Kurt Vonnegut on hometown jerks

Our friend Seymour Barab sent along a book of Kurt Vonnegut’s letters. How about that? Thank you (again), Seymour!

Here is a passage I especially like, from a Vonnegut letter to two old Indianapolis friends, Mary Jane “Majie” and William “Skip” Failey (June 21, 1982):

No — I will not be there for Vonnegut Week. Any American with common sense knows that if he was a jerk in high school he will be a jerk in his own hometown forever.

Letters, ed. Dan Wakefield (New York: Delacorte, 2012).

Other Vonnegut posts
Advice for high-school students
“[B]eautiful and surprising and deep”
E-mail from Stefan Hagemann
Kurt Vonnegut, Manager
Kurt Vonnegut on English studies

[Seymour Barab and Kurt Vonnegut collaborated on Cosmos Cantata (1995).]