
I knew nothing about that [inaudible]
and laughing along with Vonnegut.
At the same time, they're talking about the alien.
I've got it then because it was taking me a little bit away
from having to look at the horrors of war, and I just left.
And--
>> Where did you go?
>> Ecuador, I was in [inaudible] estate and I stayed [inaudible].
[Laughter]
>> So, it's like you miss Ecuador.
>> No, no.
I just was missing.
It was when I left it was going to be Virginia [inaudible] to me
and he went [inaudible], so.
But Vonnegut has stayed with me.
I reread his books occasionally
and he still is a great teacher and a great humorist.
>> Yeah, a lot of impact there.
Yeah, obviously, that's wonderful.
I mean who can ask more knowledge from the novel
than what novelist can act more and that's more than to have
that kind of impact that you just described for us.
How about some of the rest of you?
Yes.
>> You know, I read it a couple years ago.
>> A couple.
>> Yeah, I read it a couple years ago and two minutes
on the back [inaudible] I really enjoyed it.
And I felt that it was kind of a lesson that we don't have
to view these people that had, you know,
the future [inaudible] absurdity or the more like humanities
and keep on repeating, we have a really good choice.
>> So, you got the message that we have--
both of you did so that-- 'cause we have the choice to stop war.
>> Yeah.
>> To bring [inaudible] to war?
>> Yeah, we don't have to be stupid in this future
that something more are seeing it
as an inevitable part of humanity.
>> Yeah.
>> That we can actually maybe instead of expanding ways
to change war to stop.
>> But that's just the obvious that of-- so it goes, isn't it,
the resignation I spoke of.
>> Yeah.
>> That was-- how do you walk away from a novel like the
"Slaughterhouse-Five" feeling
that maybe there is a [inaudible] about you in terms
of your free will to-- I don't know, to be antiwar
or be involved in antiwar movement which you're lucky
as someone who was that way, not necessarily inspired
by "Slaughterhouse-Five" but, you know, just hated the war,
the Vietnam war and felt that it was wrong.
And frankly I also felt that I don't want
to be [inaudible] into it.
>> Right.
>> Which is also, you know, part of--
I mean so people will often ask the question, why was there not
as much globalization against the war?
Well, the first Persian Gulf War, the war in Iraq,
they're even going further back to Korean War,
but the Korean War also involved [inaudible].
But it was mainly the draft sort
of to mobilize opposition to the Vietnam War.
But, how many [inaudible]
with Vonnegut was making you just feel stronger
about opposition of war, generally?
[Multiple Speakers]
Good. I think it's important to realize
that there is a teaching element in this novel.
>> Yes.
>> All throughout it by the way, we have a lot
of literary critics who say a work
of art should be a work of art.
You know, it's the aesthetics.
It's the language.
It's the stylistics.
These are the things that we revere and these are the things
that we venerate in great works of literature.
They should have to teach us.
They shouldn't take us by the lapels and shake us
and make us feel politicized by the novel.
Well, guess what?
Good novels can politicize and do.
And even poetry can.
You know, there's-- not only you have read the poetry
of the First World War by the English poets,
by the British poets like Siegfried Sassoon
and [inaudible], do you know these names?
Robert Graves, I mean these were incredibly powerful poems.
I mean, at first, there were poems
about the glory of the war.
And then as there were woundings and as there were habitations
and as there were deaths and all of the horror of war,
war has become much more technological now
and in some ways much more destructive.
I mean this was transformed after World War I.
But as I said, it was one of the most stupid wars perhaps--
I hate to make it, you know,
some of you guys reading this was, you know,
it's the biggest no-brainer since the--
what you say, it's the biggest no-brainer since the
beginning of mankind and his commercials
about loaning you money.
I listen to other stations from time to time.
[laughter] I hear commercials.
But, you know, I mean a brand [inaudible] statement
like I'm making here is kind of absurd, it probably was one
of the dumbest war-- always pretty dumb.
World War I, if you know about that assassination,
the art student and how it started, it was--
and all of our greatest writers of that period, the [inaudible].
I mean went to great lengths to show how stupid that war was.
And Hemingway if you had, you know, firsthand experience
with Italian ambulance corp. But you read a novel like this
or you go to the poets like those British poets and you see
that all recognition, that illumination of just how stupid
and futile and unnecessary so many wars are.
Now, I'm not making a brief for being a pacifist, you know,
and I don't think Vonnegut is either.
I remember talking with Vonnegut about war and Vonnegut like,
probably most reasonable people thought, "Well,
if you had to defend a homeland, if it comes out as security,
your neck as opposed to whoever is trying to hunt your neck."
Of course you have to have a war,
sometimes wars are of necessity.
But so many wars are not.
And I mean, did you really have to go
into Iraq were there any weapons of mass destruction?
I mean some people are probably surprised
when Colin Powell Secretary of State came
out today in support of Obama.
I wasn't surprised because we're a whole [inaudible]
that the United Nation stood in the blackboard and said,
"Here are the weapons of mass destruction."
For a man who had a distinguished career
as a general, who was really a remarkable diplomat,
that was one of the most humiliating
and indignant things he had to go through.
But he went through it and he was indicted for it,
I mean not literally, unbelievably but indicted
by his critics, and deserved to be indicted for it.
But now, it seems Obama is more, I suppose at least in his mind
from what he said, someone who is leading us the peace.
Who could understand war better than a general?
These guys like Bush who never served in the military,
they didn't understand really what the war was.
Maybe you didn't want to say that Obama
and Romney don't understand what war was because they don't want
to serve the military and, you know,
there's Obama sending out drones.
It's kind of commander in chief time, okay, I'm going to look.
This almost seems like, you know,
we thought that he was a specific easy going guy,
you know after the first debate still talking about
and sending tweet saying [inaudible] stop smoking
that grass, you know, a little bit too laid back.
There was this perception, I don't know, it was really,
really very easy going a Pacific guy and [inaudible].
But he seems to be enjoying sending those drones out.
I mean, it's like he decides where to send them and they go.
Other responses in terms of how the novel affected you.
Yes?
>> At first, I was upset by [inaudible] until I noticed
that it was a response to these absurd deaths.
And so, when I looked at it,
I saw that really the [inaudible] is a--
it's brilliant because it's a statement of resignation
at this absurdity, you know, the absurdity
and the randomness of death.
And if we don't want to design to accepting this brutality,
this normality of brutality in wars is--
forces us to accept what's unacceptable.
And if we don't want to go there,
then you have to speak out.
>> Yeah.
>> So this is pushing us to reject the normality
of this brutalization of us.
And then that's why it's brilliant.
>> Yeah, thank you for this.
>> But in the beginning, there was this you know--
[laughter] you know, a first reaction was, "Oh no,
I'm not going to ever accept this," so I realized
that you don't have choice on what's happening.
>> You were pulled in?
>> Yeah, if you want to survive you have to deal with it.
>> Push the boulder.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, well said.
You know though that that does remind me that it's
from the private's point of view,
from the foot soldier's point of view and there's a lot of things
in there about what the captains and the lieutenants
and the higher-up's experience as opposed to the foot soldier
who after all is taking orders and so [inaudible].
I mean it's not a-- it's the infantry men
who gets his face in the dirt.
Have any of you read Tim O'Brien?
You don't have to [inaudible].
>> No.
>> You know, that was a good example.
The things they carry is not-- well I think O'Brien who was
in the Vietnam War, who was a soldier in the Vietnam War,
an infantry man in [inaudible].
And boy, you get to talk about the feeling
of how dissociated you are in terms of time in reading
"Slaughterhouse-Five".
You read Tim O'Brien,
you probably might not have read Tim O'Brien if it hadn't been
for [inaudible] Vonnegut and [inaudible] again kind
of give you this linear sense of the nonliving novel really
but the importance of intertextuality.
Tim O'Brien gives you a feeling of just having
to carry all of the weight.
That's not only physical weight, you know, they carry it to war,
into the villages of Vietnam where innocents are killed
and where soldiers are killed.
There were mines that can blow up at any time and so forth
but it's just that since a constant pervasive danger
and imminence of death and the realization of just how carrying
that sense of how vulnerable you are
and carrying many other emotional [inaudible] as well
with you as you trudge along as it runs into war.
Remember, there were a lot of works that were written--
how many of you know "Catch-22" for example?
You know, a great novel by Joseph Heller
which was made into a film.
As the "Slaughterhouse-Five" not really a success
on the film as "Catch-22".
But there was a sense again of the absurdity
and how it's worked in O'Brien's work of war and of what we think
of this as inhuman or venom
where human beings destroy other human beings.
The absurd that you just pointed out again is really
in many ways the key word.
Well, you know what that movement by the absurd,
I mean essentially, like I said the [inaudible] is rolling
and rolling up the hill but there is also a sense
that in terms of my own subjective practices,
my own individuality, my own self,
I look at the world outside of me
and the other human beings outside of me
and there's a distance, there's a gap,
there's a pass between the two.
And what he's saying is that essentially,
it's the irrationality of human existence.
That's where he becomes kind of one of the real pioneers
of insubstantial thinking that the gap that exist
between our consciousness and the world outside is, you know,
that it's like go all the way back
to take Descarte philosophy, cogito ergo sum,
I think, therefore I am.
I think I am and therefore,
I think there's something outside of what I am, right?
There's a distance between me as subject and the object
that I perceive outside of myself
and that distance is irrational.
That distance can't be-- it's a [inaudible], it's a gap,
it's a [inaudible] that can't really be brought together.
Now, unless you're a mystic or a believer, unless you have a leap
of faith where you have some notion
that there's a greater power,
then you could perhaps bring them together but otherwise--
and by the way, there are religious
and theological existentialists.
Everybody thinks existentialism means atheism.
It means heaven for [inaudible] narcissism.
Somebody who may not [inaudible] narcissism,
called spiritual ending which I like to describe as well.
I once interviewed Studs Terkel, the great oral historian
and he said he was an agnostic and well,
I'm interested in agnosticism.
I'm writing a book on it, how do you define agnosticism?
He said "Well, I'm an agnostic."
"So what does that mean?"
I said. "It means I'm the power of the atheist."
[laugher] But it's not all equivalent existentialism
and that is the sort of lack of belief in anything.
Agnostics I discovered through my research were essentially
people who've asked questions and say they don't know.
And sometimes it takes a certain courage to say, "I don't know."
I always love that [inaudible] by a family
of agnostics will move in the neighborhood.
And so they heard the question about it and they love it.
But Kierkegaard, you know the name, Soren Kierkegard,
the great Danish Philosopher?
I mean he was an existentialist,
he's almost the quintessential existentialist
but he was also very much a believer.
He took that leap of faith and he believed in God
and he was very strong in his Christianity.
So existential would not necessarily quit the lack
of belief in God.
But Vonnegut, I'll tell you, Vonnegut was an atheist.
I mean I think there's really a little doubt about that.
Once he came out and said, "I'm an atheist."
You know, he probably did in not so many words
but read "Cat's Cradle" for those of you who have the taste
of Vonnegut and see what he does with God
and with the whole notion of God,
and God as an omnipotent overseeing [inaudible].
It was great watching Ryan [phonetic] focus
on [inaudible] game the other day but, you know,
there were people who are a little surprised afterward.
Like he said, "God has a plan for me."
And I can almost hear somebody like Vonnegut's voice saying,
"Why does he have a plan for you, why are you so important?"
[laughter] You know?
Does [inaudible] means that much where, you know,
it's all in God's plan?
What about all those people who were suffering in hunger
and poverty, and you know die in wars and stuff like that.
Does God every plan for that?
Is that part of God's plan?
No, and so it goes, and so it goes.
It's probably time for me to end this.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]