Interview with KV, 1979

I promised myself last week that I would put Vonnegut down for a stretch, but I have failed.

This is the fault of Portland's Central Public Library near my pad.  All of Vonnegut has been reissued in recent years through the late-great author's family foundation and Dial Press, a subsidiary of Random House, and now the library is teeming with available Vonnegut.

As KV would have said, "Hi ho."

In the old days you couldn't check any Vonnegut out without placing long-list holds on the scant copies our beautiful old library held at the time.

God Bless You, Dial Press and the Vonnegut Family.

So I'm reading another that I didn't get to back in 1979--Jailbird.

This is KV's "Watergate novel," the story of a low-level Nixon appointee, a "Harvard man" assigned to keep a wary eye on America's youth during the Nixon reign.  He is rounded up with Nixon's other functionaries and does time--affording him the hours to reflect on how his dreams, and thus his life, came to ruination.

More of KV at his best, I must opine.

Here is an interview with Vonnegut from New York Public Radio, 1979.  It cuts off at 21:11, but is a good source nonetheless.


TS