September blues
Over the summer I reread Charles Dicken's novel and was again impressed. I knew all the spoilers, but still enjoyed every minute of it. I had fun watching Pip grow up into his expectations. I even thought about the ending and which ending is the better. There is the original ending and then there is the ending the publisher pushed Dickens to write. The original was more open ended and left things up to the imagination, but it wasn't published. The ending that was published felt award compared to the one that was written first. Anyway Dickens agreed with going the second ending.
My son saw me reading and made fun of me and asking, "Can't you enjoy any American writers?" I told him that if anyone today could write half as well as Kurt Vonnegut then I would read it. I think @dpend still has a lot of potential for writing and enjoyed some of his vexatious poetry and prose here on Hive.
Challenge
Just a year before Vonnegut died he replied to a letter written to him from a high school student. That reply is here:
November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut
Let's try one of those rhymed six liners now.
Oh, I've got to tear it up tiny-weeny pieces, but I go posting it on a block chain.
Why do I never learn?
Wanting what wasn't mine
I stray as I progress
Is that envy or repine?
In the armchair he regrets
Can there be a beauty so fine
A heart finds no rest nonetheless
Anyway, that's as close as I could get to ripping up my poem. I agreed to read Jane Eyre next. Still not American and definitely not 20th century, but I enjoy reading the book.
With Love,