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Kurt Vonnegut: 'A Man Without a Country'

September 11, 2005 text size A A A
From his first novel, Player Piano, through such classics as
Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle,
Kurt Vonnegut has entranced readers, often using sardonic humor to
depict horrific events.

Now 82, he lives in New York City and his writing remains trenchant.
This week, Vonnegut's collection of essays and speeches, A Man
Without a Country will be published by Seven Stories Press. Read an
excerpt:

From 'A Man without a Country'

We are not born with imagination. It has to be developed by

teachers, by parents. There was a time when imagination was very
Edith Hwang important because it was the major source of entertainment.
At 82, Kurt Vonnegut has published a
new collection of essays and speeches. In 1892 if you were a seven-year-old, you'd read a story -- just a
very simple one -- about a girl whose dog had died. Doesn't that
make you want to cry?
On Short Stories

Don't you know how that little girl feels? And you'd read another story about a
Hear a 1999
'Weekend Edition' rich man slipping on a banana peel. Doesn't that make you want to laugh? And
Interview with Kurt
this imagination circuit is being built in your head. If you go to an art gallery,
Vonnegut
here's just a square with daubs of paint on it that haven't moved in hundreds of
years. No sound comes out of it.

The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book
is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and
people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of
Waterloo.

But it's no longer necessary for teachers and parents to build these circuits. Now there are professionally
produced shows with great actors, very convincing sets, sound, music. Now there's the information
highway. We don't need the circuits any more than we need to know how to ride horses. Those of us who
had imagination circuits built can look in someone's face and see stories there; to everyone else, a face will
just be a face.

Published by permission of the author and Seven Stories Press.

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