Slapstick; Or Laughterhouse-Five: Vonnegut and Swift Misperceived
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My Wonderful World of Slapstick
THE THIS BOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF Georgia State Bo»r* of Education AN. PR,CLAun\;v eSupt of School* 150576 DECATUR -DeKALB LIBRARY REGIONAI SERVICE ROCKDALE COUNTY NEWTON COUNTY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Media History Digital Library http://archive.org/details/mywonderfulworldOObust MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK MY WO/VDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK BUSTER KEATON WITH CHARLES SAMUELS 150576 DOVBLEW& COMPANY, lNC.,<k*D£H C(TYt HlW Yo*K DECATUR - DeKALB LIBRARY REGiOMA! $&KZ ROCKDALE COUNTY NEWTON COUNTY Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-5934 Copyright © i960 by Buster Keaton and Charles Samuels All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition J 6>o For Eleanor 1. THE THREE KEATONS 9 2. I BECOME A SOCIAL ISSUE 29 3. THE KEATONS INVADE ENGLAND 49 4. BACK HOME AGAIN IN GOD'S COUNTRY 65 5. ONE WAY TO GET INTO THE MOVIES 85 6. WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS 107 7. BOFFOS BY MAN AND BEAST 123 8. THE DAY THE LAUGHTER STOPPED 145 9. MARRIAGE AND PROSPERITY SNEAK UP ON ME 163 10. MY $300,000 HOME AND SOME OTHER SEMI-TRIUMPHS 179 11. THE WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE 199 12. THE TALKIE REVOLUTION 217 13. THE CHAPTER I HATE TO WRITE 233 14. A PRATFALL CAN BE A BEAUTIFUL THING 249 15. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 267 THE THREE KeAtOnS Down through the years my face has been called a sour puss, a dead pan, a frozen face, The Great Stone Face, and, believe it or not, "a tragic mask." On the other hand that kindly critic, the late James Agee, described my face as ranking "almost with Lin- coln's as an early American archetype, it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful." I cant imagine what the great rail splitter's reaction would have been to this, though I sure was pleased. -
A Discourse of Redemption in Three of Kurt Vonnegut's Novels
Tutton Parker 1 What’s in the Potato Barn: A Discourse of Redemption in Three of Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of the College of Arts and Science in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts and English By Rebecca Tutton Parker April 2018 Tutton Parker 2 Liberty University College of Arts and Sciences Master of Arts in English Student Name: Rebecca Tutton Parker Thesis Chair Date First Reader Date Second Reader Date Tutton Parker 3 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………………………...4 Chapter Two: Redemption in Slaughterhouse-Five and Bluebeard…………………………..…23 Chapter Three: Rabo Karabekian’s Path to Redemption in Breakfast of Champions…………...42 Chapter Four: How Rabo Karabekian Brings Redemption to Kurt Vonnegut…………………..54 Chapter Five: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..72 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………..75 Tutton Parker 4 Chapter One: Introduction The Bluebeard folktale has been recorded since the seventeenth century with historical roots even further back in history. What is most commonly referred to as Bluebeard, however, started as a Mother Goose tale transcribed by Charles Perrault in 1697. The story is about a man with a blue beard who had many wives and told them not to go into a certain room of his castle (Hermansson ix). Inevitably when each wife was given the golden key to the room and a chance alone in the house, she would always open the door and find the dead bodies of past wives. She would then meet her own death at the hands of her husband. According to Casie Hermansson, the tale was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which spurred many literary figures to adapt it, including James Boswell, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and Thomas Carlyle (x). -
Elements of Gallows Humor in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five
Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.41, 2018 Elements of Gallows Humor in Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five Negar Khodabandehloo M.A. Student of Payame Noor University, Arak Branch, Iran Mojgan Eyvazi Assistant professor, English Department,Payam-e-Noor University, Tehran, Iran Abstract This study analyzes the outstanding satirist Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughter-house-five to demonstrate how the elements of Gallows Humor are applied to provide a better understanding of the author's worldview and of his narrative process. This is an anti-war book in which Vonnegut has attempted to blend the serious theme with humor. Through the choice of his protagonist- Billy Pilgrim- and the manipulation of black humor, Vonnegut exposes the atrocities of war from a new viewpoint. The focal point is to extract the phrases containing gallows humor, a sort of black humor, to be studied and explained by details, accordingly some literary terms are to be precisely defined and the unique style of writing is indispensable. Keywords: Anti-war, Black Humor, Gallows Humor, Satire, Humor, Vonnegut 1. Introduction Gallows humor is a kind of black humor in which the threatened person witnesses the oppression. As the name represents, the person threatened is implicated with no hope and no way to escape from the disaster. The misfortune is obvious to him, and he prefers joking about it instead of feeling sorrow. This section includes a definition of the gallows humor followed by some examples for more clarifications. In an essay posted on the website of the Philosophy Club, which meets regularly in Santa Monica, CA. -
A Study Guide for Teachers
KAPUT A STUDY GUIDE FOR TEACHERS ABOUT THE STUDY GUIDE Dear Teachers: We hope you will find this Study Guide helpful in preparing your students for what they will experience at the performance of Kaput. Filled with acrobatic thrills and silly blunders, we’re sure Kaput will delight you and your students. Throughout this Study Guide you will find topics for discussion, links to resources and activities to help facilitate discussion around physical theatre, physical comedy, and the golden age of silent films. STUDY GUIDE INDEX ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE RESOURCES AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. About the Performer 1. Be the Critic 2. About the Show 2. Tell a Story Without Saying a Word 3. About Physical Theatre 3. Making a Silent Film 4. About Physical Comedy 4. Body and Expression 5. The Art of the Pratfall 5. Taking a Tour 6. The Golden Age of Silent Films (1894 – 1924) 6. Pass the Ball 7. Physical Comedy + Silent Film = Silent Comedy 7. What’s in a Gesture? Being in the Audience When you enter the theater, you enter a magical space, charged, full of energy and anticipation. Show respect by watching and listening attentively Do not distract fellow audience members or interrupt the flow of performance Applause at the end of the performance is the best way to show enthusiasm and appreciation. About The Performer Tom Flanagan is one of Australia’s youngest leading acrobatic clowns. A graduate of the internationally renowned circus school, The Flying Fruit Flies; Tom started tumbling, twisting, flying and falling at the age of six. -
“I Can't Sell Nails”
“I Can’t Sell Nails” Paper Presented to the Indianapolis Literary Club James A. Glass May 5, 2014 I first met Irma Vonnegut Lindener at a luncheon in the Athenaeum arranged by her younger cousin, Catherine Glossbrenner Rasmussen.1 The year was 1976, and I had met “Catey,” as Mrs. Rasmussen liked to be called, through a historic preservation project that my office, the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, was conducting with the Junior League of Indianapolis. Under the persuasive influence of Reid Williamson, the new Executive Director of Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, the League had adopted historic preservation as a service area for its volunteers. One of its first projects was nominating the Old Northside neighborhood for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The project would entail considerable historical research. We decided that one way of gathering valuable information would be to conduct oral history interviews with some of the women who had grown up in the Old Northside area during its time of initial prosperity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When Catey heard about the project, she contacted me, then a 24-year old staff historian, about her interest in family history and in the preservation of some of the family homes in the Old Northside. That led to the luncheon at the Athenaeum with Mrs. Lindener, whom Catey called “Aunt Irma.” Aunt Irma turned out to be the daughter and only living child of Bernard Vonnegut, one of the most prominent and gifted architects in Indianapolis at the turn of the 20th century. -
Block Universes and Strange Loop Phenomena In
STRANGE TIME: BLOCK UNIVERSES AND STRANGE LOOP PHENOMENA IN TWO NOVELS BY KURT VONNEGUT by Francis C. Altomare IV A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to express his most sincere thanks to those instrumental in the completion of this thesis, especially Dr. Thomas Martin, Dr. Steven Blakemore, and Dr. Don Adams, all of whose comments and guidance were invaluable in its preparation. In addition, he would like to thank Dr. Nicholas Reboli, Dr. Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Dr. Thomas Goodmann for providing crucial inspiration for this project. The support of Joanne Weiner and the author's colleagues at Private Tutoring Services, Inc. is also greatly appreciated. Lastly, the author would like to thank his family for their unyielding support during the completion of this manuscript. iii ABSTRACT Author: Francis C. Altomare IV Title: Strange Time: Block Universes and Strange Loop Phenomena in Two Novels by Kurt Vonnegut Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Thomas L. Martin Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2010 Einsteinian relativity forever altered our understanding of the metaphysics of time. This study considers how this scientific theory affects the formulation of time in postmodern narratives as a necessary step toward understanding the relationship between empirical science and literary art. Two novels by Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse-Five, exemplify this synthesis. Close readings of these texts reveal an underlying temporal scheme deeply informed by relativity. -
Slapstick Or Lonesome No More Free
FREE SLAPSTICK OR LONESOME NO MORE PDF Kurt Vonnegut | 170 pages | 24 May 2016 | Vintage Publishing | 9781784870980 | English | London, United Kingdom Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Slapstick: Or, Lonesome No More! A pseudo-autobiography of how the author imagines his future, Slapstick takes Slapstick or Lonesome No More in an apocalyptic future as Wilbur Daffodil Swain, a former pediatrician and President of the United States, writes a memoir of his life at years old. The story skips around to different periods but is generally told chronologically to explain his current existence in the Empire State Building on the solitary island of Manhattan. Wilbur's childhood is unusual. Born in a set of physically deformed twins, he and his sister Eliza are assumed mentally retarded with short life expectations. Their very wealthy parents fix up an Slapstick or Lonesome No More mansion in Vermont and the locals and a family practitioner care for the children while the parents visit once a year and on birthdays. Wilbur and Eliza quickly educate themselves through the many books in the mansion. While Eliza never grasps reading Slapstick or Lonesome No More writing, she is a creative problem-solver, while Wilbur is very analytical and can read and write. When they are in close proximity to each other, their minds meld to create a 'genius' that becomes the author of several masterpieces of writing and invention. However, they become so consumed by the genius, that they often lose themselves in an incestuous orgy, grasping to get intellectually even closer to each other. -
Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine
Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:37945101 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Context and Neglect: Kurt Vonnegut and the Middleclass Magazine. Lori Philbin A Thesis in the Field of English for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University May 2018 Copyright 2018 Lori Philbin Abstract The scholarship focusing on the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has largely centered on his novels. Most studies have neglected Vonnegut’s start in the popular magazine market writing short stories. A few notable scholars have focused on the stories: Jerome Klinkowitz, Peter J. Reed, Jeff Karon, James Thorson, and Steve Gronert Ellerhoff. Even with the work of such scholars, there have been few studies that consider the context of Vonnegut’s earliest stories and how the influence of the middleclass magazine market not only shaped Vonnegut’s career but had continued impact on his later novels. This study explores Vonnegut’s first eight stories: “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” “Thanasphere,” “EPICAC,” “All the King’s Horses,” “Mnemonics,” “The Euphio Question,” “The Foster Portfolio,” and “More Stately Mansions.” The stories are considered within the context of their first publication venue, the magazine Collier’s, and how that context shows connections between the stories and his novels such as Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five. -
9780805086935EX.Pdf
Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 175 Fift h Avenue New York, New York 10010 www .henryholt .com ® Henry Holt® and are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Charles J. Shields All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Shields, Charles J., 1951– And so it goes : Kurt Vonnegut, a life / Charles J. Shields.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978- 0- 8050- 8693- 5 1. Vonnegut, Kurt. 2. Novelists, American— 20th century— Biography. I. Title. PS3572.O5Z855 2011 813'.54—dc22 [B] 2010045173 Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets. First Edition 2011 Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 1: You Were an Accident – he wedding of Kurt Vonnegut’s parents, Edith Sophia Lieber Tand Kurt Vonnegut Sr. on November 22, 1913, in Indianapolis, Indi- ana, was spectacular. Edith’s father, Albert, own er of a giant brewery who reveled in his reputation as one of the richest men in the city, threw a gargantuan reception at the Claypool Hotel at the northwest corner of Washington and Illinois streets, reputed to be the fi nest hotel in the Midwest. Th ere were six hundred guests, and those not chauff eured in automobiles arrived in horse- drawn carriages with jingling brass harnesses— an entire generation of rich Edwardians, silk- hatted or covered demurely by parasols, many of whom had been raised in Indianapolis’s mansions on Meridian Street.1 Albert Lieber knew what his guests expected and he did not disappoint. -
Reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions with an Eye to Walt Whitman
RSA Journal 13 21 ROBERTO SERRAI Landscapes of Destruction: Reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions with an Eye to Walt Whitman In heart, I am an American artist, and I have no guilt... Patti Smith, Babel (1978) Breakfast of Champions, first published in 1973, is probably one of Kurt Vonnegut's most destructive, pessimistic and nihilistic works. Even if we chose to label it a comedy, or a farce, its humor would still be of a very black qual ity.1 Thus, maybe, the book would be more accurately described as a satire verging on tragedy. Vonnegut was not new to the theme of destruction; where the earlier novel Cats Cradle (1963) is a long allegory on power and author ity which ends in catastrophe, Mother Night (1961) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) unfold as chronicles of private vicissitudes set against the tragic back drop of a major historical event, World War II. Along with a deep reflection on identity, ambiguity, and the thorny issue of distinguishing innocence from guilt, both share an outright condemnation of war's useless folly and of all the mystifications often concocted to disguise it. In the latter work, remarkably, the horror of the chosen exemplum — the allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden, which in three days (2/13-15/1945) killed more than 135.000 harmless civilians — is so immense to prove basically impossible to represent. Billy Pilgrim, the young American POW most of the book focuses on, takes shelter in a deep underground meat locker "hollowed in living rock" (S5 209) and so is only able to witness the bomb runs' aftermath, the morning when Dresden suddenly "was like the moon" (S5 229). -
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters/Edited by Dan Wakefield
Copyright © 2012 by The Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Trust Illustrations © Kurt Vonnegut and the Origami Express All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: DELL BOOKS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.: Letter from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to Charles Drake dated November 16, 1973, from Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut, copyright © 1981 by Kurt Vonnegut. Reprinted by permission of Dell Books, a division of Random House, Inc.; ALFRED A. KNOPF, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., FABER & FABER LIMITED, AND CURTIS BROWN, LTD.: Excerpt from Markings by Dag Hammarskjold, translated by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg, translation copyright © 1964 and copyright renewed 1992 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd. Foreword copyright © 1964 by W. H. Auden and copyright renewed 1992 by Edward Mendelson. Rights throughout Canada and the United Kingdom are controlled by Faber & Faber Limited. Electronic book rights are controlled by Curtis Brown, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., Faber & Faber Limited, and Curtis Brown, Ltd.; G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC. AND JONATHAN CAPE, A MEMBER OF THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP LIMITED: Letter from PFC Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to his family dated May 29, 1945, from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., copyright © 2008 by the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 20 | Spring 2015
University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 20 | Spring 2015 Title “Being Alive is a Crock of Shit” - Kurt Vonnegut’s Kind Pessimism Author Andrew Hicks Publication FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts Issue Number 20 Issue Date Spring 2015 Publication Date 01/06/2015 Editors Yanbing Er and Sarah Bernstein FORUM claims non-exclusive rights to reproduce this article electronically (in full or in part) and to publish this work in any such media current or later developed. The author retains all rights, including the right to be identified as the author wherever and whenever this article is published, and the right to use all or part of the article and abstracts, with or without revision or modification in compilations or other publications. Any latter publication shall recognise FORUM as the original publisher. FORUM | ISSUE 20 Andrew Hicks 1 “Being Alive is a Crock of Shit” – Kurt Vonnegut’s Kind Pessimism Andrew Hicks University of Bristol Kurt Vonnegut, long considered one of the arch-misanthropes of the American literary canon, could more accurately be said to have only fallen into genuine cynicism at the very end of his life. Before this final despair, however, Vonnegut was a trenchant critic of a variety of aspects of American culture. In The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Slapstick (1976), Vonnegut respectively satirises the self- made myth of the American Dream and tackles the issue of modern loneliness. In both novels, he proposes far more modest but perhaps more achievable and compassionate goals than those promised by American convention – goals that only appear pessimistically limited in light of unrealistic or unfulfilled ideals.