March 28, 2025 • 20 mins
Tracy talks about the difficulty of finding English-language writing about another strike she'd like to cover. Holly talks about why Kurt Vonnegut appeals so deeply to teenagers.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Frye. This weeep. We talked about the nineteen forty
six Oakland General strike. You sure did. I do want
(00:22):
to say again, I would love at some point to
do an episode on the women's day off in Iceland
in nineteen seventy five. The very basics are around easily
accessible in English. I feel like that episode would be
best if we had a lot more detail about, like
how it was organized and how it was planned, because
it was not a situation where somebody said ladies were
(00:46):
not working this day right then, and then like someone
flipped a switch, the women didn't work that day. Like
there's a whole organizing and planning effort, and the details
of that I think do exist in icelandic so much
in English, though, at least at this moment when we're recording.
So while this episode was something that I chose in
(01:07):
part because we cannot do this one, I was also
really interested in this on its own merits. To be
very clear, I was really interested in how much of
the focus was on workers in retail trying to organize
because we still have a lot of workers in retail
and a lot of workers in food service trying to
(01:29):
organize today in the world that we're living in. And
then also it being the last really major general strike
before Taft Hartley, I wanted to tell that story. Also,
something I found frustrating and the research process of this
(01:50):
was I found a lot of quotes from people who
were active or were leaders in the other unions that
went on strike to support the retail work during the
general strike. I really did not find people talking to
those retail workers and their union leaders. I think I
found at most one or two quotes that came up
(02:15):
in the context of a documentary, and then when I
went back to try to find them to be like,
can I find out more about this person, I had
lost track of where specifically I had found those couple
of quotes, and everything else was primarily quotes from people
in other unions who like that's part of the story too.
(02:39):
But I do wish we had I had I had
been able to find more things from the retail workers
whose strike really started this whole thing. I have a
theory that had a lot more women in that one,
right didn't the retail workers have more women, So it
was probably like, we want to talk to menfolk, not
(03:01):
the lab Well, so yeah, a lot of the when
I did find like statements from the union, a lot
of times they were statements from the attorney who was
a man, or they were statements from management from the
store who were men, or they were statements that were
sort of a statement from the union that did not
(03:22):
name a specific person as a spokesperson. Right, So yeah,
I like gender was specifically a part of it, and
the fact that this was a union effort that was
largely led by women was also something that made this,
you know, really interesting story to me because a lot
of the stories that we have told about labor rights
(03:44):
and unionizing and strikes, a lot of those have been
unions that were either primarily or exclusively men at the time.
So we've done a lot of strikes about railroad workers
and auto workers, and we've talked about how all of
those strikes were only possible because of the efforts of women,
(04:08):
sometimes intentionally organized women's auxiliaries to do things like support
the striking workers, keep everybody fed, keep everybody sheltered and clothed,
and all of that while the strike was going on.
But we have not had as many episodes that are
like about the women themselves at their workplace organizing. Right.
(04:28):
The one thing I can think of off the top
of my head is the London match Girls strike, which
we have covered on the show before. Yeah, this is
another one of those where I'm it makes me go, yeah,
we haven't made any progress. Yeah, Yeah, I'm not laughing
(04:51):
that we haven't made any progress. I'm laughing at the
absurdity of the human condition. You know, We'll keep trying. Yeah,
we'll keep trying. Having been through the whole process of
organizing a workplace and bargaining our first union contract, sometimes
when I read about, you know, historical union efforts, sometimes
(05:15):
I'm like, yep, that feels so familiar. I will say
that in the this wave of strikes that happened in
the nineteen forties overall did not have as much violence
as some of the earlier strike waves that we have
talked about, Because we've talked a lot about ones in
which the National Guard or some other force was like
(05:39):
called out to deal with this strike and that it
led to injuries and even deaths. Right, this one did
not seem to have an escalation of violence, even though
there were some unfortunate parts of it. Yeah, I read
or I got access to a paper that talked a
little bit about why that is, and after reading it,
(06:00):
I was like, I don't feel like I feel like
this was kind of speculative in some of its reasoning
about why this particular wave of strikes did not have
the level of violence that some earlier ones did. So
I did not try to get into that in the
episode itself because I did not feel like I had
(06:21):
a good that becomes like a whole other sociology examination
of like group behavior and leveraging of power that's not
necessarily about the labor movement anymore, right, Right, There's some
greater societal patterns involved. So yeah, I am glad that
(06:47):
I got this one up to the top of my list.
Me too. We had our live show from Indiana Comic
Con about Kurt Vonnaget this week. Yes, yes, oh, Kurt Vonneguet. Yeah,
(07:08):
you blessing upon us all. Yeah, it was really really
nice to revisit his work. In preparation for this, I
finally got to see Robert White's documentary about him that
he had been working on for decades on and off
as they became close friends, which was very moving. Yeah,
(07:29):
it was lovely. I'm now re listening to all of
his stuff in order on audiobook, so it's just a
I'm in mckurt era apparently again. One of the things
we mentioned going into that show was how a lot
of people find Kurt Vonnegut as teenagers, right and how
(07:50):
they really connect to him, And I mentioned it in
the show when we record this. I haven't heard the
final edit, so I don't know if it's still in
there or not, but I will invoke a completely other
author in why I think that's the case. Okay, there
was a great interview with shel Silverstein that I think
ran on NPR a while back where he said someone
(08:13):
asked him why do kids love your books so much?
And he said, because I don't bs them, sure, like
I'm straightforward with kids. I don't lie to them ever,
I think he said bys but in the actual, you know,
setout version, which would include swearing. And I think Kravoniget
is the same like for teenagers that come to him.
(08:33):
It feels like an adult in the literary world who
is very direct and does not mess around and tells
the truth, even through very fantastical stories. Yeah, which is
very it's very nice to have to not unpick like, oh,
the allegory of blah blah blah, which is not to
(08:54):
say any of that is bad in literature, but when
you're a teenager to be like, oh, this is a
very decorated literary person and he's just directly telling me
what is going on right on and sharing some very
real truths, it's very refreshing. Yeah, yeah, I loved it.
I did not happen to discover Kurt Vonnegut as a teen,
(09:16):
and I could not one hundred percent confidently tell you
whether it was college or immediately post college, like in
very early twenties, very first living on my own land.
But I don't think I was a teen. I don't
remember reading any Vonnegut in high school, but I do
(09:40):
remember by the early twenties years, like I vividly remember
reading Slaughterhouse five for the first time and just being
enraptured by what I was reading. Yeah. Yeah, I carried
around a copy of Kat's Cradle I think for two
years straight in high school. Now I am like it
was always in my per to the point that it
(10:00):
was like a joke because it was one of those
small size, mass market paperbacks, like the famous cover that
everybody sees that's just the the the orange with the
art on it. And then I also had the similar
series Breakfast Champions, also jangled around in my purser backpack
most of the time, and then Slaughterhouse Five for quite
(10:21):
a while. One of the things I love about his
work is how he how interconnected A lot of it is.
It's not none of the words that we would associate
with someone who is creating a whole fictional world, like
a George R. R. Martin or you know, even a
(10:42):
George Lucas or even a you know, I'm forgetting the
name of the woman who wrote the Twilight books because
those are not my jam But anyway, like that idea
of like world building and like we're putting together this
entire world and everything, and his did that, but nobody
was ever really talking about it, all right, And part
of it was I think also that he self inserted
(11:04):
quite literally, right in some ways, Billy Pilgrim is his
self insert and Slaughterhouse five as he works through the
trauma of having gone through the war. But then there
are a lot of times where it's like, Hi, it's Kurt.
I bet you're wondering why I wrote this this way,
let me tell you, And and I think that is
(11:24):
wildly charming. Yeah. I had a discussion with someone during
the convention, like over dinner one of my friends, where
we were debating over whether some of the things that
Kurt Vonnaget said in his lifetime come off as sexist
or not. Okay, and I see how many could be
(11:46):
interpreted that way. He would talk a lot about whether
women were pretty or not, blah blah blah, and like
you know how he was secretly in love with almost
every woman he worked with. But it never felt disrespectful
in the way that I associate sexism with. And it
was never super crass, you know what I mean. It
was never like so I feel like no, but but
(12:11):
but I see where people could get that way, and
I'm not gonna you know, yeah, yeah, ever, you know,
tell somebody they're wrong for their interpretation. We did not
talk about in the episode that we recorded it Indiana
Comic Con because you have limited time, you know, even
more so like when we record our show, if we
run long, fine, I cannot run long when you have
(12:32):
more panelists coming into the room. The room, Yeah, I
get the heck out of there. So we didn't get
time to talk about Ida Young, which is a pity,
and I feel like she just would have merited more
time than a quick This is a person, but she
was a person that Kurt vonna Get invoked many times
(12:53):
in interviews as being the person who raised him and
gave him his sense of morality and his ideology about
always caring about others. And that was a black woman
who was the housekeeper in his family home and the cook.
And her name was Ada Young. And she even in
(13:15):
the Vonnegut Museum and Library, which is in Indianapolis and
is a really lovely space. There's a whole area that's
just about Ida's influence on him and how important that was.
And I really love that she gets included in that story.
And like I said, there's not enough time and a
short thing to like go down the rabbit hole of
(13:37):
who she was and whatnot. So I want to do
more research on her and see what I can find,
because you know, surely she had a life outside of
the Vonna Get home. I always marvel at how in
(13:58):
interviews he would say all of the horrible things that
happened to him were fine, they didn't really bother him.
And I'm like, have you read your own books? Maybe
yes they did, They're on the page. Yeah, there's a
really good interview in that Whitey documentary, which is pretty
easy to get a hold of. I think I found
(14:19):
it on Amazon Prime, but there are other places you
can find it as well, where he's talking about some
of those experiences and he's saying the words of like
it's fine, it was all fine. It didn't really bother
me at the time, but his eyes like tell a
whole other story. He kind of gets the thousand yard
stare and he looks very morose for a moment before
(14:42):
he picks up and makes a joke. And I'm marvel
that he never cared to let on that his whole
life was kind of like his whole career really was
him dealing with trauma with trauma and the only way
he knew which was to write about it as like
another person's event, just its own sociological fascination. YEAHR Vonniet,
(15:05):
I love you. I unlike what happens sometimes when one
of us has done an interview and the other one
was not there for the interview. This is a case
where I actually have listened to the episode before coming
in here to record the behind the scenes. I really
enjoyed listening to this. I enjoyed how clearly you and
(15:26):
Brian are both talking about someone who's work you love
so dearly. Yeah, and we're also interested in, like telling
the truth of his story as a person. I liked
it a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's a fun one
to talk about because he was such a character and
I certainly would not say he you know, he was
a human, Like I said, there were discussions about whether
(15:48):
or not the things some of the things he said
were sexist at the con, but he he was so
focused on wanting to find ways to teach people the
ideas of like loving your fellow man should be your
highest calling. Ever that he's a nice one to talk
about in that regard, Yeah, there's no surprise. Oh and
(16:09):
he actually, you know, was a racist and kicked people like,
there's none of those So he's a nice you know,
it's always nice when someone that you admire turns out
to not be a monstrous jerk. I have some issues
with what happened with him and Jane, sure, but that's
not my marriage to have issues, So I don't know.
(16:33):
I wasn't there. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch interviews with
his kids, right and have them talk about him, and
how you know they we mentioned it in the show
that like his daughters were like, I had no idea
what he went through in the war until he published
Slaughterhouse Five. We just didn't know. He just came home
and there's a mention of him. I think I mentioned
(16:56):
it in the episode as an aside, and one of
the biog that I read where it was like he
tried to tell someone immediately after he got back from
the war about a man that had been shot for
allegedly I think he took something that he shouldn't have
or whatever, and he just couldn't and he never talked
about it with anybody ever again other than through his typewriter,
(17:19):
which is pretty right fascinating. I spent an unconscionable amount
of money in the Vonnegut Library and Museum gift shop. Yeah,
he said. I don't know if that made it into
the final cut of the of the episode or not,
because that I have not heard. I've only heard the
raw audio of the panel, but I was very I
was like, what all did Holly buy? I bought many
(17:41):
T shirts. I bought a pint glass that has the
quote about I have a problem with alcohol and the
telephone at night. I bought a really beautiful book that
his daughter Edith has put together that's the love letters
between him and Jane from the nineteen fouries when they
were when he was at war and they were very young,
(18:03):
which is really beautiful. I haven't gotten very far into
it yet. I got a pen, I got a pack
of cards I got. I feel like I bought other
things that I'm not remembering. I was just very grabby,
handsy because we also I was trying to be conscious
of time because we did have to get over there
in the morning, look around, get back to the convention center,
(18:26):
and you know, we had multiple panels that day that
we had to do, so I was trying to drag
my feets. But what a delight. I want to go
back and spend more time there because it's lovely and
they have a cute cafe in there. They have like
a little lounge where they do book events sometimes. It's
a very cool space. So highly recommend to anybody that's
in the area and is interested in Vonnegut, or even
(18:48):
if you're not, you're just curious. They do a lot
of fun interactive things there, like prompts that are based
on the writing of Vonnegut, to like get kids involved
in expressing themselves. And it's just a cool space. I
love it, so kudos to the people that run it.
I think that's it. I've probably waxed rapsotic enough. O.
(19:09):
Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I love you. I hope you know.
I hope if there's an afterlife. I hope if you're
on trel Fammador right now, you feel that people love
you since you experienced time, apparently in different ways than
the rest of us. I like to think of him
out there somewhere, just not here. If you are headed
(19:30):
into your weekend, I hope that you can take time
to read something that you love, or visit a museum
that might delight you and spark ideas in your mind
and just make you feel a little more at peace
with the world if you do not have time off.
I really hope everyone abides by Vonaget's ideology of training
people kindly. We all need it. Everybody be cool to
(19:51):
one another. It's the only way we're going to get through.
We will be right back here tomorrow at the classic
episode and on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(20:11):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Frye. This weeep. We talked about the nineteen forty
six Oakland General strike. You sure did. I do want
(00:22):
to say again, I would love at some point to
do an episode on the women's day off in Iceland
in nineteen seventy five. The very basics are around easily
accessible in English. I feel like that episode would be
best if we had a lot more detail about, like
how it was organized and how it was planned, because
it was not a situation where somebody said ladies were
(00:46):
not working this day right then, and then like someone
flipped a switch, the women didn't work that day. Like
there's a whole organizing and planning effort, and the details
of that I think do exist in icelandic so much
in English, though, at least at this moment when we're recording.
So while this episode was something that I chose in
(01:07):
part because we cannot do this one, I was also
really interested in this on its own merits. To be
very clear, I was really interested in how much of
the focus was on workers in retail trying to organize
because we still have a lot of workers in retail
and a lot of workers in food service trying to
(01:29):
organize today in the world that we're living in. And
then also it being the last really major general strike
before Taft Hartley, I wanted to tell that story. Also,
something I found frustrating and the research process of this
(01:50):
was I found a lot of quotes from people who
were active or were leaders in the other unions that
went on strike to support the retail work during the
general strike. I really did not find people talking to
those retail workers and their union leaders. I think I
found at most one or two quotes that came up
(02:15):
in the context of a documentary, and then when I
went back to try to find them to be like,
can I find out more about this person, I had
lost track of where specifically I had found those couple
of quotes, and everything else was primarily quotes from people
in other unions who like that's part of the story too.
(02:39):
But I do wish we had I had I had
been able to find more things from the retail workers
whose strike really started this whole thing. I have a
theory that had a lot more women in that one,
right didn't the retail workers have more women, So it
was probably like, we want to talk to menfolk, not
(03:01):
the lab Well, so yeah, a lot of the when
I did find like statements from the union, a lot
of times they were statements from the attorney who was
a man, or they were statements from management from the
store who were men, or they were statements that were
sort of a statement from the union that did not
(03:22):
name a specific person as a spokesperson. Right, So yeah,
I like gender was specifically a part of it, and
the fact that this was a union effort that was
largely led by women was also something that made this,
you know, really interesting story to me because a lot
of the stories that we have told about labor rights
(03:44):
and unionizing and strikes, a lot of those have been
unions that were either primarily or exclusively men at the time.
So we've done a lot of strikes about railroad workers
and auto workers, and we've talked about how all of
those strikes were only possible because of the efforts of women,
(04:08):
sometimes intentionally organized women's auxiliaries to do things like support
the striking workers, keep everybody fed, keep everybody sheltered and clothed,
and all of that while the strike was going on.
But we have not had as many episodes that are
like about the women themselves at their workplace organizing. Right.
(04:28):
The one thing I can think of off the top
of my head is the London match Girls strike, which
we have covered on the show before. Yeah, this is
another one of those where I'm it makes me go, yeah,
we haven't made any progress. Yeah, Yeah, I'm not laughing
(04:51):
that we haven't made any progress. I'm laughing at the
absurdity of the human condition. You know, We'll keep trying. Yeah,
we'll keep trying. Having been through the whole process of
organizing a workplace and bargaining our first union contract, sometimes
when I read about, you know, historical union efforts, sometimes
(05:15):
I'm like, yep, that feels so familiar. I will say
that in the this wave of strikes that happened in
the nineteen forties overall did not have as much violence
as some of the earlier strike waves that we have
talked about, Because we've talked a lot about ones in
which the National Guard or some other force was like
(05:39):
called out to deal with this strike and that it
led to injuries and even deaths. Right, this one did
not seem to have an escalation of violence, even though
there were some unfortunate parts of it. Yeah, I read
or I got access to a paper that talked a
little bit about why that is, and after reading it,
(06:00):
I was like, I don't feel like I feel like
this was kind of speculative in some of its reasoning
about why this particular wave of strikes did not have
the level of violence that some earlier ones did. So
I did not try to get into that in the
episode itself because I did not feel like I had
(06:21):
a good that becomes like a whole other sociology examination
of like group behavior and leveraging of power that's not
necessarily about the labor movement anymore, right, Right, There's some
greater societal patterns involved. So yeah, I am glad that
(06:47):
I got this one up to the top of my list.
Me too. We had our live show from Indiana Comic
Con about Kurt Vonnaget this week. Yes, yes, oh, Kurt Vonneguet. Yeah,
(07:08):
you blessing upon us all. Yeah, it was really really
nice to revisit his work. In preparation for this, I
finally got to see Robert White's documentary about him that
he had been working on for decades on and off
as they became close friends, which was very moving. Yeah,
(07:29):
it was lovely. I'm now re listening to all of
his stuff in order on audiobook, so it's just a
I'm in mckurt era apparently again. One of the things
we mentioned going into that show was how a lot
of people find Kurt Vonnegut as teenagers, right and how
(07:50):
they really connect to him, And I mentioned it in
the show when we record this. I haven't heard the
final edit, so I don't know if it's still in
there or not, but I will invoke a completely other
author in why I think that's the case. Okay, there
was a great interview with shel Silverstein that I think
ran on NPR a while back where he said someone
(08:13):
asked him why do kids love your books so much?
And he said, because I don't bs them, sure, like
I'm straightforward with kids. I don't lie to them ever,
I think he said bys but in the actual, you know,
setout version, which would include swearing. And I think Kravoniget
is the same like for teenagers that come to him.
(08:33):
It feels like an adult in the literary world who
is very direct and does not mess around and tells
the truth, even through very fantastical stories. Yeah, which is
very it's very nice to have to not unpick like, oh,
the allegory of blah blah blah, which is not to
(08:54):
say any of that is bad in literature, but when
you're a teenager to be like, oh, this is a
very decorated literary person and he's just directly telling me
what is going on right on and sharing some very
real truths, it's very refreshing. Yeah, yeah, I loved it.
I did not happen to discover Kurt Vonnegut as a teen,
(09:16):
and I could not one hundred percent confidently tell you
whether it was college or immediately post college, like in
very early twenties, very first living on my own land.
But I don't think I was a teen. I don't
remember reading any Vonnegut in high school, but I do
(09:40):
remember by the early twenties years, like I vividly remember
reading Slaughterhouse five for the first time and just being
enraptured by what I was reading. Yeah. Yeah, I carried
around a copy of Kat's Cradle I think for two
years straight in high school. Now I am like it
was always in my per to the point that it
(10:00):
was like a joke because it was one of those
small size, mass market paperbacks, like the famous cover that
everybody sees that's just the the the orange with the
art on it. And then I also had the similar
series Breakfast Champions, also jangled around in my purser backpack
most of the time, and then Slaughterhouse Five for quite
(10:21):
a while. One of the things I love about his
work is how he how interconnected A lot of it is.
It's not none of the words that we would associate
with someone who is creating a whole fictional world, like
a George R. R. Martin or you know, even a
(10:42):
George Lucas or even a you know, I'm forgetting the
name of the woman who wrote the Twilight books because
those are not my jam But anyway, like that idea
of like world building and like we're putting together this
entire world and everything, and his did that, but nobody
was ever really talking about it, all right, And part
of it was I think also that he self inserted
(11:04):
quite literally, right in some ways, Billy Pilgrim is his
self insert and Slaughterhouse five as he works through the
trauma of having gone through the war. But then there
are a lot of times where it's like, Hi, it's Kurt.
I bet you're wondering why I wrote this this way,
let me tell you, And and I think that is
(11:24):
wildly charming. Yeah. I had a discussion with someone during
the convention, like over dinner one of my friends, where
we were debating over whether some of the things that
Kurt Vonnaget said in his lifetime come off as sexist
or not. Okay, and I see how many could be
(11:46):
interpreted that way. He would talk a lot about whether
women were pretty or not, blah blah blah, and like
you know how he was secretly in love with almost
every woman he worked with. But it never felt disrespectful
in the way that I associate sexism with. And it
was never super crass, you know what I mean. It
was never like so I feel like no, but but
(12:11):
but I see where people could get that way, and
I'm not gonna you know, yeah, yeah, ever, you know,
tell somebody they're wrong for their interpretation. We did not
talk about in the episode that we recorded it Indiana
Comic Con because you have limited time, you know, even
more so like when we record our show, if we
run long, fine, I cannot run long when you have
(12:32):
more panelists coming into the room. The room, Yeah, I
get the heck out of there. So we didn't get
time to talk about Ida Young, which is a pity,
and I feel like she just would have merited more
time than a quick This is a person, but she
was a person that Kurt vonna Get invoked many times
(12:53):
in interviews as being the person who raised him and
gave him his sense of morality and his ideology about
always caring about others. And that was a black woman
who was the housekeeper in his family home and the cook.
And her name was Ada Young. And she even in
(13:15):
the Vonnegut Museum and Library, which is in Indianapolis and
is a really lovely space. There's a whole area that's
just about Ida's influence on him and how important that was.
And I really love that she gets included in that story.
And like I said, there's not enough time and a
short thing to like go down the rabbit hole of
(13:37):
who she was and whatnot. So I want to do
more research on her and see what I can find,
because you know, surely she had a life outside of
the Vonna Get home. I always marvel at how in
(13:58):
interviews he would say all of the horrible things that
happened to him were fine, they didn't really bother him.
And I'm like, have you read your own books? Maybe
yes they did, They're on the page. Yeah, there's a
really good interview in that Whitey documentary, which is pretty
easy to get a hold of. I think I found
(14:19):
it on Amazon Prime, but there are other places you
can find it as well, where he's talking about some
of those experiences and he's saying the words of like
it's fine, it was all fine. It didn't really bother
me at the time, but his eyes like tell a
whole other story. He kind of gets the thousand yard
stare and he looks very morose for a moment before
(14:42):
he picks up and makes a joke. And I'm marvel
that he never cared to let on that his whole
life was kind of like his whole career really was
him dealing with trauma with trauma and the only way
he knew which was to write about it as like
another person's event, just its own sociological fascination. YEAHR Vonniet,
(15:05):
I love you. I unlike what happens sometimes when one
of us has done an interview and the other one
was not there for the interview. This is a case
where I actually have listened to the episode before coming
in here to record the behind the scenes. I really
enjoyed listening to this. I enjoyed how clearly you and
(15:26):
Brian are both talking about someone who's work you love
so dearly. Yeah, and we're also interested in, like telling
the truth of his story as a person. I liked
it a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's a fun one
to talk about because he was such a character and
I certainly would not say he you know, he was
a human, Like I said, there were discussions about whether
(15:48):
or not the things some of the things he said
were sexist at the con, but he he was so
focused on wanting to find ways to teach people the
ideas of like loving your fellow man should be your
highest calling. Ever that he's a nice one to talk
about in that regard, Yeah, there's no surprise. Oh and
(16:09):
he actually, you know, was a racist and kicked people like,
there's none of those So he's a nice you know,
it's always nice when someone that you admire turns out
to not be a monstrous jerk. I have some issues
with what happened with him and Jane, sure, but that's
not my marriage to have issues, So I don't know.
(16:33):
I wasn't there. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch interviews with
his kids, right and have them talk about him, and
how you know they we mentioned it in the show
that like his daughters were like, I had no idea
what he went through in the war until he published
Slaughterhouse Five. We just didn't know. He just came home
and there's a mention of him. I think I mentioned
(16:56):
it in the episode as an aside, and one of
the biog that I read where it was like he
tried to tell someone immediately after he got back from
the war about a man that had been shot for
allegedly I think he took something that he shouldn't have
or whatever, and he just couldn't and he never talked
about it with anybody ever again other than through his typewriter,
(17:19):
which is pretty right fascinating. I spent an unconscionable amount
of money in the Vonnegut Library and Museum gift shop. Yeah,
he said. I don't know if that made it into
the final cut of the of the episode or not,
because that I have not heard. I've only heard the
raw audio of the panel, but I was very I
was like, what all did Holly buy? I bought many
(17:41):
T shirts. I bought a pint glass that has the
quote about I have a problem with alcohol and the
telephone at night. I bought a really beautiful book that
his daughter Edith has put together that's the love letters
between him and Jane from the nineteen fouries when they
were when he was at war and they were very young,
(18:03):
which is really beautiful. I haven't gotten very far into
it yet. I got a pen, I got a pack
of cards I got. I feel like I bought other
things that I'm not remembering. I was just very grabby,
handsy because we also I was trying to be conscious
of time because we did have to get over there
in the morning, look around, get back to the convention center,
(18:26):
and you know, we had multiple panels that day that
we had to do, so I was trying to drag
my feets. But what a delight. I want to go
back and spend more time there because it's lovely and
they have a cute cafe in there. They have like
a little lounge where they do book events sometimes. It's
a very cool space. So highly recommend to anybody that's
in the area and is interested in Vonnegut, or even
(18:48):
if you're not, you're just curious. They do a lot
of fun interactive things there, like prompts that are based
on the writing of Vonnegut, to like get kids involved
in expressing themselves. And it's just a cool space. I
love it, so kudos to the people that run it.
I think that's it. I've probably waxed rapsotic enough. O.
(19:09):
Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I love you. I hope you know.
I hope if there's an afterlife. I hope if you're
on trel Fammador right now, you feel that people love
you since you experienced time, apparently in different ways than
the rest of us. I like to think of him
out there somewhere, just not here. If you are headed
(19:30):
into your weekend, I hope that you can take time
to read something that you love, or visit a museum
that might delight you and spark ideas in your mind
and just make you feel a little more at peace
with the world if you do not have time off.
I really hope everyone abides by Vonaget's ideology of training
people kindly. We all need it. Everybody be cool to
(19:51):
one another. It's the only way we're going to get through.
We will be right back here tomorrow at the classic
episode and on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(20:11):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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