(tape rewinding)

(cassette tape clinking into machine)

(piano playing)

- It's a great pleasure to introduce Kurt Vonnegut.

(applause)

- I left Indianapolis following puberty.

When I went to high school in Indianapolis,

I learned how to walk around looking tough.

'Cause everybody had to do that and I, I went out

to Indianapolis, 'cause I got out there occassionally,

and they're still doing it.

Just walking around looking very tough.

'Cause something might happen, you know?

(piano music)

- [Kurt Vonnegut] I was raised by a black maid

by the name of Ida Young.

I probably talked to her more than anybody.

So, whatever is nutty about me .

was nutty about her too, I think,

'cause I saw a lot more of her than I did of my parents.

And here comes a rather intimate part,

is I used to keep it a big secret and I used to have

awful guilt feelings, my Mother was crazy toward the end.

She was alright in the day time unless you tried

to take her picture.

Where you would get a bizarre reaction at night.

She would really get wild, swearing people away

and crashing around the house.

That was barbiturates.

These were supposed to tranquilize her

and they turned her brain to cobwebs.

And I can't get mad at my Mother

because I pitied her so much, with what she went through.

(dark music)

I went and saw my parents tombstone

a couple of months ago and I cried

and I hadn't cried for a long time

and what I was crying about

was I wished they had been happier

than they were.

And I think this is probably a dumb thing to do.

I think probably, parents are

much happier than the parents realize.

I remember I asked my father

what the happiest day of his marriage had been.

This is after my Mother died.

And he said, well, they had an Oldsmobile

and they broke into the Indianapolis 500 Mile Speedway

one Sunday and just drove around

and around and around and around.

(crowd laughing)

(melancholy music)

I've heard that a writer is lucky

because he cures himself every day with his work.

What everybody is well advised to do is

not write about your own life.

This is if you want to write fast.

You will be writing about your own life anyway.

But you won't know it.

And the thing is, in order to sit alone

and work all day long, you must be a terrible

over reactor and you're sitting there,

doing what paranoids do, is putting together clues,

making them add up, you know.

Putting the fact that they put me in the room 471,

you know, what does that mean and everything.

Well, nothing means anything,

except the artist makes his living by pretending,

by putting it in a meaningful hole, though no such holes

exist and you need paranoia for energy too.

You must be terribly worried and secretly full of hate.

(scary music)

I am now older than George Orwell when he died.

I'll soon be older than Jack Kerouac when he died.

Anyway, I've wondered why all these people killed themselves

and I think that writers, creative writers

are in the process of becoming,

they are humanity becoming.

It's like reaching in to the mouth of a student

and taking a hold of a piece of tape

in the back of the mouth without getting bitten.

And seeing what the hell's written on it.

And then just keep pulling it out.

And the person doesn't know what the hell it is.

And I think it becomes an exhausting thing to do.

That's about it.

A lot of people decline to do it anymore

and it becomes too unpleasant.

(speedy piano music)

I had written story called the Big Space Fuck.

(crowd laughter)

And it's a,

it's about this big--

(crowd laughter)

Uh, (laughing)

it's about the end of the world.

All are left are lamprey's and human beings.

And they're turning into man-eating lamprey's.

The space program now

has built this enormous spaceship and the hope is

that human life will somewhere go on.

It's got a big warhead on it, filled with sperm, you see.

(crowd applause)

And they're firing this think out there

hoping it'll hit something you see and life--

(crowd laughter)

(piano music speeds up)

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Now back to the interview.

- [Kurt Vonnegut] How important my books are, are

or anybodies books are, I don't know.

I don't think they're terribly important.

I think that they make people contented

during the period they're reading them.

And this is worth something

is to take care of somebody for a couple of hours.

There will always be magic entertainers

who'll comfort people some during the Job story,

that all our lives are.

For this reason, I honor my own profession.

We are entertainers.

We don't do a whole lot, but something.

(somber piano music)

(tape rewinding)

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