SOUNDTRACK: THE STATLER BROTHERS-“Class of ’57” (1972).
I don’t know much about The Statler Brothers. They are considered country, although this song is hardly country–it’s more folk with some bluegrass and, the real selling point–great harmonies (especially the bass singer with the big mustache).
The song is a wonderful coming of age song, sad and funny with a list of what happened to everyone in the class of ’57. Like:
Betty runs a trailer park, Jan sells Tupperware,
Randy’s on an insane ward, Mary’s on welfare.
Charlie took a job with Ford, Joe took Freddie’s wife,
Charlotte took a millionaire, and Freddie took his life.
John is big in cattle, Ray is deep in debt,
Where Mavis finally wound up is anybody’s bet.
But the kicker comes at the chorus:
And the class of ’57 had its dreams,
Oh, we all thought we’d change the world with our great words and deeds.
Or maybe we just thought the world would change to fit our needs,
The class of ’57 had its dreams.
And then at the end:
And the class of ’57 had its dreams,
But living life from day to day is never like it seems.
Things get complicated when you get past eighteen,
But the class of ’57 had its dreams.
Vonnegut quotes the entirety of this song in the book and I’m glad he did, it’s a very moving song and really captures American life.
[READ: May 26, 2013] Palm Sunday
After writing several successful novels, Vonnegut paused to collect his thoughts. And Palm Sunday begins: “This is a very great book by an American genius.” It is also a “marvelous new literary form which combines the tidal power of a major novel with the bone-rattling immediacy of front-line journalism.” After all the self praise, he decides that this collage–a collection of essays and speeches as well as a short story and a play which is all tied together with new pieces (in TV they would call this a clip show)–this new idea of a book should have a new name and he chooses: blivit (during his adolescence, this word was defined as “two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.” He proposes that all books combining facts and fiction be called blivits (which would even lead to a new category on the best seller list). Until then, this great book should go on both lists.
This book is a collection of all manner of speeches and essays, but they are not arranged chronologically. rather they are given a kind of narrative context. What’s nice is that the table of contents lists what each of the items in the book is (or more specifically, what each small piece is when gathered under a certain topic).
Chapter 1 is The First Amendment in which he talks about Slaughterhouse Five being burned and how outraged he was by that–especially since the people so anxious to burn it hadn’t even read it (and the only “bad” thing is the word motherfucker). The first speeches included are “Dear Mr. McCarthy” to the head of the school board where his books were burned and “Un-American Nonsense” an essay for the New York Times about his book being banned in New York State. The next two are “God’s Law” for an A.C.L.U. fund raiser–it includes his confusion as to why people don’t support the A.C.L.U. which is working for all of our own civil liberties.
Section II, Roots, is over forty pages long and is a narrative account of Vonnegut’s family tree by relative John Rauch. Vonnegut quotes from this narrative story at crazy length. It details the exceptionally elaborate history of all of his ancestors. It is a fascinating thing to have about your own family but I have to say I stopped caring several grandmothers into it.
Section III is called When I Lost My Innocence. He reads a speech to the Cornell Daily Sun where he used to work (and says some very unkind things about Cornell because he was so unhappy there–mostly because his father made him study science). His actual loss of innocence came at the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima–that is when he learned that his country could use technology for genuinely evil things. This is followed by an anti-nuke speech at a rally in Washington D.C.
Section IV is called Triage, but it’s really about writing. The essay “How to Write with Style” is a useful primer for anyone who wants to try writing. Section V is an extended version of the Self Interview that I wrote about here. I assume for space reasons, the Last Interview’s version is about 1/2 of the whole thing or less. So here you get the whole interview. (And again, if you know anything about Vonnegut’s life you’ll get nothing new here, but if you don’t, this is a very full self-portrait).
Section VI is called The People One Knows and much like with the family tree, Vonnegut does something that I feel is almost a dare, he lists four pages of people that he has met once and (since that is how it works in New York City) they are now friends. It is a list of a huge amount of famous people. And, in what I gather means I may have read the list more closely than Vonnegut or his editor, I caught the humorous typo: Author C. Clarke (did they have spell check in 1981?). This section includes Vonnegut’s reviews of other people, like his very funny (and sweet) review of William F. Buckley, his glowing review of Joseph Heller’s Something Happened, and reviews of Irwin Shaw, James T. Farrell and the introduction to a book by comedians Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (who I don’t know but the review is so glowing I may need to discover them for myself. This also contains one of the funnier comments I’ve heard about Gore Vidal:
Some people say that my friend Gore Vidal,who once suggested in an interview that I was the worst writer in the United States, is witty. I myself think he wants an awful lot of credit for wearing three-piece suit. (126).
In Section VII “Playmates” he gives a speech at the funeral of Lavina Lyon and then quotes the song “The Class of ’57” by The Statler Brothers which he thinks would be a better anthem than our military one. The final item is a dedication of a new library which I almost find insulting and wonder if the people of New London did too.
Section VIII is all about Mark Twain and section IX is called Funnier Than Most People and has a commencement address called “How Jokes Work.” Section X is called Embarrassment and is about how his Indianapolis relatives are embarrassed by him for what he has written–they find him rather distasteful. Section XI is about Religion and shows the interesting mix of Humanist and Unitarian that Vonnegut is–he’s sort of an agnostic who likes Jesus.
Section XII is about Obscenity and is comprised almost entirely by his short story “The Big Space Fuck,” which he claims is the first (or only) story to contain fuck in the title. That may have been true in 1972. The story is pretty funny and twisted (obviously). At a time in the future (1987, ha) NASA has gathered all of mankind’s jizzum (he likes that word) and has put it into a rocket to send into outer space. The idea is that it will eventually crash into something and fertilize it. The darker side of the story is that when people turn 18 they can sue their parents for anything, and so the protagonists, sweet people, are sued by their daughter because they didn’t give her everything she wanted. Despite the over-the-topness of the story there are some pertinent ideas here too.
XIII is called Children and is about his own children. He talks at length about them. He gives a speech to the Mental Health Association of New Jersey about his son Mark who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was cured with mega vitamins. Mark wrote a book called The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity which KV believes is better than anything he ever wrote. The section also includes a letter from his daughter to a disgruntled restaurant customer whose own angry letter got a waitress fired.
After talking about Mark Twain earlier he now talks about Jonathan Swift in XIV. This was meant to be an introduction to a new edition of Gulliver’s Travels, but it was rejected because they editor believed he misunderstood Swift entirely.
XV is called Jekyll and Hyde Updated because it contains his musical called The Chemistry Professor. This story is indeed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a musical. It’s not all that exciting I must admit, although there are some funny moments. (I also liked in his directions when he says the music here is by someone else).
In XVI which is called A Nazi Sympathizer Defended at Some Cost, he includes his introduction to the paperback editions of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s last three novels. I have never read Céline and despite the anti-Semitism, Vonnegut makes him sound like a great writer whom I should read. Speaking of Nazis, Section XVII is A Nazi City Mourned at Some Profit. This is a the introduction to a new edition of Slaughterhouse Five in which he talks about Dresden and he comes to the conclusion that he is the only person to have profited from the bombing of that city.
Section XIII is called The Sexual Revolution and, amusingly enough, he doesn’t say much about sex (which he acknowledges at the end). Although he does quote the Statler Brothers again, this time the song “Flowers on the Wall” which I know from Pulp Fiction. This section also contains two things that are pretty neat. The first is his own grading of his books up til now (not comparing himself to others, just to himself).
Player Piano B; The Siren of Titan A; Mother Night A; Cat’s Cradle A+; God Bless You, Mr Rosewater A; Slaughterhouse Five A+; Welcome to the Monkey House B-; Happy Birthday, Wanda June D; Breakfast of Champions C; Wampeters Foma & Granfallons C; Slapstick D; Jailbird A; Palm Sunday C.
It also contains his graphing of storylines. I know this graph idea from somewhere and I have to wonder if I know it from here (even though this piece was rejected by the University of Chicago as his master’s thesis for anthropology. It is a graph that many readers would be familiar–with a story arc that looks like a smile. With a person happyish at the beginning of the story then he hits a low point in the middle. Meanwhile, he resolves it and is slightly happier by the end. Vonnegut then talks about creation myths which are basically like steps–with God or gods giving people more and more things. The Bible however has the bottom drop out from Adam and Even when they are kicked out of the Garden of Eden. But then he compare this to stories like Cinderella, in which the same steps appears with the fairy godmother granting her wishes. And then bottom falls out at midnight. But then she is rewarded exponentially by the end. He is thrilled by this discovery and repulsed by the apathy of the thesis folks at the University of Chicago and we get:
They can take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooooooon.
The final section is called In the Capital of the World and it includes his sermon called “Palm Sunday” which he delivered at St. Clements’ Church in New York City. He talks about a section of the Bible in which Jesus talks to Judas. He says that people have been misinterpreting that section for years and using it as an excuse to beat up on the poor. In the bible it says: “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Which people read as pay more attention to Jesus than the poor.
But Vonnegut re-tells the story in modern language. Judas chides Jesus for allowing Mary to wipe his feet with oils. He says that they should save that ointment and sell it and give the money to the poor. Jesus replies “Judas, don;t worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone. It’s a far more amusing (dark humor) comment than what people think is meant by that. Rather than an unChristinlike impatience with the poor–Jesus is teasing Judas back (something which Vonnegut says would easily get lost in translation).
If you are interested in Vonnegut’s non-fiction, this is the place to start. You learn all of his political and religious beliefs and you learn a ton about his family. It’s a bit long and KV can get pretty dark, but there’s much to enjoy here.
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