1 post tagged “vonnegut”
"I felt and still feel that everybody is right, no matter what he says ... And I gave a name ... to a mathematical point where all opinions, no matter how contradictory, harmonized. I call it a chronosynclastic infundibulum. I live in one."
Kurt Vonnegut, in a headnote to his 1971 play
"Happy Birthday, Wanda June," as quoted
in George and Barbara Perkins'
"Contemporary American Literature"
"Happy Birthday, Wanda June," as quoted
in George and Barbara Perkins'
"Contemporary American Literature"
"In our seminar, whether we were arguing about labor or religion or politics, he would sit back like a resource person and then he would say, I hear Jane saying such and such, and Tom seems to disagree on that, but then Tom and Jane both agree on this. I don’t mean he makes all conflicts go away—that would be crazy. But his natural instinct is not dividing the baby in half—it's looking for areas of convergence. This is part of who he is really deep down, and it’s an amazing skill. It's not always the right skill: the truth doesn't always lie somewhere in the middle. But I think at this moment America is in a situation where we agree much more than we think we do. I know this from polling data—we feel divided in racial terms, religious terms, class terms, all kinds of terms, but we exaggerate how much we disagree with each other. And that's why I think he’s right for this time."
"Bowling Alone" author Robert Putnam,
about Sen. Barack Obama's part in a seminar about
rebuilding community, in Larissa MacFarquhar's
New Yorker profile "The Conciliator"
about Sen. Barack Obama's part in a seminar about
rebuilding community, in Larissa MacFarquhar's
New Yorker profile "The Conciliator"
