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I am very real
- delinka 15y agoI am curious for more. Does the source book have more on this story? I'd like to know whether the letter was ever shared in the community.
- phireal 15y agoIt must have been shared with at least one other person as it explicitly states that there is only a single copy in existence. For us to be reading it means either the recipient or the person they shared it with subsequently shared it with others.
- maxko87 15y ago"Copy" probably doesn't refer to an actual copy, outside of the one Vonnegut probably made for himself -- it refers to the one sent.
- mc32 15y agoThe first time I read it, I also had that interpretation. On subsequent reading, it does seem like copy meant a copy that is not the original. Not so much, "the only copy in existence". Suffice it to say, I was sufficiently confused as well.
- sosuke 15y agoWhile not nearly as important, the idea that authors are real makes me immediately relate to my own experience that customers don't seem to understand that software is made by real people too. People with feelings, who are fallible. Several comments on blogs or reviews on the app store show to me that people don't feel they are being insulting or rude if they aren't facing the person they criticize. The more I wrote this comment the more I started to seem the Internet as a whole falling victim to anonymous words that cut deep. We've had to develop unnaturally thick skin.
- Spearchucker 15y agoThis is an unfortunate but real human trait. There's a book that describes the effect in war. The basic premise is that it's easier to kill people by dropping a bomb on them from an airplane than it is to shoot them with a rifle on the battlefield. It's because in the latter you see your victim. And immediately relate to that victim [edit: 1]. Which makes shooting him or her exceedingly difficult. It's an interesting parallel. The book is called On Killing, by US Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. [1] Unless the shooter is psychotic.
- DanBC 15y ago> Unless the shooter is psychotic. Nitpick: You mean "psychopathic", not "psychotic". People with a psychotic illness are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence, and are much more likely to harm themselves than to harm another person.
- stan_rogers 15y ago"Psychotic" also works here, but for a different reason. While a psychopath may be able to perceive, but unable to empathize with, a person, someone in the depths of psychotic delusion may be unable to perceive a fellow human being. It is perhaps not nearly as common "in the wild", but it does occur (the killing of Tim McLean by Vince Weiguang Li being the example that comes most easily to mind). In fact, generating a sort of "target psychosis" has been the aim of most modern infantry training for some time, since teaching people to see, recognize and react to targets is an awful lot easier than training them to kill humans, even under severe threat. (Human-shaped targets were introduced to training after it was discovered that most infanteers never actually fired an aimed shot at an opponent in either of the World Wars.) Similarly, you can sniff war on the horizon when the machinery used to dehumanize the enemy is started up.
- jsharpe 15y agoI'm curious, how, if "... no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands." is true, how is it reproduced on this site?
- tjr 15y agoHe also wrote, "Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?"
- sheepthief 15y agoShaun here - I run Letters of Note. Presumably Vonnegut kept the draft, or kept the original and sent McCarthy the one copy. The letter's text was later included in Vonnegut's book, Palm Sunday, as mentioned on the site.
- dasht 15y agoAs an aside: thank you for the great web site.
- sheepthief 15y agoThank you. It's a pleasure.
- rusua 15y agoYour site always makes my day. Keep the good work!
- cathywu 15y agowell, that's certainly disappointing.
- dasht 15y agoThe web site got the letter from a book that Vonnegut put together and published in 1981. Presumably he saved a copy himself, as many letter writers do.
- renegadedev 15y agoBurning a book (good or bad) is the lowest form of expression humans can stoop to. If people understood the fact that a book is simply a personification of ideas, and ideas good or bad, cannot perish in a fire, the will realize the folly of engaging in a futile act like burning a book. One of the inevitable consequences of the digital revolution will be that, there will come a time, when a controversial book will be published exclusively in digital format with no physical copies to burn. I don't know if this necessarily good or bad, but the fact that idiots can't burn a book will provide me some amount of pleasure.
- WiseWeasel 15y agoI'm not so sure that this type of book-burning is tied to the physicality of books, rather than a symbol of rejection. Certainly, there have been instances throughout history, such as when the Nazi government or the Catholic Church have carried out organized purges of particular written works on a societal level, where the supply of the work has been materially impacted to the point that it is difficult to obtain. But I assume you're referring more to examples such as this story, of small groups using book-burning as a publicity stunt, or a public symbol of their rejection of the work. In those cases, I doubt the lack of physicality makes any difference; if they wanted to protest a digital-only book, they'd simply print it out on something flammable first.
- renegadedev 15y agoGood point. I was not necessarily referring to the physicality of books but the notion these book-burners subscribe to, that if they symbolically burn a book, the idea will perish. Your point of the Nazis burning the books out of supply only illustrates the point that to burn a book in the hope that the idea will perish, did not necessarily work.
- LesZedCB 15y agoI'm sorry, I just had to share this: http://xkcd.com/750/ http://xkcd.com/750/
- forgotAgain 15y ago
- ilamont 15y agoI was curious how this document was released, if only one copy was distributed to a person who was probably not inclined to share it. The first newspaper reference on Google I could find is dated June 1982. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L6pNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=rfsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2734,3598967& http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L6pNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=r...; Anyone have access to Factiva or LexisNexis?
- sheepthief 15y agoVonnegut himself released it, in his book, Palm Sunday.
- ilamont 15y agoThanks. (Note to self: Don't skip the italicized, parenthetical text before an interesting piece of content)
- Tyrannosaurs 15y agoBut in the letter he claims that the copy the recipient is holding is the only copy. Was he lying or did he somehow have it returned to him?
- orblivion 15y agoLooks like this letter is 1973, the book 1981. His ultimate point is that he wasn't exploiting the letter for attention. 8 years after the incident, I think it's safe to claim the potential for exploitation is gone. EDIT: Oh, you mean you took him literally, that he didn't even have his own copy. Well: "And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands." It sounds like this could imply that he could be holding onto a copy himself. Interesting point, why would you do that if you didn't mean to exploit it, at least eventually? Or maybe he just likes to hold on to things for records.
- vollmond 15y agoI know personally I keep copies of every letter I send, simply to refer back to if and when the recipient responds to me; it's useful to know what questions I asked when the answers come in.
- leejoramo 15y agoFor some more background, the local newspaper looks back on this story 35 years later: http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/519549.html?nav=5576 http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/519549....
- fabricode 15y agoEveryone seems to be confused by the "I am sending you the only copy" aspect of this letter. I'm sure he kept excellent records, and keeping a copy (or the original) for himself would be a standard business practice for someone in the communication business. It is no different than you sending an email to someone saying, "I'm sending this note to you alone rather than posting this publicly, ..." As for why he would keep a copy: no different than why you keep copies of your emails. Should the recipient respond, he'll have his original to reference if the person responding takes items out of context, attributes statements not actually made to Vonnegut, amongst other benign or nefarious mistakes.
- reason 15y agoThis submission could not have come at a better time. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been contemplating making a submission urging HNers to be human, and to recognize that everyone else who comments here is also a human, and that stories about startups and notable figures are essentially about humans - humans who all have families, friends, ambitions, desires, flaws, struggles. All too often I see people here forgetting about that. I myself have been guilty of it in the past too. But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites. I think people here tend to assume that being an engineer/programmer means that not only must they treat their code with utmost logic and rationality, but that they should look at life in the same manner - that to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage. All that leads to is cold, harsh discourse and criticism without considering the more abstract, but very real ways humans feel and behave. It's sad to see. So, I guess this is that submission. Next time you write a comment, ask yourself if you're being human and remind yourself that whatever you're about to say is directed at another human. Stop being robots, and just act human.
- peter_l_downs 15y agoElaborate on this; write a blog post. I'll gladly give you another up vote. > But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites. Honestly, I have had the opposite experience. Everyone here seems focused on getting work done and making great things, yes, but the little criticism that I do see is always well thought-out and explained. Instead of it 'grating' on me, I value it highly, because it's almost all of excellent quality. > I think people here tend to assume that [...] to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage. Who? That's a foolish viewpoint that I cannot believe anyone here would hold. I haven't run across anyone who seems like they subscribe to this belief — have you?
- reason 15y agoThat is of course an assumption I'm making, but one that's come from years of using HN. More recently there was the article about the girl from Pakistan who received technical certification and sadly passed away. There was a good amount of comments that took a fully rational approach to assessing her credentials concluding that what she'd done was not worthy of praise. That seemed terribly inhuman, and I feel people of this community are more prone to act that way.
- silentscope 15y ago"And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake..." What happened?
- vajrabum 15y agoI'm guessing like most people who write for a living that he had a carbon (assuming this is before word processing) or a disk file found in his papers after his death.
- lambda 15y agoI presume he actually kept a copy or draft himself (so the "only copy" part was not strictly true), which he published seven years later in his autobiography, figuring that was long enough after not to be taken for opportunism but mere historical interest.
- gshubert17 15y agoVonnegut published a copy of the originally private letter to the people of Drake, in his autobiography "Palm Sunday", pages 4-6.
- username3 15y agoIf you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own. If Kurt is an American, Kurt must allow book burning. If you are an American, you must not down vote.
- hythloday 15y agoI guess you stopped reading at that point, because he goes on to say: After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hugs 15y agoEvery time I read a story like this, I'm reminded of Dunbar's number and David Wong's excellent (and very funny) summary: http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html The "Monkeysphere" explains a huge amount of silly human behavior.
- thebrokencube 15y agoThank you for sharing this link, this actually helps explain a lot of stuff I've been wondering about for a while.
- hugs 15y agoYeah, my description of the Monkeysphere is: "The Universal Theory of Human Behavior". I wish more people knew about it. Just doing my part. :-)
- phren0logy 15y agoMy favorite part: >Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own. Thanks again, Vonnegut.
- trentfowler 15y ago>But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that. I might have gasped out loud.
- glennericksen 15y agoDo people burn books online? Is there a correlative action to tossing vilified literature in the fire? The attitude characterized by McCarthy's response to Slaughterhouse-Five retreats from reality to the ideal. As media channels have diversified and the input streams exponentially increased, can I burn something by choosing not to consume it? Obviously we cannot take in everything, but I think the filter bubble, both imposed and self-manufactured, creates a sort of insularity and a disconnection from the broader human experience. If I only read what I like or relate to, it makes me less real.
- listic 15y agoGood question. I think there's no similar action analogous to burning books online, so people inclined to do so are left to other kinds of action, like writing angry comments and blog posts.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago> Do people burn books online? SOPA/PIPA comes to mind.
- soitgoes 15y agoI wonder what the school board would have done with Fahrenheit 451.
- padobson 15y agoThis is exactly why the 6th Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the right to face your accuser. "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him" It's harder to accuse someone, or even insult or disparage them, when you have to face them. And that is something that should be hard to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause
- abruzzi 15y agoTo me the key sentence is: >You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive. A great way of saying that if you don't learn on your own to discern good from bad, you will never learn to do it, and learning requires exposure to all sides.
- peterwwillis 15y agoIs there even any logical basis for the idea that banning curse words or otherwise offensive language "protects" children? The word itself causes no harm. Tell a child a curse word they don't know and they aren't stricken back as if you had slapped them. It has no meaning or value until you describe what it means and when to use it. Then once it's explained to them, assuming they weren't harangued by their parents into fearing the word itself, there's the use in a book such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see..." Contrast this with a book like Where The Red Fern Grows, where a boy's dog (who he loves dearly) is disemboweled in front of him and he has to literally stuff his intestines back into the dog's bloody carcass. If the high purpose is indeed to protect children they should be taught about the world so they'll know how to deal with it. Sure, there's ugly things about the world and for the most part we try to isolate ourselves from it, but burning it doesn't make it go away. The end result may be it enforces in the child the idea that they can choose to destroy any part of society they dislike, regardless of anyone else's opinion and without a reason other than their feelings. Personally I can't think of anything more frightening.
- Daniel_Newby 15y agoThe moral purity police are always with us and always find some excuse to save other people from damnation: witch hunting, regulating the surface area of women's clothing, statutory rape, and so forth.
- MyNewAccount 15y agoisn't government actually run by people too?
- ktizo 15y agoEverything was beautiful and nothing hurt. I was depressed for weeks when he died.
- kanetrain 15y agoThis was an amazing letter. Great lesson for me on so many levels.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- allenbrunson 15y agoAnd no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. ahem.
- marajit 15y ago"If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own." Tell me you don't buy this?
- alanfalcon 15y agoI've been obsessing a little bit over Ready Player One over the past couple weeks. Not that it is an amazing piece of literature, it surely is not that. But it is highly entertaining and an incredible work of meta fiction. It is a fiction about a fictional world in which essentially all other fictional worlds co-exist, and they all celebrate each other. I would recommend it to anybody at all without reservation (if you don't read speculative fiction you'll just ignore my recommendation anyway, even though I think this book would have the power to open some doors to you). I have not read Kurt Vonnegut, but was intrigued by the specific reference to him as the main character's favorite author, a certain kind of twisted high praise in the context of the book as a whole. I have not heard much about Kurt Vonnegut beyond recognizing the name and the Ready Player One reference. But reading this letter, and with the added bonus of the implied recommendation from Ernest Cline, I've heard enough. Where's the best place to start?
- drewblaisdell 15y agoSlaugherhouse-Five is his best-known book, and was the book referenced in the article. I would say to start there. Here are the grades Vonnegut himself gave his own books (in Palm Sunday): Slaughterhouse-Five: A+ Cat’s Cradle: A+ The Sirens of Titan: A Mother Night: A God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Jailbird: A Player Piano: B Welcome to the Monkeyhouse: B- Breakfast of Champions: C Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons: C Palm Sunday: C Slapstick: D Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
- tnash 15y agoI also found Ready Player One very entertaining. My favorite Vonnegut book is Cat's Cradle so I say start there.
- bambax 15y agoThis is very weak. We should not burn books because it might hurt the feelings of authors? Surely that means it's ok to burn the books of dead authors? The reason why we should not burn books is because - it deprives potential readers of the benefit of reading them - the free circulation of ideas is the cornerstone of a free society, and trying to restrict it is the beginning of tyranny - arguments should be fought with arguments, not fire But the feelings of authors really don't have anything to do with it. KV shouldn't have felt insulted that someone burnt his books. He should have been ashamed for the human race that anyone would burn any book (and not just his own). He should have punched the guy in the face.
- kaeluka 15y agothis letter is a very good example of tailoring an argument to the audience.
- kaeluka 15y agoI still can not believe how awesome this man was. This is exactly how all people should be.