Re: He shall Purify the sons of Eli...

Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:10:35 -0800 (PST) 

>
>> piece of writing.  Gimmicks are always gimmicks, but it is a writer's
>> job to find the Best way to tell a story.  The reader will know if 
it's
>> a gimmick or not.  In Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut didn't *need* to
>> write certain things in his own handwriting to conceal the ineptness 
of
>> his writing, but he did because it helped create the atmosphere of a
>> WWII prisoner camp outhouse where all the Americans puked like pigs
>> while the Brits and Germans looked on, disgusted.
>
>Vonnegut + Slaughterhouse-Five = inept writing?  I'm sure I must have
>missed something in this logical train of thought, because this is 
perhaps
>Vonnegut's most emotionallly wrenching novel.  There's not a day that
>passes when I don't see an echo of his story in my daily life (getting
>crushed into a subway train, feeling that I'm occasionally the victim 
of
>random circumstances, even imagining how to talk to a Tralfamadorian!).
>
>--tim





After my post above came right back to me, I realized that the 
ineptitude (I don't even know if that's a word) of my own writing 
construed the wrong message.  Nononono, I think Vonnegut is one of the 
best writers of his generation--or of any.  And Slaughterhouse Five is 
the cream of his crop, if you'll allow.  What I MEANT was that 
Vonnegut's rather unprosaic use of prose was not an attempt to cover up 
bad writing, although other writers use gimmicks in order to cover up 
*their* bad writing.  

I think Vonnegut was quite the opposite of inept (ept?), so much so that 
I feel stupid saying it.  As if I saw Jesus healing the blind beggar in 
Jericho and I said, "Hey, you're not a bad guy."  Your misunderstanding 
was due to my poorly constructed sentence and your lack of clairvoyance, 
or perhaps your absence of will to use your clairvoyance to determine my 
obscure intentions.

Apologies.
Brendan

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