Honoring a Champion
When you think of Kurts involved in the world of sports... a bespectalced Kurt Rambis, a besieged Curt Flood or even a bloodied Curt Schilling come to mind but few would think of the curmudgeonly old author of Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-Five.
Before becoming an award winning author and noted player in the Rodney Dangerfield classic Back to School (Kurt actually did have a cameo in which he was hired by Dangerfield to write a paper on Vonnegut novels), Vonnegut actually worked as a writer at Sports Illustrated.
In fact Vonnegut's abrubt departure from the S.I. offices would lend to the lore of the early days of the magazine**. According to a January 11, 1998 Lexington Herald-Leader's review of Michael MacCambridge's The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine:
Kurt Vonnegut worked briefly at SI until being told to write a story about a race horse that had jumped the rail and terrorized the infield at a local track. Vonnegut stared at his desk for what seemed like hours before finally departing the building without a word. Inside his deserted typewriter was this: ''The horse jumped over the fucking fence.''
Had Vonnegut stuck with sportswriting who knows what gem he might have penned had he been assigned to report on the recent hullabaloo involving Barbaro. We can almost envision Vonnegut's accompanying sketches of asses and astericks... which would only scratch the surface of his biting wit.
So this morning thewadeblogs salutes Kurt V. Breakfast of Champions style* - we raise a glass to the former sportswriter turned author/artist/social critic.
* "Breakfast of Champions" is titled as such because a waitress in the novel repeatedly utters the Wheaties slogan every time she serves a customer a martini.
** Vonngut himself elaborates in an personal letter to Robert B. Weide on January 13, 1998: ''When the magazine was only a glint in the eyes of Luce Publications, they hired a bunch of sports writers from yokel venues who, it turned out, couldn’t write. So then they hired a bunch of writers who didn’t care or know squat about sports. I was part of that second batch... At Time-Life, we got out an issue of S.I. every week, never knowing when the first real issue would be published. And I quit before that happened, exactly in the manner described.''
The Franchise is a good read. I read it on the recommendation of Bill Simmons. His regular opinions may not be so hot anymore, but he's still got decent taste in books. Another one of his keepers is "Wait Till Next Year", just for the William Goldman parts. That guy is priceless.
Posted by: mista_tibbs | 04/12/2007 at 10:25 PM
The Franchise is a good read. I read it on the recommendation of Bill Simmons. His regular opinions may not be so hot anymore, but he's still got decent taste in books. Another one of his keepers is "Wait Till Next Year", just for the William Goldman parts. That guy is priceless.
Posted by: mista_tibbs | 04/12/2007 at 10:26 PM