Advice to Students from an Iguana
June 3, 2016 11:54 AM   Subscribe

In 2006, a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City were given an assignment by their English teacher, Ms. Lockwood, that was to test their persuasive writing skills: they were asked to write to their favourite author and ask him or her to visit the school. It’s a measure of his ongoing influence that five of those pupils chose Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist responsible for, amongst other highly-respected books, Slaughterhouse-Five; sadly, however, he never made that trip. Instead, he wrote a wonderful letter. He was the only author to reply.
posted by storybored (30 comments total) 61 users marked this as a favorite
 
...and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a classy response.
posted by dfm500 at 11:59 AM on June 3, 2016 [18 favorites]


*sniff*

Must be dusty in here.
posted by SansPoint at 12:03 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Becoming. From a man of sunset years; such an inspiring sentiment.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 12:11 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I really liked Kurt Vonnegut's letter. His description of himself at this point, as an iguana is priceless. His imploring his writers and all of Ms. Lockwood's class' students to do art everyday is so simple yet so profound.

I would love to know several things as a follow-up. Did the kids do the poem and rip it up? Is Ms. Lockwood still teaching? Who were the authors who did not even respond?
posted by AugustWest at 12:11 PM on June 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


The instructions for the poetry project at the end of the letter can probably be found in Yoko Ono's Grapefruit, I'm betting.
posted by kozad at 12:14 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


btw, I didn't know this until this afternoon but the wonderful "Letters of Note" website is a creation of MeFi's own Usher. Hats off to you, sir!

Another, more serious, yet moving letter of Vonnegut's describes his chilling wartime experience in Dresden that would become the background for Slaughterhouse Five.

"...Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't...."
posted by storybored at 12:56 PM on June 3, 2016 [13 favorites]


There's a new book out that describes how Kurt's brother's work at GE (as well as Kurt's own stint doing PR there) influenced his writing. The concept of ice-9 was one of the ideas which germinated from a discussion with GE scientists.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:00 PM on June 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


I miss Kurt Vonnegut so much. But I'm also glad he's not here to see the current shitshow that is America, I think it would have been far too much for him to cope with.
posted by palomar at 1:26 PM on June 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


dat signature.
posted by GuyZero at 1:39 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Can we please not honor or dignify this sort of bullshit "lesson", which is actually an affront to working authors, as MeFi's Own jscalzi has pointed out in his publicity guidelines. Yes, it's cool that Vonnegut did respond - that doesn't make the exercise any less crap in the first place.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:45 PM on June 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


Assigning your class to write letters to famous people is not really a super great lesson plan, but it's pretty ridiculous to call it an affront to working authors. Authors are more than capable, just like any other public or famous person, to ignore fan mail as they see fit. At worst, it's a potential source of disappointment and disillusionment to the students, though hopefully the teacher provided some context to the students about the asymmetric nature of this sort of communication and why a lack of response is not an indication that the author is a jerk.

Anyhow, Vonnegut's letter is lovely.
posted by 256 at 1:56 PM on June 3, 2016 [32 favorites]


I like Vonnegut's response very much, and would much rather hear nothing back and assume that an author was too busy that day than to read a concrete rule about how the author is too busy as a rule.

It's like sending a text to a friend and not hearing back as opposed to sending a text to a friend and getting a "I'm too busy to actually answer this" response.
posted by papayaninja at 2:00 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Thank you for posting this. Thank you Mrs Lockwood, your pupils were / are so lucky to have a teacher like you. Thank you to those who wrote and my oh my Thank You Kurt Vonnegut for this letter and so much more.
posted by adamvasco at 2:02 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The image of old men looking like iguanas was also used in Bluebeard (which I am re-reading right now) to describe the main character Rabo Karabekian, who I always assumed was partly an autobiographical character (like so many of Vonnegut's characters). His work is just chock full of wonderful images like that. I miss Kurt Vonnegut.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:04 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I had chills reading that. What a great person (and writer).
posted by porpoise at 2:17 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


It is fortunate that neither the RAF nor delousing got Mr. Vonnegut in 1945. The world would have been infinitely poorer without him.
posted by rdone at 2:36 PM on June 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


One of my most dearest teenage memories is getting a handwritten letter from one of my favorite authors. If I had gotten referred to a websites publicity guidelines I would have been crushed. I love this.
posted by Marinara at 2:42 PM on June 3, 2016 [14 favorites]


Previously.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:00 PM on June 3, 2016


I miss Kurt Vonnegut so much. But I'm also glad he's not here to see the current shitshow that is America, I think it would have been far too much for him to cope with.

Oh I think he'd handle the "shitshow" just fine. The man endured one of the worst shitshows in human history, and a horrific firestorm smack in the middle of it. He emerged as a successful author and a freethinking humanist. I'd say our current shitshow is a good stretch tamer than a world war and annihilation of an entire city by carpet bombing.
posted by ecorrocio at 4:25 PM on June 3, 2016 [15 favorites]


I miss Kurt, but at least he's in heaven now.
posted by nubs at 6:02 PM on June 3, 2016 [8 favorites]


As a couple other people have referenced, I find it incredibly endearing that one of my favorite people of all time, and a famous atheist, signed off with "God bless you all." I also find it incredibly endearing that he misspelled "receptacle."

This was something I did a lot as a young person: write things to myself and then tear them up, or hide them where they'd never be seen. I never could explain to people why it felt right. On some level I feel vindicated.
posted by penduluum at 7:06 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The man endured one of the worst shitshows in human history, and a horrific firestorm smack in the middle of it... I'd say our current shitshow is a good stretch tamer than a world war and annihilation of an entire city by carpet bombing.

Huh. I guess I should disregard everything the man himself wrote in A Man Without A Country, then. Silly me, taking Vonnegut at his word that he'd grown disgusted with the state of our nation...
posted by palomar at 8:11 PM on June 3, 2016


Nobody shares the letter he wrote to students of Althoff High School of Belleville, IL suggesting they go home that night and draw their own assholes.

*
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:33 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The film version of the letter (as Parasite Unseen sort of pointed at in the "previously")
posted by HuronBob at 3:39 AM on June 4, 2016


I love how he manages to infuse his Kurty essence into every line he writes. That's why, to me, he'll live forever. I can pick up any of his books and find him.
posted by mantecol at 9:16 AM on June 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Can we please not honor or dignify this sort of bullshit "lesson", which is actually an affront to working authors, as MeFi's Own jscalzi has pointed out in his publicity guidelines.
My heart plays a very small violin on Scalzi's behalf. He can afford someone to discard his mail from schoolchildren, unanswered.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:38 PM on June 4, 2016 [1 favorite]



One of my most dearest teenage memories is getting a handwritten letter from one of my favorite authors. If I had gotten referred to a websites publicity guidelines I would have been crushed. I love this.

That's why I really don't like this sort of lesson plan.

So let's say you're fairly well known. Kid A writes you because they're a huge fan. Kids B-Z barely know who you are but have to do this stupid assignment. Now you're looking at a bunch of correspondence from a bunch of people who don't really care at all what you have to say, but you have to decide whether to be rude or take the time. Kid A's message is swept up with the rest of them.

The whole thing is really kind of awful. A teacher who's not really involved, a student who is told to pretend to be a fan of an artist and waste their time, an artist who has to decide whether the person is sincere or reluctantly fulfilling an assignment.

It was a nice letter though.
posted by bongo_x at 8:28 PM on June 4, 2016


I visited the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis last week: it's a tiny gem. They recreated the den where he did his writing... Think 1960 modernist decor... And you do feel like you're stepping back into a different era. Vonnegut fans should make a pilgrimage there if they can.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 5:46 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Marinara:

"One of my most dearest teenage memories is getting a handwritten letter from one of my favorite authors. If I had gotten referred to a websites publicity guidelines I would have been crushed."

Eh. I don't mind crushing teenagers, when it comes to thoughtless assignments from their teachers, who apparently think I don't have anything more pressing to do with my time. I think it's a reasonably valuable lesson for them -- and the teachers -- to learn that writers are busy people. And in any event, the Web site has nearly two decades of me commenting on every topic under the sun. They can get quotes from me on nearly every topic if they know how to use a search function.

If on the other hand a teenager writes me an actual piece of fan (e)mail, the chance of them getting a response is pretty good, albeit the response will likely be pretty short, since a slow week in the fan mail department is three or four dozen emails. Note well that I can usually answer the weekly fan email quicker than I can sufficiently answer one or two teacher assignment emails, which is why I (usually) answer one and not the other.

As a practical matter I find posting policies (for email, for charitable solicitations, for reading unpublished work, publicity guidelines, etc) on my Web site very useful -- not only do these policies make it clear what people can or cannot expect from me, they also make it clear that my stances are not personal, i.e., this is how I do it with everyone, not just them, and these policies are long-standing.

If people get upset by the fact I have policies in order to manage my own time, you know what, fuck 'em. They're not people who I would likely have a positive encounter with anyway.
posted by jscalzi at 7:32 PM on June 5, 2016


If people get upset by the fact I have policies in order to manage my own time, you know what, fuck 'em. They're not people who I would likely have a positive encounter with anyway.

Just to be clear. I was not at all upset with you having a policy, and wouldn't even fault you for answering zero fan mail. That's absolutely your prerogative.
posted by 256 at 3:29 PM on June 8, 2016


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