During the overwhelming surge of anecdotes, quotes, and amusing tales that came after Vonnegut's death, someone shared this one with me. It says everything there is to know about Vonnegut's wit, style, and attitude. Plus, as with anything concerning Vonnegut, it's funny.
As a young author, Vonnegut applied for a position at Sports Illustrated, which was a fairly new magazine at the time. As a priliminary assignment before his hire, he was told to write a caption for a randomly selected photo. The photograph this young Vonnegut was given turned out to be a picture of a horse that jumped a fence at the Aquaduct and ran from its owners. Disgusted with the project, he hurriedly wrote the caption, left it on the editor's desk, and left the magazine for good. The caption? "The horse jumped over the fucking fence."
Ah, how we miss him...
Sunday, April 22, 2007
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3 comments:
While I really like the earthday piece (oh, now I feel guilty for the impending hike), I want to ask about the Vonnegut thing. Sports Illustrated reported the "(Vonnegut) pondered the assignment," so is the "disgust" an editorial addition by you or did you find that elsewhere? I think of Vonnegut as having shown us ourselves in many lights, but I actually don't see disgust as one of his lenses. We will indeed miss him...
I would argue that the pondering is an editorial addition by SI, as it seems that there was no love lost between Vonnegut and the magazine, and so they were probably not involved in his writing process. Plus, his caption does seem disgusted and ...um...vitrolic, so I just made the assumption. But that's just what I think. (And I am clearly not as adept as Vonnegut at writing tall tales!)
Any truth to the rumor Vonnegut was using growth hormone?
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