Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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in the still-filling some of the the faculty won't .at this. A few dispirited Children surface, some more by the blast of time Granny glasses. Ec- hairdos. Intense. Vin- dicated. He's come! Out here in deserto theirs has been a lonely vigil but at last the prophet has blundered by. The question, I guess, is what the hell do they do out here between apparitions? Parking lot filled with Saabs and Volvos for the first time ever. You guys all get those blue jackets in the same store? Hush. Well, for Gosh sakes . . . He's a little old man. In a blazer, it you can believe it. And khakis. But they're not cooooootton. . . b' And now there's Bunting: Mr, Vonnegut grew up in one of those funny-shaped Mid-western states that none of us could trace to save his soul. Then some Germans caught him and shut him in a meatlocker. Mr. Vonnegut watch- ed the slow decomposition of a nation he dearly loved and he began to yell. He yelled and yelled. He yelled that people were silly and vicious. People yelled back that Mr. Vonnegut was silly and vicious. One thing is certain: either Mr. Vonnegut or the rest of us must be silly and vicious. It is pro- bably too much to hope for that it is Mr. Vonnegut. Well, we pretty 'well know he's going to take a swat at us, don't we? So when he says we are all Republicans and all gun nuts and all preparers for war - whatever that is - we really aren't surprised. We take it about as well as might legitimately be expected of us. We titter and cast some sidelong glances at the most ob- viously refractory among us and dle our palms gingerly and who he will light into the next one he lam- a tad farther from can enjoy it a lit- He seems to think joe and we can disagree, can't pad a. W I UHT VONNEGUT JH. HOW TO GET A JOB LIKE MINE sv, , I-ff- A 14. At 7:15 pm the auditorium is still filling for the 8:00 Vonnegut lecture. He snuffles and harrumphs into his mustache. Shrugs those shoulders and bats at the air with the back of a hand. l'm sorry, he says, I had no idea. l'll try to make it up to you. Applause. Ap- plause. Applause. Doesn't sound like much to read that, but the old curmudgeon waltzes but in front of two thousand people and mumbles that he's sorry and has them howling. He says the Indians are dumb. The computers are dumb. The governments are dumb. Shakespeare is dumb. Don't think he likes Mailer or Styron much, either. He does whisper about the Nobel, doesn't he? Singer and Bellow. And. . .? He's scratching on the blackboard. Uh! Oh! If he draws an asterisk, a batch of little old ladies are going to bolt for the door. I read Breakfast. Ah! lt's O.K. Some kind of graph. Claims it's geometry, and so now he's got all the analneurotics with him. Sinusoidal curve: he says tha's Cinderella. Graph of Y : O: he says that's Hamlet. Hrummmph. Snuffle. Stoop-shouldered scuf- fling around. We don't want to hear about Indiana. Telling us how dumb people who operate machines are. lf he honks off all the gun nuts and computer lackies in this audience, ain't going to be many left to cheer. See a couple jaws gone hard already. Sullen, scowling, arms folded across heaving chests. We paid for this? Uh, oh! He's worked one of them into a lather. Some guy is squawking about better living through chemistry and since the trains run on time and your dog has all the cheese he craves what's the problem after all? Von- negut ain't sure. Last display of chemistry he saw was fire bombs over Dresden, Germany, the Florence of the Elbe. Harrumph. Snuffle. Only one person ever lived better because of that sorry episode, he says: Me. I made about S3 for every man, woman, and child burned, blown, or crushed to death that day. Might know he'd have to talk about penises, too. Titters. Sidelong glances. What the hell did you think he'd talk about to I I I I I I I I I I

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an all-male school? That soggy lit- tle shard of flesh is about all the guy has in common with us gun- nut Republican fascist phallocrat lepers out here. He says the big worry of his generation was how big is enough? Lucky nobody out here worries about stuff like that any more. We're light years beyond all that. Harrumph. Snuffle. Everybody is on the edge of his seat. He's going to say it. He's going to say the word. You know which one. That one. The one they burn up all his books for. Going to do it. Two- hundred and umpty-ump years on the hit parade and nobody's ever said that word here. Lots of sighs of relief when about the lowest of his tide - something about breaking-wind washes over us and it's done. Whew! Waves a sheaf of rumpled paper at us. You want to print this? Hrummmph. Snuffle. You bet we do. He talks like that, too. He goes back to Kilgore Trout. Safe Vonnegut is special guest at a wine and cheese gathering given in his honor by the faculty of the college. tlf. all ,h 1. A ,FA ,f-5-1' . ., 2 'NA :ki M t .wh ug ., .ws ul: -M dll'-Xfi'-'ff-L 5. . ' HQ! 21:Fy,Q::::g.ftpggi..1AxlQ:v.. f l tfft11AL'5'21: r f 1 P r . i t1J'.,.:r. -T 554:13-iiiy.. mttgittg -S - QA.-. . . -n.-t...'..f.-s 7' '- N ' .3 ground. He's rambling on about man-woman hours now or something like that. Sure. Sure. Now he's thumping this preparers for war business. Hrummmph. Shuffle. War is bad. People who do war are bad. People who think war are bad. People who say war are bad. Applause. Applause. Applause. This man is a powerful presence. He reminds us ot other great men who have used short words and cut into the human heart with them. Carved them into its tissue. The human heart is a muscle, don't you know. lt takes sharp words to cut into it. And there is pain. And little gratitude. But sometimes that fat- and-fiber-swaddled organ needs work. l'm sorry. Don't know about you, but he signed my Deadeye Dick with an asterisk. And so it goes. - Dr. Alan Farrell Associate Professor of Modern Languages I 1 .1 -. 1 .J - 4- I, Ht