Kurt Vonnegut at Ohio State - 1 March, 2006.

The line started at the doors to the Ohio Union Ballroom, the largest open space in the student union of the second-largest public university in the united states. It stretched across the first floor of the union, then wound its way up the stairs to the second and third floor. It continued across the third floor until it reached the stairs at the other end, and the proceeded down the stairs back to the first floor and then out the door. From there, it went down to the street, past the bus stop, through some bushes and ended, I'm told, somewhere on the far side of the parking garage. When the doors opened at 6:30, it took almost an hour to finally seat everyone. Many had to be turned away, since the Ohio Union Ballroom wasn't quite large enough.

At 7:07, one of the tech guys came out and asked everyone to please move into any open seats in the middle of their rows. His request was followed by spontaneous applause from the excited crowd, while my mind worked furiously to figure out how, exactly, to provide you with photographs of the event without actually having brought a camera. (A problem I'm still working on, but bear with me!)

It was around 7:30 that the man himself finally came on stage, joined by a moderator from the OSU English faculty. I sat there, in the third row, and found myself caught between trying to type up every word spoken and trying not to annoy the eager fans around me. The result is that while I caught the gist of what was said, I can't provide you with a transcript – so I'm going to instead give you a lot of quotes, and I'll try to construct a context around them.

The conversation started with politics. Vonnegut first asked what he was allowed to say – "How dirty," he asked, "Are we allowed to talk?" The moderator gave him a bemused grin and told him it was an adult audience. "I know," replied Vonnegut, "But I suspect that there are some young ladies here away from home for the first time, so let me try it out on you." He stood up, walked over the moderator, and whispered something into his ear. "I think that'll be ok," was the reply. Vonnegut smiled, returned to his seat.

"George Bush is so stupid, he thinks Peter Pan is a washboard in a brothel."

I'll admit I didn't get it, but I appreciated the sentiment. If anyone understands that joke, please explain it to me.

The moderator chuckled and said he'd like to continue the discourse in that direction. "What," he asked, "is wrong with this country?"

Vonnegut turned serious, and said:

The reason so many people want to come to America is that the payoff for crime is bigger than anywhere else in the world. What other people call embezzling we call executive compensation; fraud= public relations. The biggest cash cow is a casino named wall street. But the big payoff is war. You know, the treasury just gets empty and money gets thrown in the direction of people who ride the government. Vietnam made millionaires into billionaires. And now the iraq was is going to make bil into tril. Bush says "I am a war president" as though was was something beautiful. That's like saying "I'm the syphilis president."

The moderator asks, "It's disturbing, but you write that George Bush has made this country – or at least the American people - appear to be war loving. What can we as individuals do about that?

"Look, the neocons say 'we gave you free speech, say what you want.' That's cuz no matter what we say it makes no difference. All the protests against Iraq, by decent middle class people, was not covered by the press. We have created a small class of people actually richer than some nations.

This is about the point that Mr. Vonnegut realized that no matter what he said, the crowd loved him and would cheer.

"I can say anything I want tonight, can't I? What the hell? I wish someone would give the president a blowjob, so we can finally get rid of him."

The tone of the discussion turned serious. For all his humor, Kurt Vonnegut is a truly somber, even depressing, individual. He quoted Camus – "Life is so absurd that the only real choice we have is to either commit suicide or go on being absurd." He said that he had been asked about his topic for the evening, and that he had told the interviewer

"I'm gonna talk about trying to write a novel about the end of the world while the world is really ending."

Vonnegut lamented the way humans have treated the environment ("Disgraceful!") When asked about Bush's recent claim that "America is addicted to oil," Vonnegut's reply was

"I said that – I'm going to sue him for perjury! Er, I mean, plagiarism! …I wish I could sue him for perjury…""

The moderator asked if he could read one of Mr. Vonnegut's poems, but Vonnegut said not to bother – that he would recite it from memory.

"The crucified planet earth,
Should it find a voice and a sense of irony,
Might now well say of our abuse of it
'Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.'
The irony would be that we know what we're doing.
And when the last living thing has died on account of us,
How shapely it would be, how poetical,
If the Earth could say in a voice floating up,
Perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon,
'It is done.'"

The moderator said, "It was very moving, very somber."

Vonnegut's response –

"I cried! You know, I have always said that life is no way to treat an animal."

This is where my transcript gets sketchy – Vonnegut said that "People are in actual revolt against life itself." By this, he explained, he means that people by nature love pleasure and hate pain – but the vast majority of humanity really doesn't have a lot of fun, doesn't get that much pleasure. It's no wonder, then, that there are people willing to blow themselves up in crowded marketplaces – they are in revolt against life.

Human history, he said, is a story of people not having fun – life is suffering.

"I think the automobile is the first fun humanity has ever had. Is it any wonder we got addicted to oil?"

The moderator is at this point kind of aghast at the really despairing tone. "Well," he asks, "what is there to look forward to, then?"

"Well, I'm gonna have a manhattan tonight."

Nervous laughs around the room as the audience can't decide whether to be amused or terrified at Vonnegut's worldview.

"As the world is ending I'm always glad to be entertained for a few minutes. Music helps a lot. Practice an art – practice one tonight. And I mean dance, sing, draw a picture. It'll help. I have an old joke I tell - if you really want to hurt your parents but you don't have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts! The joke is, that Arts aren't really seen as a way to make a living. But the arts aren't supposed to be a way of making a living – they are a way of becoming! They make your soul grow!"

Lots of applause.

Vonnegut says, "I sing a lot. Badly." He proceeds to sing. Badly.

The moderator sits there with his mouth open. "I'm at a loss," he finally says.

"Then dance!" urges Vonnegut. The moderator sits there for a moment, unsure whether or not Kurt is being serious. The crowd starts yelling "Dance! Dance!" and Mr Vonnegut looks at him encouragingly. So, he stands up and dances. Badly. ;)

Vonnegut continues:

"Everyone is worried about what computers can do next year – how about, worry about what you can become next year. And you keep becoming and becoming and becoming. One reason to draw or write or dance is to find out what's inside of you. To hell with what's in your computer! So do become, and do draw badly. …Just don't kill anybody."

The moderator asks, "Many people here at Ohio State are at a loss as to what to do after college. The economy isn't doing so well, there aren't a lot of jobs – what advice do you have?"

"As I say, the world is ending – I dunno what the hell they should do. We'll have to ask the Native Americans what the hell THEY did when they lost everything."

The moderator asks, "You talk about the arts, etc – doesn't that suggest that one answer is a personal revolution?"

"I have said we should be kind to one another. Just be civil, you don't even have to be kind."

Mr. Vonnegut then goes on to tell the story from Timequake about his uncle – the short summary is, his Uncle never understood why people always noticed when they were having a bad time, but never noticed when they were having a good time. As a reaction against this, his uncle would frequently stop – perhaps with a glass of lemonade on a sunny day – and say, out loud, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Recognize it when you're happy, and say it. I got a letter from a guy the other day, he says he says it during sexual intercourse.

Then Kurt Vonnegut said something that surprised me and most of the other people in the room. He said that the very first time he had ever spoken on a college campus for money was here at Ohio State, many years ago. And he said that this evening was the very last such speech he would ever do. It was oddly touching and somehow terribly sad to hear this bit of news.

"And by the way," he said, to lighten the suddenly somber mood:

You can feel safe from terrorists because I took my shoes off at the airport. If there's one thing terrorists can't stand it's the smell of feet. If this isn't nice, I dunno what is.

"You have put forth, in your books, the idea that we are here on earth to fart around. What do you mean by that? How do you yourself fart around?"

I run errands. I write letters, go to the mailbox, buy stamps. I don't use email and I have no answering machine, all of my communication is through letters. So I run out to buy an envelope and a stamp, I run into people, say hi. If a fire engine goes by, I give it a thumbs up – I never get tired of fire engines. We are here on earth to fart around.

Sometimes I'll be getting ready to go out and my wife will ask"Where are you going?" I say, "To buy an envelope!" She says, "Kurt, you are not a poor man. Why don't you buy 100 envelopes, and put them in your closet?" I pretend not to hear her.

I welcome the approach of the end of the world because we'll start farting around. No more electricity. Just bumping into people. [Randomly, to a girl in the crowd:] Hey, I think you're cute!

The moderator asks him about an idea from his book, God Bless You Dr Kevorkian. In the book, when you die you go to heaven and you get to choose to be the age at which you were happiest in life. "What age," he asks, "Would you choose to be?"

44. 44 is a good age for a man, people finally start to take you seriously. My dad, as I wrote in the book, was happiest at 8.

I'm going to call for show of hands: how many of you in the course of education have had teachers who made you happier, prouder to be alive than you had previously believed possible?

Many in the room raise their hands. Some do not.

Say the name of that person to the person next to you.

Murmurs. Applause.

Wasn't that nice, what you just did? I say JC Bean. I won't talk about him.

The hour is winding down. The moderator says he'd like to ask a few student-submitted questions, and Vonnegut agrees.

A creative writing student asks: "Should writers maintain a social consciousness in order to be great?"

You should maintain a social consciousness in order to be alive!

If you want a lesson in creative writing, here is a brief one: Do not use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. All they do is suggest you went to college. I'll be reading something and it's going along fine with periods and colons and commas, and all of a sudden there's this goddamn semicolon, and everything stops. I'm wondering, what the hell am I supposed to do with this thing? So don't use them.

Also, since we're on the subject of creative writing, the best short story ever written was "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Please read it if you haven't.

Next student question. There was a lot in front of this, but the gist of the question was "Can humans truly learn and forgive?"

Well, war is like what George Bernard Shaw said about marriage. … … I can't remember what Shaw said about marriage. But! I do remember a great line from Susan Sontag. She said that 10% of any population is cruel no matter what. 10% is merciful. The middle 80% can be pulled in either direction. So yes, people can be pulled that way.

I've been asked, I'm 83, what's the biggest change I've seen in my life. Well, Jesus used to be merciful and loving of the poor, but now he's a Republican.

I lived through the Great Depression. It was almost hopeless for white people, so I was always worried about how terrible it must have been for the black people. I asked my uncle, the same one who said "If this isn't nice I don't know what is," and he told me something great. "The poor," he said, "take care of the poor."

Activism is nice, but you can't become a political force because we have no representation in Washington. But this is a good day, tomorrow may be one too – be grateful for good days, and say if this isn't nice I dunno what is.

You say a saint is someone who acts decently in indecent times.

I got a letter from a woman, says she was about to have a baby. It was not mine. She said wasn't it a shame to bring an innocent baby into this world? I said what makes life worth living for me are the saints I meet.

Be respectful, be kind. God damn it, be kind. Maybe someone in this room can be a saint one day for that woman's baby.

You keep saying "this is the last book," but you keep writing new ones. Why?

Well, I still have a family and they still need money. I've always said I hate living this long, and I'm gonna sue the cigarette companies because they haven't killed me yet. I'm embarrassed to have lived this long, and I wish I could go home. Home is Indiana, when I was 9. But I can't, so I just keep going. I write short stuff now.

The room once again falls into a somber silence, so Vonnegut offers to recite another poem.

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!

The last question – "What do you want the legacy of your work to be?"

I haven't really thought about it. I feel like a person possessed. I dunno how or why the hell I did it.

There's a story I tell. I had this old structure in my backyard, and it was old and rotten and filled with termites, so I tore it down. I asked a friend of mine to build me a new one, just like. I watched him come every day, he laid the foundation, he took measurements, put up walls, put in windows. One day, he came in the house and said "Hey Kurt, come out here a second." He led me out back, and there it was, complete. We stood back, about 20 feet back from it. He looked at me and said "How did I do that?"

That's how I feel about my life, and that's how I hope you may all feel about your lives. I hope we're all possessed.

The applause was thunderous and seemed never to end. It was a very emotional experience for me, right at the very end – this old man, receiving a standing ovation from a crowd too big to see all at once. He stood, on the stage, a grin on his face, and clapped a few times. I had thought the event went well, but it was this final moment that was worth more to me than the rest of it combined – I suddenly felt the weight of every word he'd ever written (I've read them all), and I realized just how much this man had given me. He slowly, with his cane, turned and walked off-stage. I felt like I was watching a friend passing away – I'm honored to have been able to see him.

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Notice: Photographs courtesy of August E. Brunsman IV, who was nice enough to send me some snapshots. Thanks a lot, August! Let me know if you want me to post your email address here as well.

Notice 2: Anyone who makes fun of my sweater in the shot of me in front of the audience will have to answer to my mother, who gave me that sweater for Christmas and I wear it proudly. Anyone who makes fun of my rather goofy pose is excused, as it is indeed rather goofy. Especially in that sweater, which causes my arms to sort of blend into my torso. But I still have my hat. :)

Notice 3: Special thanks to Greg Hoke, who points out that there is another summary of this event to be found here. It catches a few points I had missed, but I can tell you that his quotes aren't 100% accurate. Still, a good read for anyone interested in the subject.

Notice 4: I had this down as "other" but I'm changing it to News Event, cuz it was. So be it.