Kurt Vonnegut interview on 90 Minutes Live - 1978

[Music] yes I appear only on Canadian television is that right here boycott television in the United ated for some reason and United States but not here I don't know what the explanation is I think you're more hospitable and know for a moment I was wondering if that was a put-down I mean should I try to intimidate both of us I think when i every time i say kurt vonnegut i want to say jr when did you actually drop the junior from come here well a lot of people who aren't juniors who read a whole lot into my changing my name from Kurt Vonnegut jr. to Kurt Vonnegut on my last book but the reason I was Kurt Vonnegut jr. in the first place was that they used to be another Kurt Vonnegut on this planet he had a checking account I had one he had bills I had them and so forth and so there was nothing Freudian about it nothing profound or philosophical about it at all no it was a bookkeeping necessity and he didn't keep up with his bills the way he should have because I'm not sure whether we should open this show which is our salute to spring with you because when you spoke to the graduating class of Bennington College 1970 you said and I think you were quoting yourself on Earth Day in New York City earlier you said I am rarely asked to speak in the springtime because I am a total pessimist I said everything was going to get worse and it everything has got worse well since that time I have learned a lot from Alcoholics Anonymous without joining Alcoholics Anonymous but I have decided that even if you aren't a drunk it's a very good idea to live one day at a time and so I am totally optimistic about tomorrow and probably most of the spring time so I've cheered up some attire now what was there a turning point from from describing yourself as a total pessimist to what you just said well I think when I turned 50 I said you know this is bad enough without being a pessimist - and so I self-consciously cheered up do you really know the answers to everything I haven't been stumped very often [Music] what would you like to know well I wouldn't we'll get to that but you you write about yourself that I think you say only only to other people are certain about everything as you are there I think Billy Graham and the Maharishi yes and the Maharishi has faded some I think since he started so it's not it levitating I I know what people should do with their lives and I offered this service for a long time it was called life engineering and if you had a problem you could bring it to me there was no charge for this and I would tell you what to do I mean psychiatrist won't do this no they ask you asking questions they use a Socratic method we don't do that we tell you what to do not open institution or anything well it failed for a very interesting reason is that people would not do what I told them just I so I realized that we were going to have to make an alliance with whatever succeeded murder incorporated you know where you can have somebody killed for $700 and we would say you know before you start doing business with life engineering you've got to understand that if you don't do what we tell you to do we're going to have you killed otherwise I won't do it and I don't have any bad advice week eight financial advice marital advice was this all based on your biochemical anthropological analysis of humankind I think I think it was just very sound instinct of what people should do but I think that one reason people are so uncomfortable now they're a couple of reasons one is that they don't have enough friends and relatives is we don't have big extended families the other thing is that there's nobody who will tell people what to do anymore and you know just simply order them to do it and I think people are so grateful for that yeah I am you don't want to bring back dictators do you well we'll have to bring him back they're still with you around or well I'd like people to tell me what to do a lot of times I can't figure out what to do and a very useful sort of citizen is to stir fake people up and intimidate them and sure the dictatorships very good within limits I think and what the Germans certainly enjoy you know they enjoyed it but there were several million people who didn't let's forgotten I think okay I don't think you totally I hope not when I quoted that your biochemical anthropological analysis that is from the quotation in which he said I have the answers to everything and you were arguing that everything was determined by by chemistry in fact you said if you came back I think in another incarnation that you would take up your analysis as a profession because then you would be able to understand everything everyone and studying blood and all that yes I don't think people drive each other crazy is I you know Angel Street where Charles Boyer drives who loses wife in that remember well it's the play anyway where a man drives his wife crazy human beings can't actually do that what does it you can't even drive your own children crazy its chemicals its chemical imbalance and that people are going to go nuts have to have something wrong with their metabolism and that's a last no what that basically that's right popular idea in Canada well there are people who are working on it in late doctor dr. Abraham Hafiz certainly well I'm a vested interest here because my son went crazy in Canada and wrote a fine wrote a fine book about anyone very funny he you know he went into a padded cell I put him in a padded cell once and they let him go after about six weeks and the Mounties brought him back and put him in there and he was treated by Canadian doctors and treated mainly with diet and so he's finishing his third year at Harvard Medical School that's a pretty decent remission I would say and he also wrote a wonderful book the road wrote a book about it but he is treated chemically and I'm sure that's what we'll we'll come to very soon but I don't know parents are responsible for their children going crazy and thank God cuz I had a child going crazy you know so I said couldn't possibly be guilty its metabolism how do I know you're telling me the truth because I I don't lie that often I'm trying to think of what I could I lie about the war well you know in now in cat's cradle your philosophy of FOMA right the pursuit of FOMA is living by untrue harmless untruths you say they all should live that way yeah but it's an elitist idea I like the idea of religion too of lying to Dumber people you know not like people in this audience is I don't know where the dumb people are I have in mind but I think it is so comforting to somebody if you can persuade him that life is this way or that way you know you believe it and everything is started living according to it but it would be a harmless untruth yeah I think so the I know a minister on Cape Cod his name was Bob Nicholson and he looked like Joseph Cotten under did i disgust him when we were around shelfing but he has passed on but he was an Episcopal minister there and every time one of his but one of his parishioners died is Nicholson was just outraged he would cry couldn't sleep it is inconsolable it makes congregation would after getting to get around him and everything and say look there is a heaven and God's going to welcome this person we finally persuade the minister that maybe there was a little something to it but I watched what a minute of your hat no there we had to pop up the minute he loses faith every time somebody diving there what kind of a God with a lot of this to have I'm going to you're not religious yourself you were raised in atheist and hosted in Athens yeah but I think it's been going on so long that it's essentially an ancestral religion and I I think it you know I just honored the the faith of my father's and my grandfather's and the Vonnegut's have been atheist for generation after generation and very proudly cell and their architects a love churches for architecture but they thought what people said it as just preposterous and so this has this Consol's me that I said I disbelieve the way my ancestors did you know and I'm sure to religion like any other one I would like to have occurred Vonnegut doctoral whole he has a great old breakfast of champions slaughterhouse-five you name it he's written it do you believe in censorship well I want to comment on the list of books there just a minute my foot doctor thinks I wrote kontiki hi every time I go you know you start working on your own toenails anybody can do surgery that sort at home and tell United this week start going up your leg anyway every time I go to a foot doctor the same foot doctor he says kontiki right and I say right and that's right I didn't right kontiki why did he think though I don't know if the only book he ever read is it trying to get lucky I guess you believe in censorship Thor Heyerdahl like you know I used to believe in censorship because there was so much we did not know and saying all the dirty words and having sex scenes and all that I kept away from those for a long time because it seemed plausible to believe what Richard Nixon believes but what a lot of people believe that some lunatics or some borderline lunatics and impressionable people in seeing these words are reading Lisi might go out and commit some criminal act that seem logical to me to just in the in the past 10 or 15 years there's an awful lot of data on hand that books in fact do not harm people that they don't inflame people in penitent trees and nut houses or damage the minds of children so we are no longer running a risk putting putting such things in books it's not a health problem I thought it might be but the scientific evidence is now there's not a health problem the reason is the reason I asked you is because I had a call this week from from a high school teacher in upstate in New York and a little bit time known as a matter of fact it was Saranac Lake I think what's all in that same area right so you yeah you know about what's happening there well my brother was just up there and he rocks a couple of local papers and sent me they they are trying to keep slaughterhouse-five your book about the bombing of the civilian population of dresden they are trying to keep that out of the high schools there because it's got too rude words in it on the second page which is lucky for the smut hunters is they don't have to read the whole book no it's what it's showering that and they are living a shatter again in the book because there aren't seem to cruel there it is a ghost in that there's this word is has to do with copulating with your own mother you know and this just really lost some people apparently but also there's some patriotic outfit that is circulating a list of books the decent school should not have answer of school boards all over the country all over the United States and then quite probably in Canada to have said that these books must be thrown out of the library and they do it without without reading them and now I get censorship is unconstitutional in the United States American Civil Liberties Union now has a a crisis is about they lost about a fifth of their membership because the American Nazi Party is going to march in Skokie Illinois very soon into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and the American Civil Liberties Union is going to defend them because I could defend them in order to defend the First Amendment but the First Amendment is a tragic amendment I mean it's an important one that it does cause a whole lot of pain I sympathize with with fundamentalist Christians in West Virginia who do not want their children reading some books as I know how it much it hurts them even if they were your books yes as I can understand the pain that they feel is they can't even they aren't even allowed to say what goes into their kids heads and what doesn't accept they must endure that as Americans because of the First Amendment but I think it's tragic and when the Nazis march in Skokie that's going to be tragic it's a bearable tragedy but I got it is tragic it's a terrible thing to see and any parent who who says I don't want my kids reading that garbage very Vonnegut a perfectly sensible statement and sees I want my kids to read Vonnegut we do yeah well that's a better statement do you believe in time as one of the I mean you're often called a science fiction writer I might not agree because writing has been largely scientific and I spent more time with scientists and I have with writers because my older brother Bernard is a doctor Bernard Vonnegut there's a distinguished scientist and as a kid I would hang out with his friends and so haven't you advise young people not to go into science yeah because it that so much of it goes into weaponry is such barbarous people politicians finally decide what these lovely discoveries is going to be used before I mean the laser is going to be used to kill with that's that's a very interesting use for a laser it always going to be used to kill with one way or another and it's been said of my works that they have everything but originality and lots of scientists after the Second World War were saying they were no longer going to give information to the government as it was going to be misused it wasn't going to be used for mankind it was going to be used against it Norbert Wiener is the father the cybernetic revolution here wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly saying he wouldn't tell a government anything anymore and when I read that what I was twenty years old and so snort wieners idea what would you say to my son who is unforeseen peterovsky gee whatever the jr. on yet but he'll learn except I keep getting these calls from 18 year old girls which is quite nice but it but why would you say to him he's in second year environmental engineering he's in it you may not call that science for him it's the pursuit of technology for what he sees a good cause now is he misguided and is that wrong for young people now I would I would think of that's not a highly leveraged area of science I would think if you get into a very fancy biology or you know working with particle accelerators or wherever were you going to be dealing with potentially enormous forces that is one thing actually I would like people working in those areas and not publishing is telling a few other people they trust what they found but no on the on the lower level is cleaning up rivers and all that other splendid area so civil engineering didn't you have an awful shock when when your because your brother did a lot of original work in the field of cloud seeding and sending is it silver iodide yeah and into the into the clouds and bringing and then he found out that that had been used as a weapon of war years and years and years you know that all these planes up here know what to do is they you know send a couple of mountain folk paprika over everything to slow the war down and they're throwing everything they could think of out of airplanes while they're out of hell I just just load up the sky with silver iodide see if I won't make them surrender [Music] ya know he was shocked and that was that was the only instance for somebody I knew well suddenly found out the defense people had been using his discoveries for a hospital for hospital purposes and he's into

Channel: DB

Views: 142,086

Rating: 4.9168591 out of 5

Keywords: Kurt Vonnegut

Id: kIqQZHJHPwY

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2017