I’ve been re-reading Kurt Vonnegut recently, which has been a blast, and led me back to this peach of an interview Mr. Vonnegut gave shortly before his death. Listening to it now only makes the great man all the more missed.

In August 2006, the national, weekly public radio program, The Infinite Mind, made broadcast history as it aired a four-part special taped inside the 3-D virtual on-line community Second Life. Among those interviewed in front of a live, virtual audience was author Kurt Vonnegut. The 40-minute conversation with Vonnegut was the author’s last face-to-face, sit-down interview. The host was The Infinite Mind‘s John Hockenberry, who was with Vonnegut in the studio where the program was created. This is a machinima video of Vonnegut’s interview, taped at the 16-acre virtual broadcast center in Second Life built by Lichtenstein Creative Media, which produces The Infinite Mind.

 
Previously on DM

Portrait of the Artist as Young Man: Unpublished Kurt Vonnegut Short Stories

 
While Mortals Sleep is the newest anthology of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s unpublished short fiction. Think of it as the eagerly-awaited third volume of his worthwhile ephemera, sitting alongside of 2008’s Armageddon in Retrospect and 2009’s Look at the Birdie. The new book collects work from the great author and satirist’s youth that were never published and material either rejected by magazines or else never submitted in the first place.

Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly had to say:

The 16 previously unpublished short stories of this collection, taken from the beginning of Vonnegut’s career, show a young author already grappling with themes and ideas that would define his work for decades to come. “Girl Pool” features typist Amy Lou Little, employee of the Kafkaesque Montezuma Forge and Foundry Company, who is tasked with transcribing a plea for help she receives on her Dictaphone from an escaped, dying murderer hiding somewhere in the works of the company’s cavernous factory. The tale reveals Vonnegut investigating one of his recurring themes: the isolation brought by technology and the necessity for basic humanity in the workplace. The title story melds a sentimental meditation on the true meaning of Christmas with elements of the mystery genre as a hard-nosed reporter stalks the story of stolen nativity scene characters. While these early stories show an author still testing the boundaries of his craft and obsessions, Vonnegut’s acute moral sense and knack for compelling prose are very much on display. In the foreword, Dave Eggers calls Vonnegut “a hippie Mark Twain,” which perfectly captures an essential truth about this esteemed author.

Below, Vonnegut “grades” his own novels, with Charlie Rose.
 

 
For the past few days, I’ve been reading Lorre Rackstraw’s fascinating book, Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him. Rackstraw’s lovely, intimate look at the great American novelist, humorist and moralist is chock full of letters from Vonnegut which sparkle with wit, advice on the craft of writing (they met when Rackstraw was a student of Vonnegut’s at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1965) and Vonnegut’s bittersweet, world-weary views on the human race. Although I’m loving the book, it makes me incredibly sad that we no longer have his voice with us today. I can only imagine what Vonnegut would be making of the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the know-nothing Tea party-types.

Above a delightful letter posted at the terrific Letters of Note blog.

June, 1998: Kurt Vonnegut writes a light-hearted letter to Avatar Prabhu - pseudonym of the author Richard Crasta - in response to Crasta’s controversial novel, The Revised Kama Sutra, being dedicated to the Slaughterhouse Five novelist. Vonnegut closes the missive by amusingly taking a swipe at Salman Rushdie who, whilst in hiding years previous, had written a less-than-glowing review of Vonnegut’s 1990 novel, Hocus Pocus.

 
In the 1970s, it seemed as if most literate, well-informed Americans who read books could agree that Kurt Vonnegut was probably the most important American author since Mark Twain. Vonnegut, when you think about it, was really the last author who nearly everybody who read books, read. You could gauge his popularity when I was a kid by looking at all the copies of his novels on offer at garage sales. Jethro Tull, Allman Brothers and Cheech and Chong albums along with dog-eared copies of Jaws, The Godfather, The Exorcist and one, if not several, Vonnegut paperbacks were jumble sale staples of the late 1970s. Despite the fact that Kurt Vonnegut himself seems to think that writers were over the hill at the age 55, this never seemed the case to me where his writing was concerned and I was always excited to sit down with a new book from him. Watching this video I started to wonder who would replace Vonnegut as he himself took over from Mark Twain to a great extent. No one I can see on the horizon, I’m afraid.

Vonnegut is seen here giving a speech in 2002 at Albion College, where he received an honorary doctorate. The lecture’s title is How to Get Job Like Mine.
 

 
Click through to YouTube for the rest of the speech.

Bonus: Fox News did an entirely disrespectful obit of Vonnegut the day after he died. Something tells me the author would have found this screamingly funny.

Via Fishbowl LA