Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

Short lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on the 'simple shapes of stories.'

• Category

  Education

[ArmenianBlueberry]

oh goddammit. My favorite part.

[zumbi1990]

"She achieves off-scale happiness."

[Graham Walsh]

Kurt Vonnegut was a true artist with an unrivaled literary voice. This man lived an incredible life, one that will forever be immortalized in his many short stories, novels, and essays. The day after Kurt Vonnegut passed in 2007, I was set to give a presentation on Vonnegut's life and works in my high school english class. It crushed me to have to add "and so it goes" to the end of the presentation.

This is one of my favorite of Vonnegut's speeches, wish I could have seen him speak in person!

[Trustme77]

As I recall from his book "A Man Without A Country", which has a chapter about this, it's because every good thing that happens in Hamlet seems to be counterbalanced by a bad thing, and it ends with everybody (good and bad alike) dying.

He's joking about Shakespeare being a bad writer, of course. I think in the book he says that Hamlet's a really popular story, so maybe the whole shifting from good fortune to ill or vice versa thing is overrated.

[Daniel Cockling]

This guy is a boss. Nothing more can be said.

[nuevasustancia]

Is the variatio 1 a 1 from Goldberg variations. Bach is god.

[DeadQ21]

This is EPIC xD

[youandmelets]

This was probably an excerpt (outtake) from that Seinfeld episode....hence the laugh track.

[LooneyLune]

Hamlet starts out depressed, continues to be depressed, is more depressed, and then is killed. It's more of a diagonal downward line, really.

[Congakeystone]

Thank you for posting this. Priceless.

[Sonny Williamson]

Love the Bach at the end too.