The 1973 children's crusade of Kurt Vonnegut

"I believe the theme, or message of the book is a question: Why are we killing each other still? The book deals with other concerns as well. The lack of dignity and respect with which we treat each other in increasing doses. The dissatisfaction that Billy Pilgrim, the hero of the book, feels with his life of obvious material success. The emptiness of his marriage. The matter of man's own free will, that seems to be no longer functioning. The resulting apathy. It is this apathy towards an increasing state of man's inhumanity to his fellow man that the author is crying out against in protest, through Billy Pilgrim. This is a moral book. It deals with a moral question that we as humans have been trying to deal with for time immemorial. The book begs the reader to come up with a workable answer. "

(Bruce Severy, Drake (ND) High School English teacher)

"We didn't approve of its obscene language."

(Charles McCarthy, Drake school board president, November 9, 1973)

And that short rejoinder apparently, was enough to set off a book-burning -- 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five were confiscated from Severy's sophomore students. Lockers were searched for errant copies, and the books were tossed in the school's coal burner. The book "shouldn't be read by anyone," according to one school board member. "It might have passed in college, but not in this school," board president McCarthy told the Minot Daily News in 1973. But Kurt was up for the battle: he wrote a letter to the school board, which eventually was published in his 1981 collection Palm Sunday.

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

Kurt Vonnegut, 1970 (photo by Jack Mitchell)

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this. I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books -– books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.

Vonnegut was not the only writer with words on the fire: the school board also burned sixty copies of James Dickey's Deliverance and an anthology, Short Story Masterpieces, containing work by Hemingway and Steinbeck. But the novel, published in 1969, gives Vonnegut a certain distinction: more than forty years on, Slaughter-House Five continues to be among the most challenged books in the nation's high schools, according to the American Library Association.

The 1973 children's crusade of Kurt Vonnegut

"I believe the theme, or message of the book is a question: Why are we killing each other still? The book deals with other concerns as well. The lack of dignity and respect with which we treat each other in increasing doses. The dissatisfaction that Billy Pilgrim, the hero of the book, feels with his life of obvious material success. The emptiness of his marriage. The matter of man's own free will, that seems to be no longer functioning. The resulting apathy. It is this apathy towards an increasing state of man's inhumanity to his fellow man that the author is crying out against in protest, through Billy Pilgrim. This is a moral book. It deals with a moral question that we as humans have been trying to deal with for time immemorial. The book begs the reader to come up with a workable answer. "

(Bruce Severy, Drake (ND) High School English teacher)

"We didn't approve of its obscene language."

(Charles McCarthy, Drake school board president, November 9, 1973)

And that short rejoinder apparently, was enough to set off a book-burning -- 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five were confiscated from Severy's sophomore students. Lockers were searched for errant copies, and the books were tossed in the school's coal burner. The book "shouldn't be read by anyone," according to one school board member. "It might have passed in college, but not in this school," board president McCarthy told the Minot Daily News in 1973. But Kurt was up for the battle: he wrote a letter to the school board, which eventually was published in his 1981 collection Palm Sunday.

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

Kurt Vonnegut, 1970 (photo by Jack Mitchell)

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this. I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books -– books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.

Vonnegut was not the only writer with words on the fire: the school board also burned sixty copies of James Dickey's Deliverance and an anthology, Short Story Masterpieces, containing work by Hemingway and Steinbeck. But the novel, published in 1969, gives Vonnegut a certain distinction: more than forty years on, Slaughter-House Five continues to be among the most challenged books in the nation's high schools, according to the American Library Association.

The 1973 children's crusade of Kurt Vonnegut

"I believe the theme, or message of the book is a question: Why are we killing each other still? The book deals with other concerns as well. The lack of dignity and respect with which we treat each other in increasing doses. The dissatisfaction that Billy Pilgrim, the hero of the book, feels with his life of obvious material success. The emptiness of his marriage. The matter of man's own free will, that seems to be no longer functioning. The resulting apathy. It is this apathy towards an increasing state of man's inhumanity to his fellow man that the author is crying out against in protest, through Billy Pilgrim. This is a moral book. It deals with a moral question that we as humans have been trying to deal with for time immemorial. The book begs the reader to come up with a workable answer. "

(Bruce Severy, Drake (ND) High School English teacher)

"We didn't approve of its obscene language."

(Charles McCarthy, Drake school board president, November 9, 1973)

And that short rejoinder apparently, was enough to set off a book-burning -- 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five were confiscated from Severy's sophomore students. Lockers were searched for errant copies, and the books were tossed in the school's coal burner. The book "shouldn't be read by anyone," according to one school board member. "It might have passed in college, but not in this school," board president McCarthy told the Minot Daily Newsin 1973. But Kurt was up for the battle: he wrote a letter to the school board, which eventually was published in his 1981 collection Palm Sunday.

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

Kurt Vonnegut, 1970 (photo by Jack Mitchell)

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this. I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books -– books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.

Vonnegut was not the only writer with words on the fire: the school board also burned sixty copies of James Dickey'sDeliverance and an anthology, Short Story Masterpieces, containing work by Hemingway and Steinbeck. But the novel, published in 1969, gives Vonnegut a certain distinction: more than forty years on, Slaughter-House Fivecontinues to be among the most challenged books in the nation's high schools, according to the American Library Association.

Kurt Vonnegut, born November 11, 1922: "the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound"

Kurt Vonnegut on Mark Twain, 2007: " ... He himself was the most enchanting American at the heart of each of his tales. We can forgive this easily, for he managed to imply that the reader was enough like him to be his brother. He did this most strikingly in the personae of the riverboat pilot and Huckleberry Finn. He did this so well that the newest arrival to these shores, very likely a Vietnamese refugee, can, by reading him begin to imagine that he has some of idiosyncratically American charm of Mark Twain." Earlier in his remarks, Vonnegut explained Twain's "necessary miracle":

... This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of enthusiastic liar, is on an unpredictable adventure. His initial lie, his premise, will suggest many new lies of its own. The storyteller must choose among them, seeking those which are most believable, which keep the arithmetic sound. Thus does a story generate itself.

The wildest adventure with storytelling, with Missouri calculation, of which I know is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was written in this sacredly absurd monument -- as were Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, from which I have quoted, and the world masterpiece,Huckleberry Finn. Twain's most productive years were spent here--from the time he was 39 until he was my age, which, is 56. He was my age when he left here to live in Europe and Redding and New York, his greatest work behind him.

That is haw far down the river of life he was when he left here. He could not afford to live here anymore. He was very bad at business.

About A Connecticut Yankee: its premise, its first lie, seemed to promise a lark. What could more comical than sending back into the Dark Ages one late nineteenth-century optimist and technocrat? Such a premise was surely the key to a treasure chest of screamingly funny jokes and situations. Mark Twain would have been wise to say to himself as he picked that glittering key, "Keep your hat on. We may wind up miles from here."

I will refresh your memories as where he wound up, with or without his hat. The Yankee and his little band of electricians and mechanics and what-have-yous are being attacked by thousands of English warriors armed with swords and spears and axes. The Yankee has fortified his position with a series of electric fences and a moat. He also has several precursors to modern machine guns, which are Gatling guns.

Comically enough, thousands of early attackers have already been electrocuted. Ten thousand of the greatest knights in England have been held in reserve. Now they come. I quote, and I invite you to chuckle along with me as I read:

"The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted,they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, and then they broke, faced about, and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths it and plunged over-to death by drowning.

"Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England! Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us."

End quote.

What a funny ending.

Mark Twain died in 1910, at the age of 75 and four years before the start of World War I. I have heard it said that he predicted that war and all the wars after that in A Connecticut Yankee. It was not Twain who did that. It was his premise.

How appalled this entertainer must have been to have his innocent joking about technology and superstition lead him inexorably to such a ghastly end. Suddenly and horrifyingly, what had seemed so clear throughout the book was not clear at all -- who was good, who was bad, who was wise, who was foolish. I ask you: "Who was most crazed by superstition and bloodlust, the men with the swords or the men with the Gatling guns?"

And I suggest to you that the fatal premise of A Connecticut Yankee remains a chief premise of Western civilization, and increasingly of world civilization, to wit: the sanest, most likable persons, employing superior technology, will enforce sanity throughout the world.

Shall I read the ending of A Connecticut Yankee to you yet again?

No need. ...

Kurt Vonnegut, born November 11, 1922: "the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound."

Kurt Vonnegut on Mark Twain, 2007: " ... He himself was the most enchanting American at the heart of each of his tales. We can forgive this easily, for he managed to imply that the reader was enough like him to be his brother. He did this most strikingly in the personae of the riverboat pilot and Huckleberry Finn. He did this so well that the newest arrival to these shores, very likely a Vietnamese refugee, can, by reading him begin to imagine that he has some of idiosyncratically American charm of Mark Twain." Earlier in his remarks, Vonnegut explained Twain's "necessary miracle":

... This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of enthusiastic liar, is on an unpredictable adventure. His initial lie, his premise, will suggest many new lies of its own. The storyteller must choose among them, seeking those which are most believable, which keep the arithmetic sound. Thus does a story generate itself.

The wildest adventure with storytelling, with Missouri calculation, of which I know is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was written in this sacredly absurd monument -- as were Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, from which I have quoted, and the world masterpiece,Huckleberry Finn. Twain's most productive years were spent here--from the time he was 39 until he was my age, which, is 56. He was my age when he left here to live in Europe and Redding and New York, his greatest work behind him.

That is haw far down the river of life he was when he left here. He could not afford to live here anymore. He was very bad at business.

About A Connecticut Yankee: its premise, its first lie, seemed to promise a lark. What could more comical than sending back into the Dark Ages one late nineteenth-century optimist and technocrat? Such a premise was surely the key to a treasure chest of screamingly funny jokes and situations. Mark Twain would have been wise to say to himself as he picked that glittering key, "Keep your hat on. We may wind up miles from here."

I will refresh your memories as where he wound up, with or without his hat. The Yankee and his little band of electricians and mechanics and what-have-yous are being attacked by thousands of English warriors armed with swords and spears and axes. The Yankee has fortified his position with a series of electric fences and a moat. He also has several precursors to modern machine guns, which are Gatling guns.

Comically enough, thousands of early attackers have already been electrocuted. Ten thousand of the greatest knights in England have been held in reserve. Now they come. I quote, and I invite you to chuckle along with me as I read:

"The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted,they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, and then they broke, faced about, and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths it and plunged over-to death by drowning.

"Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England! Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us."

End quote.

What a funny ending.

Mark Twain died in 1910, at the age of 75 and four years before the start of World War I. I have heard it said that he predicted that war and all the wars after that in A Connecticut Yankee. It was not Twain who did that. It was his premise.

How appalled this entertainer must have been to have his innocent joking about technology and superstition lead him inexorably to such a ghastly end. Suddenly and horrifyingly, what had seemed so clear throughout the book was not clear at all -- who was good, who was bad, who was wise, who was foolish. I ask you: "Who was most crazed by superstition and bloodlust, the men with the swords or the men with the Gatling guns?"

And I suggest to you that the fatal premise of A Connecticut Yankee remains a chief premise of Western civilization, and increasingly of world civilization, to wit: the sanest, most likable persons, employing superior technology, will enforce sanity throughout the world.

Shall I read the ending of A Connecticut Yankee to you yet again?

No need. ...

Vonnegut on Twain, born November 30, 1835: "how appalled this entertainer must have been"

Above: Twain and his daughters,

photographed by Thomas Edison in 1909.

Kurt Vonnegut on Mark Twain, 2007: " ... He himself was the most enchanting American at the heart of each of his tales. We can forgive this easily, for he managed to imply that the reader was enough like him to be his brother. He did this most strikingly in the personae of the riverboat pilot and Huckleberry Finn. He did this so well that the newest arrival to these shores, very likely a Vietnamese refugee, can, by reading him begin to imagine that he has some of idiosyncratically American charm of Mark Twain." Earlier in his remarks, Vonnegut explained Twain's "necessary miracle":

... This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of enthusiastic liar, is on an unpredictable adventure. His initial lie, his premise, will suggest many new lies of its own. The storyteller must choose among them, seeking those which are most believable, which keep the arithmetic sound. Thus does a story generate itself.

The wildest adventure with storytelling, with Missouri calculation, of which I know is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was written in this sacredly absurd monument -- as were Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, from which I have quoted, and the world masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn. Twain's most productive years were spent here--from the time he was 39 until he was my age, which, is 56. He was my age when he left here to live in Europe and Redding and New York, his greatest work behind him.

That is haw far down the river of life he was when he left here. He could not afford to live here anymore. He was very bad at business.

About A Connecticut Yankee: its premise, its first lie, seemed to promise a lark. What could more comical than sending back into the Dark Ages one late nineteenth-century optimist and technocrat? Such a premise was surely the key to a treasure chest of screamingly funny jokes and situations. Mark Twain would have been wise to say to himself as he picked that glittering key, "Keep your hat on. We may wind up miles from here."

I will refresh your memories as where he wound up, with or without his hat. The Yankee and his little band of electricians and mechanics and what-have-yous are being attacked by thousands of English warriors armed with swords and spears and axes. The Yankee has fortified his position with a series of electric fences and a moat. He also has several precursors to modern machine guns, which are Gatling guns.

Comically enough, thousands of early attackers have already been electrocuted. Ten thousand of the greatest knights in England have been held in reserve. Now they come. I quote, and I invite you to chuckle along with me as I read:

"The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted,they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, and then they broke, faced about, and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths it and plunged over-to death by drowning.

"Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England! Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us."

End quote.

What a funny ending.

Mark Twain died in 1910, at the age of 75 and four years before the start of World War I. I have heard it said that he predicted that war and all the wars after that in A Connecticut Yankee. It was not Twain who did that. It was his premise.

How appalled this entertainer must have been to have his innocent joking about technology and superstition lead him inexorably to such a ghastly end. Suddenly and horrifyingly, what had seemed so clear throughout the book was not clear at all -- who was good, who was bad, who was wise, who was foolish. I ask you: "Who was most crazed by superstition and bloodlust, the men with the swords or the men with the Gatling guns?"

And I suggest to you that the fatal premise of A Connecticut Yankee remains a chief premise of Western civilization, and increasingly of world civilization, to wit: the sanest, most likable persons, employing superior technology, will enforce sanity throughout the world.

Shall I read the ending of A Connecticut Yankee to you yet again?

No need. ...

"The Best Non-Required Reading" series: fun reading, even in airports

Literary anthologies are meant be be read as randomly as they seem to be presented -- that is, in no order, and certainly with no specific goal in mind other than to pass the time while doing laundry or sitting in the Minneapolis airport waiting for a flight. So it was a surprise to find the 2006 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading (edited by McSweeney's Dave Eggers) arranged with some themes. Section One consisted of a pop-culture "best-of": Headlines from The Onion, first sentences of novels published in 2005, new American band names, things to know about Chuck Norris. Sure, okay, goofy bits and lists are fun reading, but their freshness-dating is pretty limited. I know that Dave won't find it so funny in ten years when Senator Norris's House Un-American Activities hearings catch up to him.

The second section seems more thoughtful, and more selective. By 2006 the initial "shock and awe" of the Iraq war was unraveling into an unending American role; reports from Iraq make up much of the serious material included here. Readers who are interested can read the new Iraqi constitution, along with the unpublished piece "Are Iraqis Optimistic?" by the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based defense contractor whose goal was to give a positive spin on the U.S. occupation. There are short stories by Rick Moody and Haruki Murakami, and David Rakoff's "Love It or Leave It," detailing his efforts to become an American citizen. There's George Saunders' visit to Dubai, "The New Mecca," which originally appeared in GQ, of all places: that one might have gotten away, but I would have missed his entertaining writing on Dubai's Arabian Ice City.

Capturing "the best" of a literary year in print (even its "nonrequired" reading) must be a maddening task, especially now, when the internet seems to be an increasingly attractive source. Eggers is at least upfront about it -- "we also came across a variety of things that didn't fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included," he writes -- fitting the definition of "nonrequired" reading, of course, but much of it "non-essential" as well.

By broadening the scope of the book, Eggers runs the risk of weakening it. That's one of the issues faced by any anthology editor: with so many choices, how do you equate the timely writing of, say, Tom Downey's The Insurgent's Tale and Michael Lewis's return to a slowly-recovering New Orleans, Wading Toward Home, with five scenes from Miranda July's shooting script of Me and You and Everyone We Know? The inclusion of The Best American Things to Know About Hoboes, John Hodgman's overwrought "history" from The Areas of My Expertise, is a pale shadow next to Kurt Vonnegut's Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing:

Now, I don't mean to intimidate you, but after being a chemist as an undergraduate at Cornell, after the war I went to the University of Chicago and studied anthropology, and eventually I took a master's degree in that field. Saul Bellow was in the same department, and neither one of us ever made a field trip.

Although we certainly imagined some. I started going to the library in search of reports about ethnographers, preachers, and explorers -- those imperialists -- to find out what sorts of stories they'd collected from primitive people. It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can't stand primitive people -- they're so stupid. ... Primitive people deserve to lose with their lousy stories.

With his characteristic deadpan humor (and accompanying graphs and charts) Vonnegut then goes on to explain how Shakespeare's Hamlet shares the best features of a primitive mythology: the greatest English dramatist, he concludes, is "as poor a storyteller as any Arapaho." It's his final lesson in the power of storytelling and its charms (from A Man Without a Country), and a real gem. The benefits of a collection like the 2006 book -- Eggers has been the "Nonrequired Reading" series editor since its inception in 2000 -- is that it gives a place to writing that otherwise might be overlooked in the jungle of weekly magazines, monthly glossies, newspapers and literary magazines. (Perhaps it's time for Eggers to edit that next, glorious irony: a yearly compilation, in print, of the best of the internet.) The introduction here is provided by Matt Groening, who certainly had no trouble discerning his own required reading at a very early age:

My obsessive love of reading began before I could read at all. As a wee tyke I remember being entranced by my older brother Mark's 1950s-era Little Lulu, Donald Duck, and Mad comic books."You know how much you like looking at those pictures?" Mark asked me."Well, when you can read the words in the balloons, it's a zillion times funnier."

"The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2006"

Literary anthologies are meant be be read as randomly as they seem to be presented -- that is, in no order, and certainly with no specific goal in mind other than to pass the time while doing laundry or sitting in the Minneapolis airport waiting for a flight. So it was a surprise to find the 2006 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading (edited by McSweeney's Dave Eggers) arranged with some themes. Section One consisted of a pop-culture "best-of": Headlines from The Onion, first sentences of novels published in 2005, new American band names, things to know about Chuck Norris. Sure, okay, goofy bits and lists are fun reading, but their freshness-dating is pretty limited. I know that Dave won't find it so funny in ten years when Senator Norris's House Un-American Activities hearings catch up to him.

The second section seems more thoughtful, and more selective. By 2006 the initial "shock and awe" of the Iraq war was unraveling into an unending American role; reports from Iraq make up much of the serious material included here. Readers who are interested can read the new Iraqi constitution, along with the unpublished piece "Are Iraqis Optimistic?" by the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based defense contractor whose goal was to give a positive spin on the U.S. occupation. There are short stories by Rick Moody and Haruki Murakami, and David Rakoff's "Love It or Leave It," detailing his efforts to become an American citizen. There's George Saunders' visit to Dubai, "The New Mecca," which originally appeared in GQ, of all places: that one might have gotten away, but I would have missed his entertaining writing on Dubai's Arabian Ice City.

Capturing "the best" of a literary year in print (even its "nonrequired" reading) must be a maddening task, especially now, when the internet seems to be an increasingly attractive source. Eggers is at least upfront about it -- "we also came across a variety of things that didn't fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included," he writes -- fitting the definition of "nonrequired" reading, of course, but much of it "non-essential" as well.

By broadening the scope of the book, Eggers runs the risk of weakening it. That's one of the issues faced by any anthology editor: with so many choices, how do you equate the timely writing of, say, Tom Downey's The Insurgent's Tale and Michael Lewis's return to a slowly-recovering New Orleans, Wading Toward Home, with five scenes from Miranda July's shooting script of Me and You and Everyone We Know? The inclusion of The Best American Things to Know About Hoboes, John Hodgman's overwrought "history" from The Areas of My Expertise, is a pale shadow next to Kurt Vonnegut's Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing:

Now, I don't mean to intimidate you, but after being a chemist as an undergraduate at Cornell, after the war I went to the University of Chicago and studied anthropology, and eventually I took a master's degree in that field. Saul Bellow was in the same department, and neither one of us ever made a field trip.

Although we certainly imagined some. I started going to the library in search of reports about ethnographers, preachers, and explorers -- those imperialists -- to find out what sorts of stories they'd collected from primitive people. It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can't stand primitive people -- they're so stupid. ... Primitive people deserve to lose with their lousy stories.

With his characteristic deadpan humor (and accompanying graphs and charts) Vonnegut then goes on to explain how Shakespeare's Hamlet shares the best features of a primitive mythology: the greatest English dramatist, he concludes, is "as poor a storyteller as any Arapaho." It's his final lesson in the power of storytelling and its charms (from A Man Without a Country), and a real gem. The benefits of a collection like the 2006 book -- Eggers has been the "Nonrequired Reading" series editor since its inception in 2000 -- is that it gives a place to writing that otherwise might be overlooked in the jungle of weekly magazines, monthly glossies, newspapers and literary magazines. (Perhaps it's time for Eggers to edit that next, glorious irony: a yearly compilation, in print, of the best of the internet.) The introduction here is provided by Matt Groening, who certainly had no trouble discerning his own required reading at a very early age:

My obsessive love of reading began before I could read at all. As a wee tyke I remember being entranced by my older brother Mark's 1950s-era Little Lulu, Donald Duck, and Mad comic books."You know how much you like looking at those pictures?" Mark asked me."Well, when you can read the words in the balloons, it's a zillion times funnier."