Notes

1       Wilfred Sheed, “The Now Generation Knew Him When,” in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, ed. William Rodney Allen (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), 13.

2       For a terrific piece about this in regard to writers, see Margo Rabb, “Fallen Idols,” New York Times Book Review, July 25, 2013.

3       “Kurt Vonnegut: In His Own Words,” London Times, April 12, 2007, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kurt-vonnegut-in-his-own-words-mccg7v0g8cg.

4       Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (New York: Delacorte Press, 1981), chap. 4.

5       Kurt Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style,” International Paper Company Publicity Handout, May 1980, also appeared in the New York Times; collected in Palm Sunday.

6       Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 13.

7       Suzanne McConnell, “The Disposal,” Fiddlehead, no. 110 (Summer 1976), 99–107.

8       In fact, one of my earliest glimpses of Kurt Vonnegut was at the Steak-Out restaurant in the basement of the Jefferson Hotel in Iowa City, with the order pad in my hand. He was with his wife Jane, Vance and Tina Bourjaily, José and Pilar Donoso, and, I think, Nelson Algren and his wife. It took quite a while for me to get the order. They were very interested in each other. It was early the first semester, and all the writers and their wives, except for the Bourjailys, were new to Iowa City. They were all just becoming acquainted.

9       Kurt Vonnegut, Letters, ed. Dan Wakefield (New York: Delacorte Press, 2012), 14–16.

10      Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008), 11–13.

11       Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 4.

12     The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, season 10, episode 115, “Kurt Vonnegut,” directed by Chuck O’Neil, aired September 13, 2005, on Comedy Central.

13       Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style.”

14     Jill Krementz, ed., Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut: A Festschrift for Kurt Vonnegut on His Sixtieth Birthday (New York, Delacorte Press, 1982), 49.

15     Kurt Vonnegut, “Fluctuations Between Good and Ill Fortune in Simple Tales (unpublished proposed master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1965),” 23, Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

16     Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style.”

17     This began with a book called Writing without Teachers by Peter Elbow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). A simple book, it revolutionized the English department where I was teaching at the time. The title appealed to our ’60s sensibilities.

18     Joe David Bellamy and John Casey, “Kurt Vonnegut Jr.,” in Conversations, 158.

19     A declarative sentence is one that simply marches forward, by subject, verb, object, declaring something. It’s free of dependent clauses that start with “if,” “when,” “although,” and so on—those signifiers that that part of the sentence’s thought will depend on the rest of the sentence’s thought.

20     Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style.”

21     Grace Paley, “Distance,” in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985), 13.

22     Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers,” in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 71.

23     Toni Cade Bambara, “My Man Bovanne,” in Gorilla, My Love (New York: Random House, 1972), 3.

24     Dylan Thomas, “The Orchards,” in Adventures in the Skin Trade (Cambridge: New Directions, 1969), 137.

25     Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird (New York: Delacorte Press, 1979), chap. 9.

26     Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (New York: Delacorte Press, 1959), chap. 10.

27     Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (New York: Delacorte Press, 1973), chap. 18.

28     Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 15.

29     Kurt Vonnegut, preface to Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (New York: Delacorte Press, 1974).

30     Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style.”

31     Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 19.

32     Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 20–21.

33     Ernest Hemingway, “The Art of Fiction No. 21,” interview by George Plimpton, Paris Review, no. 18 (Spring 1958).

34     Frank McLaughlin, “An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,” in Conversations, 73.

35     Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron” (unpublished manuscript, ca. 1961), Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

36     Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron,” in Welcome to the Monkey House (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968).

37     Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style.”

38     Scholars quibble about the alphabet’s origin, depending on whether “alphabet” is defined as the first representational marks for sound that the Phoenicians made, or the Semites’ marks for consonants only, or the Greeks’ more detailed symbol system for vowels as well as consonants, and whose “alpha” and “beta” came to form “alphabet.”

39     Annie Murphey Paul, “Your Brain on Fiction,” New York Times, March 17, 2012.

40     “The U.S. Illiteracy Rate Hasn’t Changed in 10 Years,” Huffington Post, last modified November 27, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html.

41     Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (New York: Delacorte Press, 1963), chap. 20.

42     Vonnegut, Wampeters, preface.

43     Vonnegut, Kurt, Wampeters, 281.

44     McLaughlin, “Interview,” 73.

45     Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (New York: Delacorte Press, 1952).

46     Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard (New York: Delacorte Press, 1987), chap. 3.

47     Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night (New York: New York: Harper and Row, 1961), chap. 37.

48     Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990), chap 6.

49     Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 25.

50     Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (New York: Delacorte Press, 1965), chap. 2.

51     Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse than Death (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1991), chap. 14.

52     Vonnegut, Letters, 316.

53     Vonnegut, Letters, 318–19.

54     Kurt Vonnegut: So It Goes, directed by Nigel Finch (1983; Princeton: Films for the Humanities and Sciences; 2002), DVD, 63 minutes.

55     Kurt Vonnegut, “Mythologies of North American Indian Nativistic Cults” (master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1947).

56     Vonnegut, “Mythologies.”

57     Vonnegut, “Mythologies.”

58     Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 17.

59     Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

60     Kurt Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999).

61     Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

62     Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 157.

63     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

64     Kurt Vonnegut, We Are What We Pretend to Be (New York: Vanguard Press, 2012), chap. 4.

65     Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 33.

66     Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 4.

67     Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 4.

68     Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 120.

69     Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 13–14.

70     Kurt Vonnegut, “Kurt Vonnegut at NYU,” lecture, New York University, November 6, 1970, New York, radio broadcast, KPFT, copy of a reel-to-reel tape, 40 minutes, Pacifica Radio Archives, https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bc1568.

71     Suzanne McConnell, “Do Lord,” in Fence of Earth, Hamilton Review, no. 11 (Spring 2007), http://www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr11fiction.html#dolord.

72     Edward Weeks to Kurt Vonnegut, 29 August 1949, Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

73     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 6.

74     Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 14.

75     Robert Taylor, “Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations, 9–10.

76     Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969), chap. 1.

77     Kurt Vonnegut, “There Must Be More to Love than Death,” interview by Robert K. Musil, in The Last Interview and Other Conversations, ed. Tom McCartan (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2011), 67.

78     Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 18.

79     Taylor, “Vonnegut,” 9.

80     Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 31.

81     Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 1.

82     Jerome Klinkowitz, telephone conversation with Suzanne McConnell, October 2015.

Coincidentally, perhaps eerily, the artwork resulting from Tim Youd’s performance typing Breakfast of Champions echoes Vonnegut’s impulse to render the destruction of Dresden in visual terms, using the typewriter. See introduction.

83     Kurt Vonnegut, “New Dictionary,” in Monkey House.

84     For more about the power of commitment and synchronicity, check out The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992).

85     Vonnegut, Man Without, 19.

86     Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

87     For a brilliant essay on failure to realize one’s writerly vision, see Michael Cunningham, “Found in Translation,” New York Times, October 2, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03cunningham.html.

88     Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 161–62.

89     Steve Blakeslee, “The Man from Slaughterhouse-Five: A Remembrance of Kurt Vonnegut,” Open Spaces: Views from the Northwest 9, no. 3 (2007).

90     Vonnegut, Man Without, 20.

91     Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

92     Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 22.

93     Kurt Vonnegut, “Poems Written During the First Five Months of 2005” (unpublished manuscript, 2005).

94     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

95     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 2.

96     Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?, ed. Dan Wakefield (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2014), 9.

97     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

98     Vonnegut, Fates, chap 11.

99     Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

100    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

101    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap 16.

102    Barry Schwartz and Amy Wrzesniewski, “The Secret of Effective Motivation,” New York Times, July 6, 2014.

103    Charles Shields, And So It Goes (New York: Holt and Company, 2011), 229.

104    Kurt Vonnegut, “Despite Tough Guys, Life Is Not the Only School for Real Novelists,” New York Times, May 24, 1999.

105    Mark Vonnegut, introduction to Armageddon in Retrospect, 1.

106    Alder Yarrow, “So You Wanna Be a Wine Writer,” Vinography (blog), December 10, 2009, http://www.vinography.com/archives/2009/12/so_you_wanna_be_a_wine_writer.html.

107    Vonnegut, Man Without, 56.

108    Vonnegut, Man Without, 24.

109    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 19.

110     Vonnegut, Wampeters, preface.

111     Louise DeSalvo, Writing as a Way of Healing (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 25.

112    Josephine Humphreys, review of The Collected Stories, by John McGahern, New York Times, February 28, 1993.

113    Vonnegut, “More to Love,” 74.

114    Vonnegut, “More to Love,” 67–68.

115    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 163.

116    Kurt Vonnegut, prologue to Slapstick (New York: Delacorte Press, 1976).

117    Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982), chap. 13.

118    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 280–81.

119    Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer, Like Shaking Hands with God (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 29.

120    Reynolds Price, review of The Collected Stories by William Trevor, New York Times, February 28, 1993.

121    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

122    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 254.

123    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 254–55, 284.

124    David Standish, “Playboy Interview,” in Conversations, 87, 108.

125    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 18.

126    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 18.

127    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 283.

128    Charles Reilly, “Two Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations, 202.

129    Richard Todd, “The Masks of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,” in Conversations, 33.

130    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 283.

131    David J. Morris, “After PTSD, More Trauma,” New York Times, January 17, 2015.

132    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 6.

133    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 9.

134    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 37.

135    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 19.

136    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 5.

137    William Butler Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” in Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats (New York: Collier, 1962), 184.

138    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 19.

139    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 9.

140    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 17.

141    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 24.

142    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 283.

143    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 237–38.

144    McLaughlin, “Interview,” 72.

145    For more about Vonnegut’s freethinker ancestors, see “Roots” and “Religion” in Palm Sunday.

146    “Indiana War Memorial Museum,” Indiana State Official Government Website, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.in.gov/iwm.

147    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 166.

148    Standish, “Playboy,” 76.

149    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

150    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

151    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

152    Alex Davies, “I Rode 500 Miles in a Self-Driving Car and Saw the Future. It’s Delightfully Dull,” Wired, January 7, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/01/rode-500-miles-self-driving-car-saw-future-boring.

153    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 14.

154    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 4.

155    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 24.

156    Jonathan Becher, “Gladwell vs Vonnegut on Change Specialists,” Forbes, October 14, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2014/10/14/gladwell-vs-vonnegut-on-change-specialists/#c445b4d46f7d.

157    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 7.

158    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 3.

159    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 12.

160    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 2.

161    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 103.

162    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

163    Carol Kramer, “Kurt’s College Cult Adopts Him as Literary Guru at 48,” in Conversations, 27.

164    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 30.

165    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap 5.

166    Dan Wakefield, introduction to If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?, by Kurt Vonnegut, ed. Dan Wakefield (New York: Seven Stories, 2014), xiv.

167    (My Fairy God Mama provided these at the time of this writing in the obituary of Jack Leggett, director of the Iowa workshop from 1970 to 1987):

Bruce Weber, “Jack Leggett, Who Cultivated Writers in Iowa, Dies at 97,” New York Times, January 30, 2015.

168    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 29.

169    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 70.

170    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 274.

171    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 41–42.

172    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 259.

173    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 42.

174    See the brochure and more about these trips at Cottonwood Gulch’s website, http://www.cottonwoodgulch.org.

175    Standish, “Playboy,” 104.

176    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 94.

177    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 10.

178    Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos (New York: Delacorte Press, 1985), book 1, chap. 6.

179    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 19.

180    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 20.

181    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 34.

182    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 21.

183    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 18.

184    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 37.

185    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 18.

186    Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997), chap. 42.

187    Vance Bourjaily, “Dear Hualing,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999).

188    Hank Nuwer, “A Skull Session with Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations, 242–43.

189    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

190    Suzanne McConnell, “Kurt Vonnegut and the Writers’ Workshop,” Brooklyn Rail, December 10, 2011, https://brooklynrail.org/2011/12/fiction/kurt-vonnegut-at-the-writers-workshop.

191    Vonnegut, Letters, 131.

192    Alexander Neubauer, ed., Conversations on Writing Fiction (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 143.

193    Gail Godwin, “Waltzing with the Black Crayon,” Yale Review 87, no. 1 (January 1999).

194    Godwin, “Waltzing.”

195    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 18.

196    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 71–75.

197    Godwin, “Waltzing,” 52.

198    The scribbled “p. 114, Journey…” on the second assignment is a note to myself to attend that page in Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (a French doctor to the poor and WWI veteran), which Vonnegut had assigned. It’s this novel that Kurt refers to in Rule #4 as being “so bloody depressing.” Vonnegut read it and Theodore Roethke’s poems on his first return trip to Dresden to do research for Slaughterhouse-Five.

199    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 7.

200    From Kurt Vonnegut’s letter to David Hoppe, Indiana journalist and friend of Kurt’s. May 23, 2005.

201    Vonnegut, Man Without, 8–9.

202    Kurt Vonnegut, “God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut,” interview by J. Rentilly, in The Last Interview, 158.

203    Vonnegut, Fates, “On Literature by Karel Capek, From Toward the Radical Center.”

204    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 70.

205    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 1.

206    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 24.

207    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 19.

208    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 29–30.

209    Pam Belluck, “For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov,” New York Times, October 3, 2013.

210    Paul, “Your Brain.”

211    “Literature and Medicine.” Maine Humanities Council, accessed November 20, 2018, http://mainehumanities.org/program/literature-medicine-humanities-at-the-heart-of-healthcare/.

212    Those assignments in order of citation were Helen Benedict, The Sand Queen (New York: Soho Press, 2011); Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel (2007; Paris, France: Pathé Renn Productions, 2008), DVD; Joan Leegant, “Sisters of Mercy,” in Bellevue Literary Review 11, no. 2 (Spring 2011); and Bellevue Literary Review 15, no. 2, “Embattled: The Ramifications of War” (Fall 2015).

213    Tom Bradshaw and Bonnie Nichols, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (Washington: National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004), https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/ReadingAtRisk.pdf.

214    For more information, see “NEA Big Read,” Arts Midwest, https://www.artsmidwest.org/programs/neabigread/about.

215    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 7.

216    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 1.

217    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

218    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 259.

219    Mark Vonnegut, introduction to Armageddon, 1.

220    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

221    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 72.

222    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 4.

223    Vonnegut, “Despite Tough Guys.”

224    Reilly, “Two Conversations,” 196–97.

225    Sidney Offit, “The Library of America Interviews Sidney Offit About Kurt Vonnegut,” interview by Rich Kelley, The Library of America e-Newsletter (New York: Library of America, 2011), 5, https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/LOA_Offit_on_Vonnegut.pdf.

226    Vonnegut, “Despite Tough Guys.”

227    See Jon Reiner, “Live First, Write Later: The Case for Less Creative-Writing Schooling,” Atlantic, April 9, 2013; or google “against writing programs” and you’ll discover quite a discussion.

228    Reilly, “Two Conversations,” 199.

229    Ronni Sandroff was an editor for thirty years: editor in chief of Medica, editor at On the Issues, and editorial director of Health and Family at Consumer Reports. She has published two books of fiction and many short stories.

230    McLaughlin, “Interview,” 73.

231    Michelangelo Buonarroti, “To Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel,” trans. Gail Mazur, in Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems by Gail Mazur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 116.

232    For more information and wonderful photos, see Johannes Huber, Ernst Tremp, and Karl Schmuki, The Abbey Library of Saint Gall, trans. Jenifer Horlent (St Gallen: Verlag am Klosterhof St. Gall), 2007.

233    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 3.

234    Dana Snodgrass, “Outstanding Hoosier Women Honored by Theta Sigma Phi,” Indianapolis Star, April 3, 1965.

235    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 3.

236    Thank you, Elizabeth Cook.

237    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 35.

238    Jon Winokur, ed., W.O.W.: Writers on Writing (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1986).

239    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

240    Shields, And So It Goes, 146.

241    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

242    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 7.

243    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 19.

244    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 12.

245    Vonnegut, Monkey House.

246    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

247    Vonnegut, “More to Love,” 81–82.

248    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 3.

249    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 160.

250    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 261.

251    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 8.

252    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 4.

253    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 35.

254    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

255    Attributed for years to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), its source may go back much farther: see “Serenity Prayer Stirs up Doubt: Who Wrote It,” New York Times, July 11, 2008.

256    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 7.

257    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 47.

258    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 61.

259    Todd, “Masks,” 39.

260    Offit, “Library of America,” 6.

261    Kurt Vonnegut to José Donoso, 26 May 1973, José Donoso Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University.

262    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 24.

263    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 23.

264    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

265    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 9.

266    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 10.

267    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 10.

268    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 21.

269    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 21.

270    Shields, And So It Goes, 85–86.

271    Kurt Vonnegut, “The Salon Interview: Kurt Vonnegut,” interview by Frank Houston, Salon, October 8, 1999, https://www.salon.com/1999/10/08/vonnegut_interview.

272    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 39.

273    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 158.

274    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 4.

275    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

276    Reilly, “Two Conversations,” 199.

277    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

278    Vonnegut, “Despite Tough Guys.”

279    Vonnegut student Ronni Sandroff reports this as an admonishment Vonnegut gave Iowa students in class. I remember that too.

280    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

281    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

282    Offit, “Library of America,” 6.

283    John Cloud, “Inherit the Wind,” Time, April 18, 2011. After thirty-eight rejections, Gone with the Wind was published in the summer of 1936, and by Christmas it had sold a million copies. Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer for it the following year. To date, it’s sold thirty million copies. A Harris Poll in 2014 found that Americans favored it second only to the Bible.

284    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

285    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 1.

286    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 1.

287    Kurt Vonnegut, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” in Monkey House.

288    Kurt Vonnegut, “Unready to Wear,” in Monkey House.

289    Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” in Monkey House.

290    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

291    Godwin, “Waltzing,” 47.

292    Ronnie Sandroff, e-mail memoir to the author, unpublished, May 29, 2014.

293    Godwin, “Waltzing,” 48.

294    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 40.

295    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

296    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

297    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

298    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

299    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

300    Jeffrey Ely, Alexander Frankel, and Emir Kamenia, “The Economics of Suspense,” New York Times, April 26, 2015.

301    Godwin, “Waltzing,” 47.

302    Vonnegut, “Fluctuations.”

303    Offit, “Library of America,” 5.

304    Some of these graphs, minus the graph paper, are reproduced in Palm Sunday and A Man without a Country.

305    Shields, And So It Goes, 194.

306    Robert Lehrman, “The Political Speechwriter’s Life,” New York Times, November 3, 2012, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/the-political-speechwriters-life.

307    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap 13.

308    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 31.

309    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 31.

310    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 10.

311    He commented on one of my Form of Fiction papers, “Full of life, Suzanne, and that’s all I ever ask of anyone. (Believe me, most weren’t.)” He scrawled a fat A, hailed me the next time I saw him.

My paper wasn’t brilliant. I’d responded fictionally to the assignment comparing the merits of the short story form versus that of the novel: narrated by a bubble-headed woman, the two opinions divided a town, created civil war. I suppose most papers were thoughtful essays. The fact that liveliness trumped erudition for my teacher, who had to grade eighty papers, impressed upon me the primo importance of keeping the reader awake.

312    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 8.

313    Vonnegut, What We Pretend, chap. 7.

314    Vonnegut, “Fluctuations.”

315    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 46.

316    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

317    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 19.

318    Mel Gussow, “Vonnegut Is Having Fun Doing a Play,” in Conversations, 24.

319    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 20.

320    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 18.

321    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 24.

322    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

323    Kurt Vonnegut, “Acceptance Speech” (speech, Eugene V. Debs Award ceremony, Terre Haute, IN, November 7, 1981), Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

324    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

325    Vonnegut, Sirens, epilogue.

326    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 19.

327    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 8.

328    Nuwer, “Skull Session,” 244–45.

329    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

330    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 7.

331    Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).

332    Kurt Vonnegut, “Adam,” in Monkey House.

333    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 2.

334    Kurt Vonnegut, “The Foster Portfolio,” in Monkey House.

335    Vonnegut, “Fluctuations.”

336    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 14.

337    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap 8.

338    Vonnegut, “Adam.”

339    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 23.

340    A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (New York: Random House, 1955), 26.

341    Nanette Kuehn, foreword to We Are What We Pretend to Be, by Kurt Vonnegut (New York: Vanguard Press, 2012).

342    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 159–60.

343    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 7.

344    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 160.

345    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

346    Gifford Boies Doxsee to Ada Zouche German, #6311, 10 January 1981, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

This eighteen-page letter from Gifford Boies Doxsee to Ada Zouche German describes his memories of the Second World War, “especially during the months I was a prisoner of war… in Dresden.” The letter was on display at an exhibit of Vonnegut’s drawings and memorabilia at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in September 2015.

347    Nuwer, “Skull Session,” 263.

348    Kurt Vonnegut, “Long Walk to Forever,” in Monkey House.

349    Kurt Vonnegut, preface to Between Time and Timbuktu (New York: Dell Publishing, 1972).

350    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 8.

351    Mark Vonnegut, introduction to Armageddon, 1.

352    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

353    Vonnegut, Man Without, 66.

354    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 8.

355    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 2.

356    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 2, chap. 6.

357    Vonnegut, Man Without, 67–68.

358    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 1.

359    Vonnegut, “Foster Portfolio.”

360    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

361    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 20.

362    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 42.

363    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 20.

364    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 110.

365    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 6. Vonnegut furnishes the original words in the book’s appendix, so that you can “decide for yourself.”

366    Vonnegut, Fates, appendix.

367    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 6.

368    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 13.

369    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 4.

370    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

371    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

372    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 3.

373    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 2, chap. 4.

374    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 9.

375    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 25.

376    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 30.

377    For a marvelous essay on that subject, see Dan Wakefield, “Kurt Vonnegut, Christ-Loving Atheist,” Image, no. 82, https://imagejournal.org/article/kurt-vonnegut/.

378    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 32.

379    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 9.

380    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 160.

381    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

382    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

383    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 4.

384    Jerome Klinkowitz, The Vonnegut Statement (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 197.

385    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 8.

386    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 12.

387    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 5.

388    Reilly, “Two Conversations,” 197.

389    Vonnegut, Breakfast, preface.

390    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 5.

391    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

392    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 2.

393    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

394    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

395    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

396    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 16.

397    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 157–58.

398    Vonnegut, Man Without, 23.

399    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 1.

400    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 9.

401    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 9.

402    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 258–59.

403    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 12.

404    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 6.

405    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 9.

406    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 6.

407    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 5.

408    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 4.

409    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 21.

410    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

411    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 12.

412    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 20.

413    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 20.

414    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 12.

415    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 9.

416    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 8.

417    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 13.

418    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 5.

419    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 45.

420    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 31.

421    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 256.

422    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 73.

423    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 156.

424    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 256–58.

425    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 72–73.

426    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 69.

427    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 57.

428    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 35.

429    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 38.

430    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 11.

431    Vonnegut, Man Without, 39–40.

432    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 142.

433    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 144, 153.

434    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 145.

435    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 145–46.

436    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 9.

437    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 259.

438    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 9.

439    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 19.

440    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 8.

441    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 6.

442    Vonnegut, Slapstick, chap. 7.

443    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

444    Vonnegut, Wampeters, preface.

445    Kurt Vonnegut, “Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction,” interview by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, and Richard Rhodes, in The Last Interview, 7.

446    Vonnegut, Wampeters, preface.

447    Vonnegut, Armageddon, chap. 2.

448    Offit, “Library of America,” 8.

449    Todd, “Masks,” 33.

450    Vonnegut, Letters, 168.

451    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 281.

452    Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five” (unpublished manuscript), Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

453    Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, chap. 3.

454    Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo.

455    Vonnegut, Letters, 58.

456    Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Word by Word (Iowa City: University of Iowa Printing and Mailing Services, 2011), 38.

457    Vonnegut, Letters, 88.

458    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 166.

459    Kramer, “Kurt’s College,” 29.

If you want to read a short-short story, written in a fit of pique, about revising fiction, which, coincidentally, features a similar plot, see my story “Book” in Per Contra, no. 22 (Spring 2011), http://percontra.net/archive/22mcconnell.htm.

460    Morgan Entrekin, editorial notes to Kurt Vonnegut, 1 March 1982, Kurt Vonnegut Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

461    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

462    Vonnegut, Jailbird, prologue.

463    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 70.

464    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

465    Vonnegut, Slapstick, chap. 14.

466    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

467    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 3.

468    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 32.

469    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 8.

470    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 75.

471    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 10.

472    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 24.

473    Rentilly, “God Bless,” 157.

474    McLaughlin, “Interview,” 70.

475    Carol Pinchefsky, “Wizard Oil,” Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, December 2006, http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=carol_pinchefsky&article=015.

476    Sara Sheridan, “What Writers Earn: A Cultural Myth,” Huffington Post, updated June 24, 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sara-sheridan/writers-earnings-cultural-myth_b_3136859.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=fahUDQ-l9b4CWlw0wtpjwA.

477    Patrick Wensink, “My Amazon Best Seller Made Me Nothing,” Salon, March 15, 2013, https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money.

478    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

479    Andrew Perrin, “Book Reading,” Pew Research Center, September 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016.

480    Vonnegut and Stringer, Like Shaking, 19–20.

481    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

482    Vonnegut, Letters, 27.

483    Vonnegut, Letters, 32–34.

484    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

485    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone, 15.

486    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 2.

487    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

488    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 20.

489    Lehrman, “Political Speechwriter’s.”

490    Vonnegut, God Bless You, chap. 8.

491    “I’m the dishwasher here,” my first published story begins. See McConnell, “Disposal.”

492    William Rodney Allen and Paul Smith, “Having Enough: A Talk with Kurt Vonnegut,” in Conversations, 299.

493    Finch, Kurt Vonnegut.

494    For more on this, see M. Allen Cunningham, “Rethinking Restriction,” Poets & Writers, January/February 2014.

495    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

496    C. D. B. Bryan, “Kurt Vonnegut, Head Bokononist,” in Conversations, 4.

497    Shields, And So It Goes, 216.

498    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 5.

499    Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Word by Word, 36.

500    Shields, And So It Goes, 219.

Unfortunately, when Knox Burger became a literary agent, Vonnegut reneged on a promise to go with his agency. He said in the Paris Review interview, “And let it be put on the record here that Knox Burger, who is about my age, discovered and encouraged more good young writers than any other editor of his time.”

501    Shields, And So It Goes, 219.

502    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 29.

503    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone without Mental Illness Only More So (New York: Delacorte Press, 2010), 15.

504    Publishers Weekly, “The Conscience of the Writer,” in Conversations, 45.

505    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone, 15.

506    C. G. Jung, “Christ, a Symbol of the Self,” in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Complete Digital Edition Vol. 9 Part II: Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of Self, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 101, https://the-eye.eu/public/concen.org/Princeton%20Jung/9.2%20Aion_Researches%20into%20the%20Phenomenology%20of%20the%20Self%20%20(Collected%20Works%20of%20C.%20G.%20Jung%20Volume%209,%20Part%202).pdf.

Vonnegut fulfilled several of his mother’s dreams, as he acknowledges. Whether intending to or not, according to Jung, it’s a “psychological rule” that “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.… That is to say, when the individual… does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict.” In simpler words, “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.”

507    Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick, chap. 1.

508    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 161.

509    Shields, And So It Goes, 168. Shields notes that Vonnegut wrote a story about an epidemic of people killing themselves for their life insurance entitled “The Epizootic.”

510    Bellamy and Casey, “Vonnegut,” 161.

511    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 27.

512    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, chap. 2.

513    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 6.

514    Kurt Vonnegut, in a speech to Lehigh University. Quote sent from Charles Shields in an e-mail to Suzanne McConnell, July 19, 2014.

515    McLaughlin, “Interview,” 73.

516    Vonnegut, “Unready to Wear,” 249.

517    Kurt Vonnegut to José Donoso, 26 May 1973.

518    Vonnegut, Letters, 178.

519    Vonnegut, Letters, 40.

520    Vonnegut, Letters, 46.

521    Vonnegut, Letters, 47.

522    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

523    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 251–53.

524    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 2.

525    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 6.

526    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 29.

527    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 8.

528    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 6.

529    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 27.

530    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 6.

531    Martin J. Blaser, Missing Microbes (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 25.

532    For more information, watch two excellent PBS documentaries on these topics: Ed Moore, dir., Ride the Tiger: A Guide Through the Bipolar Brain (2016; Detroit: Detroit Public Television), http://www.pbs.org/ride-the-tiger/home/; and Larkin McPhee, dir., Depression: Out of the Shadows (2008; Twin Cities Public Television, Inc. and WGBH Boston for PBS), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/takeonestep/depression/.

533    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 4.

534    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 263.

535    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 17.

536    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

537    Mark Leeds, “What Would Kurt Vonnegut Think of Donald Trump?,” June 15, 2017, Literary Hub, https://lithub.com/what-would-kurt-vonnegut-think-of-donald-trump/.

538    Vonnegut, Sirens, chap. 9.

539    Vonnegut, Timequake, chap. 8.

540    Vonnegut, Man Without, chap. 4.

541    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 14.

542    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

543    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

544    See Leslie Jamison, “Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?” New York Times Magazine, March 13, 2018, excerpted from her book The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2018).

545    Nancy C. Andreasen, “Secrets of the Creative Brain,” Atlantic, July/August 2014.

546    This line or its variation is attributed to Red Smith, Hemingway, and others. See “Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and Bleed,” Quote Investigator, http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/14/writing-bleed/.

547    Andreasen, “Secrets.”

548    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 32.

549    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 12.

550    Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice, 30–31.

551    Vonnegut, Man Without, chap. 6.

552    Allen and Smith, “Having Enough,” 295.

553    Nanette Vonnegut, “My Father the Doodler,” in Kurt Vonnegut Drawings, by Peter Reed, Nanette Vonnegut, and Kurt Vonnegut (New York: Monacelli Press, 2014), 9.

554    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 11.

555    Peter Reed, “The Remarkable Artwork of Kurt Vonnegut,” in Kurt Vonnegut Drawings, by Peter Reed, Nanette Vonnegut, and Kurt Vonnegut (New York: Monacelli Press, 2014), 13.

556    At the Johnson: The Members’ Newsletter of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Fall 2015.

557    Reed, “Remarkable Artwork,” 15.

558    Tribune News Services, “Chicago Veterans Museum Acquires Kurt Vonnegut Art Prints,” Chicago Tribune, January 11, 2017, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-chicago-veterans-museum-kurt-vonnegut-art-prints-20170111-story.html.

559    Maria Popova, “To Paint Is to Love Again,” Brain Pickings, accessed November 27, 2017, https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/21/to-paint-is-to-love-again-henry-miller.

560    Reed, “Remarkable Artwork,” 19.

561    Vonnegut and Stringer, Like Shaking, 47.

562    James Sullivan, “A Celebration of Kurt Vonnegut on Cape Cod,” Boston Globe, October 7, 2014, https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/10/06/celebration-vonnegut-cape/RUegb0NmUXBmi449E5TbJI/story.html.

563    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone, 172.

564    Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Word by Word, 40–41.

565    Vonnegut, Man Without, 66.

566    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 11.

567    For a thorough investigation of this subject, see Ginger Strand, “How Jane Vonnegut Made Kurt Vonnegut a Writer,” New Yorker, December 3, 2015.

568    Vonnegut, preface to Monkey House.

569    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 19.

570    For some gorgeous insight on privacy and relationship, see these two articles: Joshua Rothman, “Virginia Woolf’s Idea of Privacy,” July 9, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/virginia-woolfs-idea-of-privacy; and Alain de Botton, “The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships,” On Being, August 2, 2018, http://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/#.WKOB5sF5Nvw.email.

571    Kurt Vonnegut, “Basic Training,” in What We Pretend, chap. 4, 46.

572    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 20.

573    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 2, chap. 5.

574    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 1.

575    Vonnegut, Player Piano, chap. 4.

576    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 15.

577    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 93.

578    Vonnegut, Galápagos, book 1, chap. 14. For a gloriously humorous example of a discussion between a husband and wife ending up “like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates,” read chapter 18 in Player Piano.

579    Vonnegut, Gapápagos, book 1, chap. 14.

580    Vonnegut, Mother Night, chap. 9–10.

581    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 16.

582    Vonnegut, Bluebeard, chap. 31.

583    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 7.

584    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone, 21.

585    Vonnegut, Sirens, epilogue.

586    Krementz, Happy Birthday, 156.

587    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 241.

588    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 242.

589    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 244.

590    Kurt Vonnegut, “The Last Interview,” interview by Heather Augustyn, in The Last Interview, 166–67.

591    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 4.

592    Lee Sandweiss, “Historic Vonnegut Cottage on Lake Maxinkuckee Saved from Demolition,” Herald-Times (Hoosier Times), June 11, 2016, https://www.hoosiertimes.com/herald_times_online/life/at_home/historic-vonnegut-cottage-on-lake-maxinkuckee-saved-from-demolition/article_714e551a-8b26-59aa-947d-f36a2761ab40.html.

593    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 147–48.

594    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 12.

595    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 12.

596    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 247–48.

597    Vonnegut, Slapstick, chap. 33.

598    Vonnegut, Slapstick, chap. 33.

599    Vonnegut, Jailbird, chap. 8.

600    Vonnegut, Slapstick, chap. 32.

601    Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, chap. 7.

602    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 274.

603    Kathryn Schulz, “Call and Response,” New Yorker, March 6, 2017.

604    Barb Darrow, “Turns Out Attendance at Women’s March Events Was Bigger than Estimated,” Fortune, July 23, 2017, http://fortune.com/2017/01/23/womens-march-crowd-estimates.

605    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 2.

606    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 241.

607    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 10.

608    Vonnegut, Breakfast, chap. 2.

Check out these two quotes regarding community, one from Donald Trump Jr. about hunting and one from photographer Catherine Opie about belonging to an S/M group. Each acknowledges that the main value of the activity had or has to do primarily with the sense of being in a community.

“What is lost on nonhunters, he [Donald Trump Jr.] said, is the sense of community that is part of hunting trips. ‘Too much of hunting has turned into the notion of the kill,’ he said. ‘It’s a component, the meat. But so much is experiential, so much is relationships. It is sitting in a duck blind with seven people, cooking breakfast. For me, it’s been a great way to see the world. The least interesting part is the three seconds it takes to pull the trigger.’” Laura Holsen, “Donald Trump Jr. Is His Own Kind Of Trump, New York Times, March 18, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/style/donald-trump-jr-business-politics-hunting-twitter-vanessa-haydon.html.

“Really, what Opie liked best about transgressive sex was the way it created a feeling of family. ‘S/M was all about community for me,’ she said one afternoon, sitting in her sunny kitchen in Los Angeles.” Ariel Levy, “Catherine Opie, All-American Subversive,” New Yorker, March 13, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/catherine-opie-all-american-subversive.

609    Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, chap. 32.

610    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 13.

611    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 13.

612    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 13.

613    Vonnegut, Wampeters, 248.

614    Vonnegut, “Who Am I This Time?,” in Monkey House.

615    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 1.

616    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 42.

617    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 2.

618    Vonnegut, prologue to Slapstick.

619    Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone, 14.

620    Allen and Smith, “Having Enough,” 279.

621    Vonnegut, Letters, 38–40.

622    Vonnegut, Fates, chap. 3.

623    See this article for more explanation: Kevin Kelly, “Scenius, or Communal Genius,” Technium (blog), KK.org, June 10, 2008, http://kk.org/thetechnium/scenius-or-comm/.

624    Vonnegut and Stringer, Like Shaking, 48.

625    Rogers Cadenhead, “How to Join Kurt Vonnegut’s Family,” Workbench (blog), August 16, 2010, http://watchingthewatchers.org/read/3631.

626    The most heartening words I’ve ever received as a writer were from him. See letter in chap. 31.

627    Vonnegut, “Poems.”

628    Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chap. 99.