Who doesn't love some Kurt quotes? Stop Smiling, always a treat of a magazine, interviewed him last year. Below are a few delicious excerpts...
Stop Smiling: Tell me about the American Midwest you remember from childhood, and the one you came back to, after WWII.
Kurt Vonnegut: I was born in Indianapolis, but I’m a Chicagoan who lives in New York. I went to the University of Chicago. I worked for Chicago’s City News Bureau as a street reporter, and my first child, Mark, was born there.
SS: Do you think the Midwest is a good place to grow up?
KV: If George W. Bush got mad enough at me and exiled me back to Indianapolis, I could make a decent life there. I could hack it in Indianapolis.
SS: You and your family long ago gravitated East. What is your theory about fresh water people versus salt-water people?
KV: When my ancestors arrived, they were thunderstruck by all this land. They were right in the middle of it. Arable land stretched out for hundreds of miles in all directions. So the land, the continent, was enough to think about. New York and San Francisco and West Coast people are oceanic and feel very close to Europe or to Asia, and the people in the Middle West are continental. One is not better than the other. It just happens to be an interesting difference. Where did you grow up?
SS: Illinois.
KV: All right. You’re a fresh water person.
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