“Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.
And so on.
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
On the song "Pedro Navaja" in "Rubén Blades" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/latinmusicusa/legends/ruben-blades/ in PBS
Source: 1910s, Ads and Sales (1911), p. 13
“If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.”
As quoted in "The Encyclopedist’s Lair" in The New York Times (19 November 2007)
Context: There’s plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.
"James Thurber: Men, Women, and Dogs" (1975), p. 228
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)
Statement (12 September 1939), quoted in * Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886–1948
1987
Shabtai
Teveth, p. 717.
Variants:
Fight the war as if there was no White Paper, and the White Paper as if there was no war.
As quoted in A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times (1949) by James William Parkes, p. 342
"We shall fight the War as if there was no White Paper, and the White Paper, as if there was no War."
As quoted in Pioneer (1968) by Deborah Dayan, p. 83