The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library will be having its grand opening Thursday and Friday, November 11-12, at its new home in Indianapolis. For a little background on the Vonnegut family’s participation in this promising new resource, click on http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/a-new-chapter-culture-counter-july-2010.aspx.

ALA 2010 Update

Saturday, May 29, 2010, marked the second annual meeting of the Kurt Vonnegut Society. This year’s meeting at the San Francisco Hyatt on Embarcadero included two panels, eight presenters, the society’s business meeting and our celebratory Third Annual Timequake Clambake. Our panelists piqued the interest of all in attendance as spirited and wide-ranging discussions broke out during  the Q&A session and continued long into the afternoon. (Click here for a full listing of papers presented. The full papers will be published on this Website by the end of summer.)

The Third Annual Timequake Clambake was another success. I lost track but believe we had 18 guests meet at Joe’s Crabshack across from the marina at Fisherman’s Wharf. It is always a thrill when scholars and fans from faraway locales manage to find our panels and comfortably insert themselves among those with common interests. This year our long-distance champ came from Croatia -- and is soon to release the first book in Croatian about Vonnegut!

Business Meeting Update

(1) This next bit will be news to our general membership, but I shared this information with last year’s panelists as well as this speakers. Well-known scholar and critic Donald Morse, editor of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), a highly regarded peer-reviewed  publication with roots that go back before World War II, has asked me to serve as guest editor for a special Vonnegut issue slated for publication in 2011. I have asked our society's vice-president and conference organizer Robert Tally to serve as the assistant editor.

Morse is interested in using our panelists presentations as the center-piece of that special Vonnegut issue. Robert and I will be reviewing last year’s papers along with this year’s contributions and submitting a selection to HJEAS for further peer-reviewing.

In addition to those who spoke during this year’s conference, I have asked Nick Curry and Ana Martino to submit their papers for possible selection. They were unable to attend after having been selected to speak.

        The fact that HJEAS wants to do a Vonnegut issue should be heartening to us all. The fact that they are turning to our very young literary society is a sign that the caliber of our member contributions is already receiving positive notice. Our society is nothing without the selfless and creative work done by you. Thank you for all your efforts.

        (2) Over the next year, I plan on calling on some of our members to serve as an ad hoc committee to determine a plan of action for developing our own peer-reviewed electronic journal.

        (3) In advance of our official call for papers for the 2011 meeting, we would like to hear from our members about broad topics of consideration that you would be interested in hearing. We would like to weave your ideas together with our own and offer topics of interest that you may be considering. Please make your interests known to us by emailing  Robert Tally and me prior to September 30th.

       

ALA 2009 Update

Friday, May 22, 2009 was a big day in Boston for the new Kurt Vonnegut Society.  As part of the American Literature Association’s meeting at the Westin Copley Place Hotel, on that day the KVS sponsored two panels with a total of nine presenters of eight papers (double last year’s offerings); held our first business meeting; and enjoyed our first dinner honoring the singular American writer whose works had brought us all together.

The panel papers were eclectic in subject matter and international in authorship: topics ranged from the bombing of Hiroshima (Fumika Nagano) to the medical ethics of organ transplants (Gunter Beck) to Vonnegut’s composition process in Slaughterhouse-Five (Todd Atchison) to the controversial idea that Howard W. Campbell, Jr. was lying in his confession to the Israeli War Crimes Tribunal about having been an American secret agent during the war (Susan Farrell). In addition to the American presenters, scholars came from as far away as Israel and Tokyo, reflecting the fact that Vonnegut is known and respected all over the world as one of the best American writers of the past half century. After the panelists presented, lively discussions ensued between the authors and members of the audience.

The KVS’s first business meeting was ably led by our President, Marc Leeds.  It was attended by approximately a dozen people, who voted to adopt a society charter created by Robert Talley, Jr.; discussed creating positions for a bibliographer and secretary; and planned to publish online at the KVS website the future papers on Vonnegut presented at ALA. We also considered ways we might collaborate with the recently formed Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library project.  The Library will be in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut’s hometown, and may be housed in one of the buildings designed by Vonnegut’s father or grandfather. KVS members on the Board of Directors for the KVML are Marc Leeds, Rodney Allen, and Susan Farrell.

The best part of the day was the “Timequake Clambake” dinner we all enjoyed at a big table at Rabia’s Restaurant in Boston’s North End. Since Vonnegut had described the “original” clambake in his last novel, Timequake, we referred to this meal as “the second annual Timequake Clambake.”  We hope there will be many more. In attendance was Loree Rackstraw, whose new book recently appeared on her long relationship with Vonnegut (Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him, Da Capo Press). Making strange appearances were two people seated for most of the evening at the children’s table, the ghosts of Vonnegut’s real-life friend Bernard V. O’Hare (portrayed by Paul Smith, Editor in Chief of Allyn and Bacon publishers) and his famous fictional character Kilgore Trout (portrayed by Rodney Allen.) High jinks eventually ensued, but no police had to be called—although they apparently did tow Trout’s illegally parked baby-shit brown station wagon out of the parking lot, taking with them many priceless paperback copies of such sci-fi classics of his as Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass, Bring Me the Head of Leon Trotsky Trout, and The Straw Boss of Planet Zog.

All in all, May 22, 2009 proved that our new KVS is alive and kicking.

Respectfully submitted,

Rodney Allen, Ph.D.

2009 KVS Panelists:

1. “From Ground Zero to Eternity: Hiroshima, Testimony, and the Lessens of History in Vonnegut’s Later Novels.”  Fumika Nagano, Seikei University, Tokyo.

2. “‘Now it’s the women’s turn’: The Art(s) of Reconciliation in Vonnegut’s Bluebeard.”  Tom Hertweck, University of Nevada, Reno.

3. “‘The miracle age of organ transplants and other forms of therapeutic vivisection’: Medicine and Medical Ethics in Kurt Vonnegut’s Work.”  Günter Beck, University of Haifa, Israel.

4. “From the Bomb to Barack: Vonnegut Chronicles the Death of Sociological Structuralism and the Birth of Postmodernity.”  Kevin Boon, Pennsylvania State University.

1. “Like bugs trapped in amber’: The Chaos of Composition in Slaughter-house Five.”  Todd Atchison, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

2. “Kurt Vonnegut and the Paradox of Perception.”  Loree Rackstraw, University of Northern Iowa.

3. “The Voice of Kurt Vonnegut.”  Nick Curry, Maryville University, and Jeremy C. Ellis, Managing Editor, The Dirty Napkin.

4. 4.“The Fraudulent Light in Mother Night.”  Susan Farrell, College of Charleston.
   

Graphical image of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1994 speech at the University of Chicago. This was provided by  George Sarlas of Chicago, a high school student at the time who cut school with friends to attend the speech. Mr. Sarlas and three of his fiends were the last to leave the auditorium and found Mr. Vonnegut’s speech at the podium. The KVS has been given permission by the Kurt Vonnegut Trust to post the speech.

Dave Eggers’s New York Times review of Vonnegut’s Look at the Birdie, a collection of unpublished short stories from the 1950s. Read the review from October 29.

Look at the Birdie, a collection of 14 short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut’s prior to the publication of his first novel, Player Piano, was released by Delacorte Press (September 15, 2009). See the NY Times notice.

San Francisco’s Examiner.com reporter Aubrey Winkler interviews Marc Leeds about the start of the Kurt Vonnegut Society (September 6, 2009).