WOOHOO! I too found a search for this info to be nearly impossible. Was
considering unpacking my books this weekend in desperation. Thanks! Do
ya like homemade date oatmeal cookies? (: I'm serious, send me your
snail mail, and I'll get em on the way!
Thanks!
Cindy
On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Janie Wilkins wrote:
> On Monday February 26th, 2001, cdale wrote:
>
> >I subscribe to what Kurt Vonnegut says about
> >smoking being the only respectable form of suicide. (If anyone knows
> >which preface of which book he wrote all this stuff in, I'll give you a
>
> >cookie, cuz I'll be damned if I can find it)
>
> Actually, this was a very tricky question to find the answer to ...
> *lots* of news articles and so forth cited this famous Vonnegut quote
> without giving proper attribution to which book it appeared in. And it
> has been mangled so that you can find about ten variations of the
> correct quote. An extensive search by myself and my colleagues has
> finally unearthed the complete and correct citation. So, for the
> official record, this quote appeared in one of the final paragraphs of
> the preface to "Welcome to the Monkey House" which was first published
> in 1950.
>
> The quote is as follows, according to an article in the Milwaukee
> Senitinel on 7/16/90:
>
> "Smoking" he wrote in 'Monkey House' "is a fairly sure, fairly honorable
> form of suicide".
>
> By referring to the actual volume we have in the stacks of our library,
> I can provide you with the complete context of this quote as it appears
> on pages xiv and xv of the edition that we have:
>
> "My sister smoked too much. My father smoked too much. My mother smoked
> too much. I smoke too much. My brother used to smoke too much, and then
> he gave it up, which was a miracle on the order of the loaves and
> fishes.
>
> And one time a pretty girl came up to me at a cocktail party, and she
> asked me, "What are you doing these days?"
> "I am committing suicide by cigarette," I replied.
> She thought that was reasonably funny. I didn't. I thought it was
> hideous tht I should life that much, sucking away on cancer sticks....
>
> The public health authorities never mention the main reason many
> Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly
> sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
>
> Send me my cookie any time you get around to it ;-)
> Diva
>
-- "Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases, think for yourself." --Doris Lessing, British writer
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:13:39 PDT