11.11.03
gilgongo!
Happy Birthday to Kurt Vonnegut, whose books were once considered science fiction.
I met the man once, at a book signing. He looked miserable, perhaps at the fact that people were treating him like a zoo animal, talking about him as though he weren't two feet away. Friendly, though. I was a kid of 14 or 15, had brought a bunch of books for him to sign, including Venus on the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout, which I had assumed he'd written.
He said "I didn't write this. It was written by my friend Philip Jose' Farmer. I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?"
I answered in the affirmative, said I'd read and liked Farmer's books. He signed the book anyway, inscribing it with "Not Mine" followed by his autograph, including the asterisk (see above), which readers of Breakfast of Champions will recognize as a drawing of an asshole.
And so on.
Hi ho.
Actually... an asterisk following characters' names in "Galápagos" signaled that the starred character would die before the end of the novel. Still, it's probably a drawing of an asshole, but who knows?
Posted by: Josh at 13.11.03 23:15I saw Vonnegut at a lecture he gave at Florida International University in 1987. He declined a request to sign books, saying, "Too often it becomes a matter of physical prowess."
Posted by: Rick still at 14.11.03 16:09Josh- I either can't find or no longer have a copy of BOC, but I swear I remember a drawing that Vonnegut specifically said was a drawing of an asshole. Possibly It's actually in another book? Maybe someone out there can verify or rule this out...
Posted by: monk at 17.11.03 10:14i knew this jacklord in rochester ny who had the word "golgingo" erroneously publicized on the hind panel of his 1980 datsun...when questioned as to what exactly it meant he said "like, you know..from that carl vonnegut book 'lunch of runners up' or something grahgrah...the whole world ends and then there's the ice 8 and yada yada...
Posted by: w. hoobler at 17.11.03 20:59