

Kurt Vonnegut: I want to share with you something I’ve learned.  - mapleoin
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/kurt-vonnegut-at-the-blackboard.php

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jpwagner
Dostoevsky once said that there are two stories: (1) man goes on a journey and
(2) stranger comes to town.

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gruseom
Are you sure? That doesn't sound like Dostoevsky to me. Do you know where he
said it?

 _Crime and Punishment_ doesn't fit that rule (except perhaps as a moral
journey). _Notes From Underground_ doesn't fit it, and so on. _The Double_ ,
on the other hand, which was the second thing he wrote and one of the best
comic novels ever, is a classic #2. I highly recommend _The Double_!

Edit: I suppose you could say the _Odyssey_ is a prototype of #1 and the
_Iliad_ of #2. It's an amusing principle. But I'd bet money (well, five bucks)
that it isn't Dostoevsky's. Dostoevsky is more the kind of writer who, if you
gave him a list of all possible types of stories, would immediately set out to
write one that didn't fit the list. Just to spite list-makers.

~~~
biotech
After doing some light google research, I was not able to find the origin of
the phrase "there's only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and
stranger comes to town." It is generally attributed to peoples' literature or
film professors. The quote is prefaced with " _They say that...._ " very
often, suggesting that the origin of the quote is largely unknown even by
those who study stories professionally.

~~~
jpwagner
I heard it from a person.

This is far from proof, but the first result in the only search I did (total
time-9 seconds) yielded this
...<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Fyodor_Dostoevsky>

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Semiapies
That's from the _Unsourced_ section, as clearly described.

It's roughly the opposite of proof.

~~~
jpwagner
good one

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Semiapies
Nit: I've never come across the idea that Claudius didn't react to the play in
_Hamlet_. He jumps up and freaks out a bit (something staged with varying
degrees of subtlety, but not really ambiguously), then later sends Hamlet
overseas to get beheaded.

I always viewed Hamlet as a staircase-like figure going quite definitely
_down_. The king's not merely dead, he's a tormented ghost. Hamlet must kill
his uncle, but he's stymied the first time he tries. Hamlet outmaneuvers
Claudius, but in the process kills Polonious, drives Ophelia mad and to
suicide, which turns her brother into a deadly enemy...and then damn near
everyone dies at the end.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea that any of this is ambivalent. :)

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andrewcooke
i get the general story, but why does he say that hamlet is like cinderella
("I don’t have to draw a new line, because Hamlet’s situation is the same as
Cinderella’s, except that the sexes are reversed.") and then later say hamlet
is a flat line?

~~~
CodeMage
He's referring to Hamlet's starting situation, which is same as Cinderella's
(despondent girl, mother dead) except that the sexes are reversed (despondent
boy, father dead). From there on, the story is different.

~~~
run4yourlives
Actually, what he is saying is that the the stories are exactly the same, but
Hamlet has a realistic outcome (truth) whereas Cinderella is all about the
story graph. Hamlet makes the mistake of killing Polonius, and getting killed
himself, because there really is no shoe fitting happily ever after in life,
and that's why the story works.

~~~
CodeMage
Wait, I don't get it. How are they "exactly the same" if Hamlet's is realistic
and there's no magic "shoe fitting happily ever after" and the "graph" is
completely different? I mean, I've read both Cinderella and Hamlet and the
only thing they really have in common is the starting situation.

What's the difference between a crocodile and a camel? One ends with
"rocodile" and other with "amel"...

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ankeshk
Why chart the emotions of the protagonist to evaluate the story? The value of
a story is not in how happy or sad the protagonist was - but how it makes you
feel.

If I had to evaluate stories, my vertical axis would have 4 parts. From top to
bottom:

* Unpredictable and irrational

* Surprisingly Unpredictable

* Tolerantly Predictable

* Predictable and stale

The closer the story is to "Surprisingly unpredictable" the better it is.

Cinderella, Kafka, Hamlet - all reach that point.

(But to be fair - Cinderella reaches that point only because its amongst the
first few stories you ever hear.)

Titanic reached that stage for many teenage girls by killing the hero.

The best book I've read - Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov reaches that
"surprisingly unpredictable" point too.

~~~
CodeMage
_Why chart the emotions of the protagonist to evaluate the story? The value of
a story is not in how happy or sad the protagonist was - but how it makes you
feel._

It's a rather good starting point for analyzing stories. Most of the stories
he mentioned (with Kafka being a notable exception) aimed to make the reader
identify with the protagonist. Therefore, it's the protagonist's situation
that matters the most. Also, bear in mind that he wasn't charting the emotions
of the protagonist, but the protagonist's _fortune_.

~~~
almost
Why do you mention Kafka as an exception? I've always felt his characters were
very easy to identify with. They're the confused part of you, constantly
buffeted by processes you don't understand. Surely everyone feels a little
like that at times?

~~~
CodeMage
Honestly, I find it impossible for myself to identify with the young man who
found himself transformed into a bug ;)

I know it's supposed to be a metaphor, but it kind of kills my personal
identification with the poor sod.

~~~
aasarava
You've never once in your life felt like a complete alien, unable to
communicate with those who should be closest to you? Now that's good fortune.

~~~
CodeMage
That's not really what I said, is it? I said that the metaphor stands in the
way of my identification, not that I can't understand the metaphor or that
I've never been in situations that the metaphor tries to describe.

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amohr
Single page version: [http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/kurt-
vonnegut...](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/kurt-vonnegut-at-
the-blackboard.php?page=all)

------
kmak
This was also in "A Man Without a Country", his last book. So it goes.

~~~
jballanc
Indeed, a great finale for a great man. My favorite line from that is still:
"I never thought I'd be alive when the three most powerful men in the world
were named Bush, Dick, and Colon."

Vonnegut always had an immaculate sense of humor!

~~~
kmak
I read this thread again, saw the * next to my comment, and got instantly
reminded of an KV art..

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hubb
i didn't know that vonnegut went to grad school with saul bellow. i'm always
pleased to hear about when favourite authors of mine knew each other before
they were famous.

edit: who downmodded the comments of everyone who enjoyed the article? sheesh,
if vonnegut's not your bag, then just abstain

~~~
jcl
I didn't mod the comments myself, but it is common here to mod down a comment
that doesn't add anything to the discussion -- that is, both "Great article!"
and "Terrible article!" comments that lack further content or commentary would
be modded down.

~~~
jrockway
I downmod commentary explaining when it's right to downmod.

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tome
This reminds me of a story I once read. Good news, bad news? Who knows?

<http://www.spinwwweaver.net/goodnews.html>

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ars
Isn't this the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_journey> described with a
graph?

I guess he's famous (I looked him up) but I found the writing style hard to
read.

~~~
bmelton
That's interesting -- not that you don't know who Vonnegut is (though that IS
interesting) but that you thought it was hard to read. I mean, to each his own
of course, but at least to me, Vonnegut has always been one of the authors
whose works were easiest for me to consume.

~~~
ars
Would you like a line by line analysis?

"Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer
can understand"

What very simple shape? He hasn't said a shape, he laid out the graph, but
that doesn't change per story.

I had no idea what he was talking about here.

"so start your story up here"

I'm writing a story? Oh, didn't realize that, maybe you should have said
something. I backtracked two paragraphs and re-read it, now that I know this.

"Now, I don’t mean to intimidate you, but after being a chemist as an
undergraduate at Cornell, after the war I went to the University of Chicago
and studied anthropology, and eventually I took a masters degree in that
field."

I guess this is informal, but the grammar connecting the two "afters" is
strange.

Was this transcribed from someone speaking? It make a bit more sense if it
was, because as writing it's kinda bad.

BTW, just because this was hard to read doesn't mean his books are. I probably
never read his stuff because I'm not a big fan of satire.

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george_morgan
Related, Vonnegut on drama: <http://sivers.org/drama> (more graph sketches!)

~~~
BoppreH
It's the same graphs, just with the "real life" one being new.

But it does include an important piece of wisdom: people want their lives to
have greater ups and downs, just like in the stories, and that's why some make
drama for nothing.

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ddelony
Hmm, I think my life would be a sine wave or a saw-tooth wave pattern.

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binarymax
I wonder what Kilgore Trout has to say about all this?

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samh
enjoyed it

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anatoly
So it goes.

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david927
Brilliant. Thank you.

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charliesome
what the fuck was he going on about there

~~~
Herring
I think you're supposed to pretend there's some subtle & insightful comment
that he couldn't just say, eg "people like happy endings".

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Tichy
"and she becomes off-scale happy"

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__bjoernd
It's the old Socratean thing: "I know that I don't know".

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andrewljohnson
Follow the ghost of @kurt_vonnegut on twitter...

