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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Vonnegut's "Medical Opinion on the Effects of a Writers' Strike"

    "I'm thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you support it?"
    "Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police or the firemen walking out."
    "Or the college professors."
    "Or the college professors," I agreed. I shook my head. "No, I don't think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."
    "I just can't help thinking what a shaking up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems . . ."
    "And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?" I demanded.
    "They'd die more like mad dogs, I think--snarling and snapping at each other and biting their own tails."
    I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
    "In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system."
-From "Cat's Cradle" Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

This might also contribute to Huenemann's discussion about the value of the humanities.