Jonathan Denn said: > Someone is editing Kurt Vonnegut letters for publication. This was > online today... I'm struck with "editor" meaning "voter" and > "stories" as "candidates" > "...I invite you to read the fifteen tales ..."
I believe whole civilizations have been voted into existence by this method, more or less. The candidate stories for the collection are myths of a cherished past (as in The Iliad), or utopias of a hopeful future (New Testament) or both (Mahabharata). The narrow method is one of cultural selection; but the larger process, which Vonnegut seems also to ask of his students, might more pointedly be called "cultural *e*lection". Could such an election happen in modern times, do you think? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jonathan Denn said: > Someone is editing Kurt Vonnegut letters for publication. This was online > today... I'm struck with "editor" meaning "voter" and "stories" as > "candidates" > "...I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short > Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). > Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven > minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye > be as little children ...” > > Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents > of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a > grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent > measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I > do insist that you like some stories better than others. > > Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a > good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories > that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend > that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be > submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior. > > Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a > barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a > few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn > as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention > to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. > The Universe needs more good editors, God knows..." > > There are a few more delightful bits if you're interested. Oh, and an inside > joke, KV was an atheist for most of his life, and when he wrote this. > > http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html?google_editors_picks=true > > Jon Denn ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
