Reason Breeds Insanity

I am sitting in Bracken Library 215 listening to a marathon reading of works of Kurt Vonnegut. This is interesting on a couple of planes.

The first plane, the funny one, is that the library, yes the dean of the library at a fairly well-respected state university, sent out several pieces of publicity (5 exactly) that invited people to join GSAB for a marathon reading of works by KIRK Vonnegut. You would think that the dean of the library would catch a mistake about an author who is not only incredibly well known, but just died, and was from Indianapolis to boot. Amazing: the powers of higher education.

The other plane, perhaps the more personal, and definitely the more touching one, on which this whole experience touches me is that my high school boyfriend loved Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. He relished its every page; his version showed it too, all dog-eared, yellowed, and marked up. I used to think he was crazy for loving Vonnegut, but I know now that he was just ahead of us, courtesy of his sister, in his knowledge of literature.

The final plane interests me, and perhaps the most intimate, is the plane of emotion. Right now we are listening to the “Prologue to Slapstick.” It is sad and mostly about life, which means it is mostly about life, and it makes me sad nonetheless. The last two readings were from Man With a Country and the political writings therein are so close so deeply engrained in our society, so fucked up right now. I guess if I think about all the readings together, I can be glad that we live with strong, deeply entrenched feelings, but I should look forward to death as well and what we leave behind.

Here are a few Vonnegut quotes:

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”—A Man Without a Country

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

“How nice–to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” —Slaughterhouse Five

“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Lots of people blame Eve for the wacky shit that goes on the world. If she just wouldn’t have eaten the apple, so the theory goes, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. How did the blame get transferred to Eve? I was thinking the other day that God sent a flood to eradicate the evil caused by the sin that she and Adam committed. Yeah, I’m reading the text that says she gave the fruit to the man who was with her. It doesn’t say she went home and gave it to him but that he was with her. Read: He was just as guilty because he was standing right there, but I digress. So anyway, there is this flood. And all the sin that was introduced on that fateful day in the Garden was washed away; it was drowned out from the earth. So why don’t we blame Noah’s sons for our problems today? Weren’t they the first ones to sin on the clean slate? I mean, I think I will not only ask Jesus, but also Paul, who actually is the person responsible for our understanding of Jesus as the second Adam, why in the hell we needed to be redeemed from a sin committed before the flood? Weren’t we, for all fo those years, really trying to atone for Ham’s sin?

Please enjoy a sampling of thoughts from one of my favorite writers, Donald Miller.

“It is striking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people. We are relational indeed.” (67)

“How do you stop a war, I wonder?” (80)

“We are wired so that other people help create us, help make us who we are, and when deception is fed to us, we make bad decisions. War is complicated; it isn’t black and white.” (82)

“…it feels like there is a penalty for not being respected by other people, it feels like you are going to die unless you get some kind of respect and appreciation.” (107)

“In my own life, I notice I validate people who I like or validate me. When I say so-and-so is a nice person, what I really mean is so-and-so thinks I am a nice person.” (117)

“If you believe Jesus was God, and he came to earth to walk among us, the first thing you start considering is that He might actually care. Why else would something so great become something so small? He didn’t close himself off in a neighborhood with the Trinity; He actually left His neighborhood and moved into ours, like a very wealthy and powerful man moving to the slums of Chicago or Houston or Calcutta, living on the streets as a peasant.” (122)

“In reading the gospels of the Bible, I discovered that the personality of Christ was such that people who were pagans, cultists, money-mongers, broken, and diseased felt comfortable in His presence.” (123)

“Writing in scrolls, however, was not something that interested Jesus…Instead, he accumulated friends and allowed them to write about Him, talk about Him, testify about Him…I can’t imagine He would do this unless he actually liked people and cared about them. Jesus built our faith system entirely on relationships…” (127)

“Suppose I really and somebody?” (130)—quoting Maya Angelou

“I have sometimes wondered if the great desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.” (133)

“Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies.” (155)

“Love creates rules, and forgives when they are broken.” (181)

“Morality, then, if you think about it, is the way we imitate God. It is the way we imitate the ways of heaven on earth.” (183)

“I think most Christians…want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a cultural war.” (189)

“Morality, in the context of a relationship with Jesus, becomes the voice the voice of love to a confused community, the voice of reason and calm in a loud argument, the voice of life in a world of walking dead, the voice of Christ in a sea of self-hatred.” (191)

“And I wonder about that, about how much of my faith I apply in a personal way, deep down in my heart on the level where I actually mean things.” (201)

“…fasting is mourning Him, baptism is identifying with Him, Communion is remembering Him.” (203)

“It is true that people need Jesus, not religion.” (206)

“This, I believe, is what the Bible means when it speaks of our oneness: It isn’t a technicality, it is an actual relationship.” (225)

And, finally, a toast: “Here is to Christ for making us, to Christ for rescuing us, and to Christ, who gives us hope for tomorrow.” (232)

I have this crazy cousin. Every once in a while he totally freaks out, checks himself into the nut house, relaxes, and then check himself out. Every time they give him new medication. I wonder more if he just checks out of society because it is so fucked up. Is it really him that is crazy? Or is it the rest of us who go on day after day pretending we’re okay. I envy him sometimes. He is real.

Then there are these friends of mine–the homeless ones–who asked today how Becky is doing with her new job. Joe, who misses Becky and the dogs and wants to know if we can come by on Saturday just because he misses them. For no other reason–he just wants to see the dogs and Bec. Joe, who fed six people yesterday because the food pantries in Muncie are out of food. Why can’t we all see what is going on? Why do I feel like so many times people who we all think are freaks are the ones who know what is really going on? What life is really about?

I worry about deep critical readings of Victorian texts in hopes that somehow my reading of a one hundred plus year old book will change society. I appreciated one my professor’s candor the other day, when she shared about her experience with Titanic the movie. She was more moved by the fact that nothing has changed. The poor people died on the Titanic, because there weren’t enough lifeboats. The poor people died in New Orleans because there still aren’t enough “lifeboats.” Why in almost a hundred years has nothing changed. She wondered out loud, what is the purpose in all of this? Are we changing anything?

I wonder, will all of my work in school, in a hundred years, have changed anything? What is the purpose in all of this?

On May 1, 1992, the third day of the Los Angeles riots, [Rodney] King appeared in public before television news cameras to appeal for calm and plead for peace, asking, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

I asked the same thing tonight as I read the new edition of the Christian Century, which had an article discussing the status of juvenile offender in the US. I was hoping to link to it, but the newest issue of the Century isn’t online yet. While I read the story I was reminded, I am sure intentionally, of the fiasco going on in Jena, Louisiana right now. I literally wept as I realized that many of the children incarcerated are not being rehabilitated but are being indoctrinated into a way of life that is violent and harsh. No wonder there are so many repeat offenders, we are literally training up criminals, startign with a disproportionate number of young Black men. The article said that 16 percent of the total juvenile population in the US is African-American, yet 44 percent of the incarcerated offenders are African-American. How sick.

On a good note, and sort of in the same vein. People must be doing some things right in Muncie because I saw two guys that I remember teaching at Garfield on the front page of the paper. As juniors, they had already passed their ISTEP and were signing up for the SATs. I also bumped into a kid who I rememberand whose younger brother was in one of my reading groups. I was so proud that Chadwick was at BSU as a freshman. I am proud of these young men for shutting down the sterotypes. They all grew up on the southside, they are all respectable young men, and they all are making something of themselves. I am sure that their success is not attributed to the miraculous wonders of the Muncie police department’s preventative efforts. There success is fostered in their families, their communities, their churches, themselves. Wow, how amazing to watch these guys make it out!

I also read Leonard Pitts’ column (Click here for the Leonard Pitts article.) in the Muncie paper. I keep wondering when the Muncie paper will drop Pitts’ column because it is too controversial, but I suppose they have to keep something for those of us who like to labor under the delusion of multiculturalism. I am sure that is why they keep Candorville, which is nowhere as smart or funny as Boondocks, but I’ll take what I can get. They took away Doonesbury except Sundays, so I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Anyway. Whenever I can, I will post the article about the juvenile offenders.