Palm Sunday_ An Autobiographical Collage - Kurt Vonnegut [63]
“‘The Blue Hotel’ is about a foreigner who comes here and commits murder. He imagines that he is defending himself. He has scared himself out of his wits, thinking that Americans are much more dangerous than they really are.
“So he kills.
“So much for that.
“Ten percent of you may be wondering by now why I called this speech ’The Noodle Factory.’ One hundred percent of me is delighted to explain:
“It is very simple. The title is an acknowledgment of the fact that most people can’t read, or, in any event, don’t enjoy it much.
“Reading is such a difficult thing to do that most of our time in school is spent learning how to do that alone. If we had spent as much time at ice skating as we have with reading, we would all be stars with the Hollywood Ice Capades instead of bookworms now.
“As you know, it isn’t enough for a reader to pick up the little symbols from a page with his eyes, or, as is the case with a blind person, with his fingertips. Once we get those symbols inside our heads and in the proper order, then we must clothe them in gloom or joy or apathy, in love or hate, in anger or peacefulness, or however the author intended them to be clothed. In order to be good readers, we must even recognize irony—which is when a writer says one thing and really means another, contradicting himself in what he believes to be a beguiling cause.
“We even have to get jokes! God help us if we miss a joke.
“So most people give up on reading.
“So—for all the jubilation this new library will generate in the community at large, this building might as well be a noodle, factory. Noodles are okay. Libraries are okay. They are rather neutral good news.
“Perhaps the central concept of this beautifully organized speech will enter the patois of Connecticut College.
“One student may say to another, ’You want to go out and drink some beer?’
“The other might reply: ’No. I’m about to flunk out, they tell me. In view of the heartbreaking sacrifices my parents have made to send me here, I guess I’d better go spend some time at the Noodle Factory instead.’
“A student might ask a particularly dumb question of a professor, and the professor might tell him, ’Go to the Noodle Factory and find out.’
“And so on.
“This noble stone-and-steel bookmobile is no bland noodle factory to us, of course, to this band of readers—we few, we happy few. Because we love books so much, this has to be one of the most buxom, hilarious days of our lives.
“Are we foolish to be so elated by books in an age of movies and television? Not in the least, for our ability to read, when combined with libraries like this one, makes us the freest of women and men—and children.
“(That is such a strange word on a printed page, incidentally: ’freest—f-r-e-e-s-t.’ I’m glad I’m not a foreigner.)
“Anyway—because we are readers, we don’t have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.
“Even more magically, perhaps, we readers can communicate with each other across space and time so cheaply. Ink and paper are as cheap as sand or water, almost. No board of directors has to convene in order to decide whether we can afford to write down this or that. I myself once staged the end of the world on two pieces of paper—at a cost of less than a penny, including wear and tear on my typewriter ribbon and the seat of my pants.
“Think of that.
“Compare that with the budgets of Cecil B. DeMille.
“Film is simply one more prosthetic device for human beings who are incomplete in some way. We live not only in the Age of Film, but in the Age of False Teeth and Glass Eyes and Toupees and Silicone Breasts—and on and on.
“Film is a perfect prescription for people who will not or cannot read, and have no imagination. Since they have no imaginations, those people can now