NOT PYNCHON: "it's all about me"

[Allan Balliett]

Well, let me make it clear, if your short story course doesn't contain
Vonnegut's THE BIG SPACE FUCK, I won't be enrolling!

*“What was the dirtiest story I ever wrote?” wrote Kurt Vonnegut in “Palm
Sunday
<http://www.amazon.com/Palm-Sunday-Autobiographical-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385334265/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5130489-5371355?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176428250&sr=8-1>,”
his 1981 “autobiographical collage.” “Surely ‘The Big Space Fuck,’ the
first story of literature to have ‘fuck’ in its title. It was probably the
last short story I will ever write. I did it for my friend Harlan Ellison,
who printed it in his anthology ‘Again, Dangerous Visions.’” It’s a
terrific, and terrifically relevant, story. I found only a fragment of it
on the Web. Here’s the story in full as it appeared in “Palm Sunday,” *
from a Blog known as *Candide's Notebooks*

read it again HERE <http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/07/wf041307.htm>

(proposed correction: add the phrase "curated at" to "a Blog" above)

-Allan in WV, where transgender small mouthed bass represent a greater
threat than lampreys any day

PS Think of how far the past has actually come

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 6:18 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well, let me make it clear, if your short story course doesn't contain
> Vonnegut's THE BIG SPACE FUCK, I won't be enrolling!
>
> *“What was the dirtiest story I ever wrote?” wrote Kurt Vonnegut in “Palm
> Sunday
> <http://www.amazon.com/Palm-Sunday-Autobiographical-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385334265/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5130489-5371355?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176428250&sr=8-1>,”
> his 1981 “autobiographical collage.” “Surely ‘The Big Space Fuck,’ the
> first story of literature to have ‘fuck’ in its title. It was probably the
> last short story I will ever write. I did it for my friend Harlan Ellison,
> who printed it in his anthology ‘Again, Dangerous Visions.’” It’s a
> terrific, and terrifically relevant, story. I found only a fragment of it
> on the Web. Here’s the story in full as it appeared in “Palm Sunday,” *
> from a Blog known as *Candide's Notebooks*
>
> read it again HERE <http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/07/wf041307.htm>
>
> (proposed correction: add the phrase "curated at" to "a Blog" above)
>
> -Allan in WV, where transgender small mouthed bass represent a greater
> threat than lampreys any day
>
> PS Think of how far the past has actually come
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 7:16 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Seems I may be teaching a course next semester at my local university on
>> EITHER some modern short stories or THE SIXTIES.
>>
>> I pitched the short stories one as not famous stories--what do I
>> know,anyway, about
>> what is canonical or not at colleges today?--- but interesting ones that
>> might not need
>> the usual kind of classroom glossing that most are used to....no
>> symbol-finding
>> (which I love, ya know) and no overly historical "understanding"
>> necessary to get and like.
>>
>> My key theme will be......the stories will connect with your life
>> straight on ...
>> not just your literary ideas --if I'm right and we all share how, behind
>> my
>> wide flashlight beam. I hope.
>>
>> Or Sort of like a Group Read of my chosen stories.
>>
>> Anyway, I am soliciting suggestions from this group that usually has some.
>>
>> To start, one story I have self-chosen is Cortazar's AXOLOTL--the one
>> reputedly translated by
>> Pynchon in that original US collection--because of the theme of entering
>> another mind/world--a metaphor for what some fiction can do, is why.
>>
>> I may add Salinger's A PERFECT DAY FOR BANANAFISH--called a perfect story
>> by Nabokov--and
>> Murakami's 'answer",  A PERFECT DAY OR KANGAROOS...because...stories
>> talking about each other might be a new thing to many....
>>
>>
>> Re: The Sixties, the only book I will (loosely) "require" is The Crying
>> of Lot 49, which won't surprise
>> anyone.  I will be signposting the decade myself. Real work required by
>> me but, again, any thought will be attended to if you care to take the time
>> to express them.
>>
>> (I have already decided to start the SIXTIES in 1959, per Morris
>> Dickstein's Gates of Eden. And, I think, to use Orwell's great observation
>> that there are at least two major cultural strains in almost any block of
>> history.)
>>
>>
>>
>
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