Accidents in a Very Busy Place:

Kurt Vonnegut in Schenectady

K. A. Laity
kalaity.com

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a

file drawer labeled science fiction ever
since, and I would like out, particularly
since so many serious critics regularly
mistake the drawer for a urinal.
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons,
1974

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as

honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are
both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to
the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I
myself prefer to laugh, since there is less
cleaning up to do afterward.
Palm Sunday
a sermon delivered at St. Clements Church

I told my brother one time that whenever I

did repair work around the house, I lost all
my tools before I could finish the job.
Youre lucky, he said. I always lose
whatever Im working on.
We laughed.
Slapstick

We didnt belong
anywhere in particular any
more. We were
interchangeable parts in
the American machine.

There was an empty seat between us,

which was spooky poetry. It could have
been a seat for our sister Alice whose
age was halfway between mine and
Bernards. She wasnt in that seat and
on her way to her beloved Uncle Alexs
funeral, for she had died among
strangers in New Jersey, of cancerat
the age of forty one.

Soap opera! she said to my brother

and me one time, when discussing her
own impending death. She would be
leaving four young boys behind,
without any mother.
Slapstick, she said.

Exhaustion, yes, and deep money

worries, too, made her say toward the
end that she guessed that she wasnt
really very good at life.
Then again: Neither were Laurel and
Hardy.

I had never told her so, but she was the

person I had always written for. She was
the secret of whatever artistic unity I
had ever achieved. She was the secret
of my technique. Any creation which
has any wholeness and
harmoniousness, I suspect, was made
by an artist or inventor with an
audience of one in mind.

Thus it happened that Kurt received a call in late

August from George W. Griffin Jr., a General Electric
public relations executive. Griffin explained that
[Vonneguts brother] Bernard had recommended his
younger brother as the kind of man they might be
looking for: someone with a science background who
was also a reporter. Would he be interested in
interviewing for a job in Schenectady?
Charles J. Shield, And So It Goes

A pop, a green flash, and the cat

sailed high over the top strand
as though thrown. She dropped
to the asphaltdead and
smoking, but outside.

We are here on Earth to fart

around. Dont let anybody tell you
any different.
A Man Without a Country, 2005

You were a damn fine machinist,

Rudy.
I say so myself. Knowing that, knowing
smart men like you say that about
Rudy, that means a lot. Its about all I
got, you know, Doctor? That and the
dog.

Where willow wands bless

Rill-crossed hollow,
There, thee, Pat, dear,
Will I follow

That profession specializing in the

cultivation, by applied psychology in mass
communication media, of favorable public
opinion with regard to controversial issues
and institutions, without being offensive to
anyone of importance, and with the
continued of the economy and society as its
primary goal.

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.
a composite self-interview inThe Paris Review,
1977