The Brilliant Mechanical Man

These past couple weeks have been a little crazy with the end of the semester upon us, me being out of town last weekend (Who thinks to travel the weekend before finals? Dis fool.), and an onslaught of deadlines that will. not. stop. However I found a couple minutes to spare, and I'm sharing some words of the great Kurt Vonnegut, that my friend and forever Vonnegutphile suggested I post. I couldn't agree more.

INTERVIEWER: Let’s talk about the women in your books.

VONNEGUT: There aren’t any. No real women, no love.

INTERVIEWER: Is this worth expounding upon?

VONNEGUT:
It’s a mechanical problem. So much of what happens in storytelling is mechanical, has to do with the technical problems of how to make a story work. Cowboy stories and policeman stories end in shoot-outs, for example, because shoot-outs are the most reliable mechanisms for making such stories end. There is nothing like death to say what is always such an artificial thing to say: “The end.” I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don’t want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that’s the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.

INTERVIEWER: So you keep love out.

VONNEGUT:
I have other things I want to talk about. Ralph Ellison did the same thing in Invisible Man. If the hero in that magnificent book had found somebody worth loving, somebody who was crazy about him, that would have been the end of the story. Céline did the same thing in Journey to the End of Night: he excluded the possibility of true and final love—so that the story could go on and on and on.

INTERVIEWER: Not many writers talk about the mechanics of stories.

VONNEGUT:
I am such a barbarous technocrat that I believe they can be tinkered with like Model T Fords.

INTERVIEWER: To what end?

VONNEGUT: To give the reader pleasure.

INTERVIEWER: Will you ever write a love story, do you think?

VONNEGUT:
Maybe. I lead a loving life. I really do. Even when I’m leading that loving life, though, and it’s going so well, I sometimes find myself thinking, “My goodness, couldn’t we talk about something else for just a little while?”
♥

Happy Finals week to everybody studying! I'll resurface soon.