Vonnegut's Name Proposed for 48th and Second Avenue

by Annie Karne
From:The New York Sun
Kurt Vonnegut's name could soon be attached permanently to the Manhattan block where he spent most of his writing career.

Community Board 6 last week voted to rename the corner of East 48th Street and Second Avenue after one of its most famous writers ( E.B. White, who for decades resided on the same street, competes for the title).

Vonnegut, who for 40 years lived on East 48th Street near Second Avenue, was a community icon, according to neighborhood residents. Vonnegut was often seen walking his dog in Dag Hammarskjold Park near the United Nations and sitting on the stoop of his townhouse, thinking, smoking, and nodding to passersby. He and his wife, photographer Jill Krementz, had a second home in Sagaponack, Long Island, but spent most of their days in Manhattan.

"Mostly I remember he'd be sitting on his bench in Dag Hammarskjold Park," the vice president of the Turtle Bay Association, Millie Margiotta, said. "Not always reading, just sitting. People would see him on the steps in front of his building or in front of Sterling Plaza, usually with his dog, Flour, or smoking."

The City Council later this month will consider an omnibus bill of 50 street co-namings, with attempts to honor such nonhousehold names as Robert Breen, Ruth Poindexter, and Daniela Notaro. Manhattan's East Side community boards, however, have sought over the years to make the street-naming honor more exclusive and to limit the number of names they send to the council to sign into law.



Vonnegut's many famous novels, such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle" — staple volumes for many Americans who have come of age since the 1970s — and his bond with the community make him exactly the right kind of candidate for the street-naming honor, members of Community Board 6 said.

To have a serious shot at being memorialized on a city street, nominees on the East Side must have made a lasting contribution to "the intellectual vitality of the community or the nation." They must also have shown a "significant affiliation" to the community that would display their names.

Kurt Vonnegut Way was a "no-brainer," board members said, and was almost unanimously approved. (The two board members who voted in opposition, according to the committee chairman, voted to express concern over the possibility of an "inappropriate" candidate coming before the board in the future.)

The board, which represents the East Side of Midtown and portions of the Upper East Side, has in recent years approved for renaming only Katharine Hepburn Way, on East 49th Street, and Jan Karski Way, at the corner of 37th Street and Madison Avenue near the Polish Embassy, in memory of the World War II Polish resistance fighter.

"There used to be a habit that we'd just name something after anyone who sneezed," the chairman of Community Board 6's transportation committee, Lou Sepersky said. The casualness of the process, according to Mr. Sepersky, cheapened the honor of being memorialized on a green placard beneath a city street sign.

Vonnegut, the author of 14 novels as well as plays and essays, died on April 11 at age 84 after suffering brain injuries from a fall a few weeks earlier. His widow, Ms. Krementz, requested the street co-naming for her husband through the Turtle Bay Association. Ms. Krementz and the Turtle Bay Association are also seeking to have Vonnegut's favorite bench in Dag Hammarskjold Park named in his honor.




The council would consider approving Kurt Vonnegut Way in October if council Member Daniel Garodnick, who represents the neighborhood, brings the street renaming request before the council's Parks Committee.

"It's something I'll take a look at and give some careful thought to," Mr. Garodnick said yesterday, although he said he had not yet seen the board's resolution.
While the council usually approves the names sent by community boards, there is sometimes opposition. Speaker Christine Quinn has been blocking the renaming of a four-block stretch of Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant after the radical black activist Sonny Carson. The council now is expected to address the Sonny Carson renaming issue in a separate vote from the other street names.

John Irving Remembers Kurt Vonnegut

When author Kurt Vonnegut died last week at the age of 84, the first person EW rang was Vonnegut's longtime friend John Irving, who was Vonnegut's student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in the mid-'60s. Irving — the writer of The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year — was in a reflective mood, so we just listened as he talked at length about his sad and funny friend. If you like good Kurt Vonnegut stories, read on.

JOHN IRVING: ''I met him in '65, and I was in the Workshop from '65 to '67. I spent the lion's share of my time at Iowa with Kurt, and we've been close friends ever since. The only criticism he ever made of my writing was making fun of my fondness for semicolons, which Kurt never liked very much. He called semicolons ''transvestite hermaphrodites.'' [Laughs] And so whenever we had a correspondence I would try to write him a letter that was one sentence connected by an infinite number of semicolons. [Laughs] But he was a great guy, and a particularly important influence on me at a young time, because I certainly knew from reading Dickens that you could break the rules in terms of putting comedy and tragedy in the same story or even the same scene. But Vonnegut was such a flaunting example of that in contemporary terms. He could write the most condemning stuff about human nature while being both funny and kind.

''I watched the Six-Day War in Vonnegut's kitchen in Iowa City. My now-eldest son Colin was then two years old, and Kurt didn't have any kids that age, so there weren't any toys around for Colin. Kurt and I were trying to watch the war, but it's tough to watch a war with a two-year-old. So Kurt got the idea that if we took all the pans and pots out of the kitchen cabinet, and gave Colin a couple of wooden spoons, then he could entertain himself, and we would have the appropriate background music for watching a war. And so that's what we did. We gave Colin two wooden spoons, and all the pots and pans in Vonnegut's kitchen, and turned up the volume.

''Kurt was a troubled guy. He had issues and episodes with depression — his mother had killed herself. I think the thought of suicide was one he held at bay, and the issue of depression was one he lived with, often by laughing at it. He was notorious for sort of being the most entertaining person at a dinner party until he abruptly got up and went home. And you kind of expected that from him. I was a neighbor of his for a number of years when I lived in Long Island — my year-round house was around the corner from Kurt's summer house — and I would often come down to make coffee in the morning and find him sitting on the porch of my house smoking a cigarette. And he always said, 'Oh, I just got here, and I just wondered if you were up,' and he'd come in, and we'd have a cup of coffee, and he'd leave, and he'd say 'Well, I'll let you get to work.' And then my kids would go outside and count the number of cigarette butts on the lawn, and by that we could come up with a fair estimation of how long he'd really been sitting there, waiting for someone to get up and make some coffee. His eccentricities were real.



''I once half-killed him in a New York restaurant, imagining at the time I was saving his life. At dinner he started to cough and hack in a terrible way, and he got up from the table, and I swore he was choking to death. I got my hands around his hips, but you can't really Heimlich somebody properly when you're only five foot six-and-a-half, which I am standing on my toes, and he's a good six-two or -three. So I had no alternative but to knock him down on all fours and pound him from behind. And this is right in the middle of a pretty busy restaurant! I could imagine what people must've been thinking — 'Crazy writers! Can't they keep it at home or something?' But I just hammered away on him down on the restaurant floor. And finally he was able to get his breath and say something, and he said, 'John! I'm not choking, I have emphysema!' [Laughs] That was the first I'd ever heard of it! [Laughs] This was back in the '80s. I mean, if anybody was gonna get emphysema, it would've been Kurt with those nonstop Pall Malls over the years, but I didn't know it at the time.

''He was a generous, generous friend. You'd always worry about him, how he was doing. If there was a message on your answering machine, you always thought, 'Uh-oh, is he in trouble? Does he need to talk to somebody?' And then you'd call, and it'd just be that he'd thought of something funny he wanted to tell you. Ten years ago, a package arrived from Kurt, and it didn't look like a book or anything. I opened it, and it was a very ugly, soiled, sweat-stained golf cap, an old man's kind of cap, something I would never wear, really grubby. And I thought, 'What could this thing be? It's disgusting!' And the note — which was a classic — said, 'Dear John, This hat once belonged to Billy Wilder. He gave it to Saul Steinberg. Saul gave it to me. I give it to you. Keep it going. Cheers, Kurt.' Well, I was terrified. I thought, 'What has happened in his life that has made him clean his house and decide to send such things on?' I thought it was like getting a suicide note or something. [Laughs] So I called him on the phone and said, 'Are you all right?' And he said, 'Of course, I'm all right!' And I said, 'Well, you sent me Billy Wilder's hat,' and he said, 'Well, who would want that around for much longer?' [Long Laugh] So with Kurt, you never quite knew what you were gonna get.''

''He was one of the very few and very select father figures in my life. There were a couple of wrestling coaches, a couple of English teachers, and Kurt. That was it. I just feel lucky that our paths crossed, because he gave me a lot of encouragement at a time when I was vulnerable and insecure enough to need it. He was a gentleman of the old school, but at the same time he had a warmth that was really childlike. He was a very loyal and sentimental friend. And everybody who knew him is gonna miss him.''

Irving — whose most recent novel, Until I Find You, came out in 2005 — adds that he's currently ''off to a good start on Novel Number 12.'' Its main character is a cook.

Vonnegut leaves them laughing

by Jacqueline Blais, ( USA Today)

The town of Indianapolis can't celebrate its native son Kurt Vonnegut enough.

The Year of Vonnegut touches on the late writer's contributions — and that of his German-American ancestors — including a town-wide reading of his anti-war classic, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Vonnegut could have scripted the centerpiece event himself: a smart crowd in his hometown, listening to a speech he wrote. He died before he was able to deliver it, so it was given posthumously by his son.

"We will get through this. There will be no crying. If I cry, you will politely not notice," said Mark Vonnegut Friday at Butler University.

Vonnegut finished writing the speech on Feb. 27, weeks before his death on April 11 at age 84. The lecture opened just as Vonnegut planned: no introduction, but a tape recording, set to music, of a reading from Slaughterhouse-Five.

The speech, as Mark Vonnegut said, ricocheted from topic to topic, going to all kinds of places unexpectedly, yet it was knit together seamlessly. Here is a taste of what he had to say:

•"I think we can come up with a statement on which all Americans, Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, straight or gay, can agree, despite our country being so tragically and ferociously divided. The first universal American sentiment I came up with was: 'Sugar is sweet.' "


•"But seriously, my fellow Hoosiers, there is good news and bad news tonight. This is the best of times and the worst of times. So what else is new? The bad news is that the Martians have landed in Manhattan and have checked in at the Waldorf-Astoria. The good news is they only eat homeless people of all colors, and they pee gasoline."

•"We humanists behave as well we can, without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We don't fear death, and neither should you. You know what Socrates said about death — in Greek, of course? 'Death is just one more night.' "

•"The most spiritually splendid American phenomenon of my lifetime is how African-American citizens have maintained their dignity and self-respect, despite their having been treated by white Americans, both in and out of government, and simply because of their color, as though they were contemptible and loathsome, and even diseased."

•"But listen: If anyone here should wind up in a gurney, in a lethal-injection facility, maybe the one in Terre Haute, here is what your last words should be: 'This will certainly teach me a lesson.' "



He also wrote of attending Indianapolis public schools, saying the teachers were "celebrities" — and students, including him, would report to them long after graduation.

He called anyone who borrows a book instead of buying one a "twerp."

He would advise people to be kind, help each other, tell jokes and get a dog.

Some people call Vonnegut the Mark Twain of our day. But if he could have his way, he'd also be known by the nickname given to writer Booth Tarkington, also a native son: "The gentleman from Indiana."

The last line of his speech: "And I thank you for your attention and I'm out of here."

Honors were showered on him, including the city's first Kurt Vonnegut Award for Literature, celebrating writing that "uniquely defines the human condition," said Chris Cairo, who presented it to Mark Vonnegut on Friday.

Mayor Bart Peterson presented a proclamation to Vonnegut's widow, Jill Krementz, naming Friday Kurt Vonnegut Day in Indianapolis. In an aside that brought the house down, Peterson noted: "Jill, we have a semicolon here. Did anyone bring white-out?"

Semicolons, as fans know, are a showoff punctuation that Vonnegut would banish from writing.

After Vonnegut finished the speech, he sent his son a letter that began: "If I should die, God forbid …" It gave directions for a memorial service: no church, no big gathering, invitation only.

The songs selected were I'll Fly Away, Down by the Riverside, and Amazing Grace— "that was about as much religion as Kurt could tolerate," said Mark Vonnegut.

He shared that his father could sight-translate Latin and would recite Chaucer while his children were banging on pots and pans for background music.

At a ceremony Saturday for the new Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library's new Central Library, a signed first edition of Slaughterhouse-Five (the One Book, One City selection) was the only book included in a time capsule to be opened in 2057.

The Indianapolis Maennerchor sang This Is My Country, Back Home in Indiana (a song Vonnegut would play on piano) and the Gettysburg Address set to music (fitting because Lincoln was a hero to Vonnegut).

These words from the Gettysburg Address took on a particular resonance: "It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion."

NOW Interview (October 7, 2005)

courtesey of pbs.

Kurt Vonnegut's 'Sirens Of Titan' Being Adapted For Big Screen

Kurt Vonnegut's 'Sirens Of Titan' Being Adapted For Big Screen
by Shawn Adler


Writer James V. Hart reveals details of script, which late novelist collaborated on.

In speeches and books written during the last years of his life, novelist Kurt Vonnegut urged people to appreciate the simple pleasures in life by exclaiming, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
Now fans of the recently deceased satirist have new reason to crow that phrase: His second novel, "The Sirens of Titan," has been adapted for the big screen, screenwriter James V. Hart told MTV News exclusively

" 'Sirens of Titan' was the gem in Kurt's little box, the one that he put it all out there on, his first real breakthrough. If Kurt's legacy is going to be represented, it's got to be done right," Hart said of the novel he is adapting with his son Jake. " 'Titan' was important enough to him where he is sharing screenplay credit with us. Jake had just typed the end on it. We were going to hand it to Kurt together."

"Sirens of Titan" follows Malachi Constant, the richest and luckiest man in the 22nd century, whose bizarre and seemingly random journeys take him from Earth to Mars to Mercury, and finally to the Saturn moon of Titan — where he learns a painful and absurd truth about the history of humanity.

" 'Sirens of Titan' is the story of the entire history of mankind on this planet being reduced. [Malachi learns] its whole purpose was for a one-word statement on a message being transferred across the galaxy from one civilization to another," Hart said of the novel's plot. "Earth just happened to be in the place where an alien broke down. It used all the history of mankind — wars, monuments, architecture, Stonehenge — to communicate this single-word message."

The ambitious story of thwarted free will and extraterrestrial manipulation resonated with Hart because of its particularly Vonnegutian perspective, he said.

"I thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever read. For me, it just reduced our entire meaning to an infinitesimal, tiny speck of an atom," he remarked. "It was such a strong, powerful message to put us in our place, show us how important we're not."

"I was a victim of a series of accidents," Vonnegut has a character say in the novel. "As are we all." It's a quote that could just as equally describe how Hart and his son got their hands on the screenplay. For many years, the rights were owned by Jerry Garcia (yes, that Jerry Garcia) before Vonnegut himself granted the option to "Curb Your Enthusiasm" producer Robert B. Weide. After several years, the story's rights were optioned again.

"I was pursuing the rights to 'Sirens of Titan,' which was my favorite, [but] the rights had always been owned or tied up somewhere. We just cracked it," Hart said. "Kurt was my hero. For years, you try to get to a place in your career where you can say, 'Now I can do Kurt Vonnegut.' "

Having previously worked with Carl Sagan on an adaptation of "Contact," Hart was insistent Vonnegut have a hand in the script's early development, a role he said the author approached with typical intelligence and humanity.

"Kurt was sharp as a tack and giving us solutions to problems in the book. He couldn't have been nicer. It was so collaborative," Hart recalled. "He basically said, 'I wrote the book, you go make the movie.' "

Hart particularly treasured Vonnegut's attitude, he said, because of how much the author's kindness meant to his son Jake, a co-screenwriter on the project. The father-and-son team is also writing a film adaptation of Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle." "At the end of the day, Kurt said, 'You know, Jim, I like you OK, but I want to marry Jake.' It made [my son's] life at this point."

It was a gentleness and generosity that Jake hoped to repay, Hart said, with an ending to "Sirens" that is meant to honor Kurt. (If you'd like to be kept in the dark about the script's ending, which differs from the book's, don't read on.)

"Jake wrote an ending to 'Sirens of Titan' that was a tribute to Kurt. It involves a little boy coming over to a bench where Constant is frozen to death, and in Malachi's arms is a book he wrote on Titan which is the key to the knowledge of the universe," Hart said of the scene, describing how it strikes a Vonnegut-inspired tone of hope for humanity amid loneliness and despair. "It really embodies everything that Kurt was about to my son."