Nicole With The ACTUAL Typewriter Vonnegut Used In The '70s
Nicole messin' around with the first paragraph of a new short story on a REPLICA of Vonnegut's '70s Typewriter, in a replica of his writing room.
Last Friday afternoon (Good Friday, the Christians call it; though I suspect the crucified man himself might have used a somewhat more colorful adjective), I made a pilgrimage of the most sacrilegious variety. While the faithful spent their holy day in church, I traveled up to Indianapolis to the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library (www.vonnegutlibrary.org)
Although he spent the vast majority of his writing career in New York, Vonnegut (a one-time honorary President of the American Humanist Association, environmentalist, and scribbler of not a few books of dark satire) was born and raised in Indianapolis. Thus, Indy is home to this small — but important — working monument to the man, his fiction, and his activism.
I’m not a native Hoosier. I grew up in Maryland. But I do take pride in the fact that Hoosiers are actually doing something to build and preserve our cultural infrastructure (while Maryland, last I heard, couldn’t get its act together to keep its Edgar Allan Poe House open). The Vonnegut Memorial Library is a stellar example of what can be done with a relatively small space. It deserves support.
So, I’m donating all of my royalties from May’s sales of How To Eat Fried Furries to the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, in hopes that it will give it some well-deserved attention and maybe even make a meaningful dent in their electric bill. Every little bit helps, you know. My friend Steve Lowe (another Hoosier author of weird fiction) has also lent his support to this effort, and will be doing a similar fundraiser in May.
Take a gander at some other cool pics from my visit…and set aside ten bucks to buy How To Eat Fried Furries, and another ten to buy Steve’s book, Muscle Memory in May! (P.S. — I plan on posting more pics in the near future).
The Tombstone Reads: "Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal"
Vonnegut, The Environmentalist..
