Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 It’s the birthday of writer Kurt Vonnegut, born in Indianapolis (1922). His books include Cat’s Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Breakfast of Champions (1973), and Timequake (1997). In 1999, Vonnegut wrote a piece called “How To Write With Style.” He ended his essay by summing up his seven most important points: Find a subject you care about; do not ramble, though; keep it simple; have guts to cut; sound like yourself; say what you mean; and pity the readers. He wrote: “I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.”

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"Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks."

Kurt Vonnegut was born #OTD 100 years ago!!

Books by Kurt Vonnegut at PG:https://t.co/j6wqTncz4n pic.twitter.com/VmHre1JBFx

— Project Gutenberg (@gutenberg_org) November 11, 2022

Project Gutenberg liked your reply Kurt’s 100. “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”