Before Kurt Vonnegut started speaking Wednesday night, he wanted to get the ground rules straight – just how dirty could he be?
He leaned over to associate English professor and moderator Manuel Martinez and whispered something to him – something about “Peter Pan.” Martinez thought the statement was repeatable.
After warning the young women in the audience to cover their ears, Vonnegut said: “George W. Bush is so dumb, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought Peter Pan was a wash basin in a whore house.”
The tone was set early for Vonnegut’s almost-hour-long presentation, which was part philosophical lecture and part stand-up routine. His philosophy is familiar to anyone who has read his novels, such as “Slaughterhouse-Five” or “Cat’s Cradle,” and much of his comedy was culled from his most recent book, the nonfiction “A Man without a Country.”
He called Ohio State the parentheses of his university-speaking career – he did his first college speech at OSU and this would be his last, he said.
Bush was often the target of Vonnegut’s too-numerous-to-do-justice-to one-liners – Bush’s claim of being a war president was, said Vonnegut, “like saying ‘I’m a syphilis president.'”
He also had the war in Iraq, big business, politicians, technology and society as a whole in his sights.
“People are living as if there is no tomorrow, and pretty soon there won’t be one,” he said.
He added, “It wouldn’t surprise me, either – or anybody here – if all of a sudden they reported that all the fish in the ocean died. That’s what that smell is.”
As dark as his subject matter got, though, Vonnegut kept the atmosphere light with his storytelling and quick wit. He called out faculty members because two books he asked be put in the library were not yet on the shelves, and once, when Martinez was stuttering through a question, Vonnegut said “Oh, shut up.”
He also said it was important for people to improve themselves and “become” through art – whether the art is done well or done badly. To demonstrate, he sang a few bars of “Stardust” a cappella.
After he was done, he turned to Matinez.
“Now your turn,” he said. When Martinez declined, Vonnegut told him to dance, and Martinez did a little jig.
Later, he asked for those in the crowd who had a teacher who inspired them – who made them happier to be alive – to raise there hands. After nearly every hand in the room was raised, he asked the members of the audience to turn to someone nearby and tell them the name of that teacher.
After a few moments of rumblings, the crowd burst into applause.
“Wasn’t that nice, what you just did?” Vonnegut asked. For the record, Vonnegut’s teacher is J. C. Bean.
People need these little moments because they have no real power, he said, and added that there are no Republicans or Democrats, only one party – the winners.
“Neocons are saying ‘Look, we gave you free speech, you can say whatever you want.’ That’s ’cause whatever I say, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” Vonnegut said.
His job as a novelist, he said, was to write a book about the end of the world while the world was actually ending. Though this might be a bleak mission statement, there is no reason not to be happy now, Vonnegut said.
“We’ve got several nice days ahead of us. And what the alcoholics do – what they’re told to do, what they try to do – is live just one day at a time. So we’ll do that too … Hey, this was a pretty damn good day, and tomorrow might be one too.
“Be grateful for good days and say, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'”
Though he covered a lot of ground, the message of his speech could probably be summed up in one phrase: “Be kind, goddamn it, be kind.”
