TheRealVille
When I was a (much, much) younger man I worked at a summer camp in the Sooke Hills on Vancouver Island.
And, despite my total lack of qualifications, not to mention my somewhat under-developed social skills, after a couple of years I got the hang of it.
A big key, maybe the biggest, to getting all the kids in the cabin on your side, at least for a few minutes a day, is bed time.
And for that, I had two go-to's.
My closer was JD Salinger's 'The Laughing Man' which I would always recite orally, with the lights out, because then I could bend it into pretty much anything until every single kid fell asleep. It's a long short story and with the starts and stops, not to mention the back-ups to catch up the early fall-asleepers, I could easily stretch it out over the entire ten nights of their stay.
As for my bedtime openers?
Well...
For these the lights would alway be on as the kids did their final fiddling while I read one of the twenty-five stories in Kurt Vonnegut's anthology 'Welcome To The Monkey House'. As I was most often dealing with 11 year old boys there was none of the racy stuff from stories, like, say, the title track. Instead, it was the adventure/weird sci-fi stuff like 'Harrison Bergeron' that they ate up and, truth be told, I always loved to read given its well-planned multilevel stratification strategy.
Anyway, one Monkey House story I never read to those kids was 'Long Walk To Forever' because it was straight-up sappy, the story of a young guy who comes home from the war and does his best to get his childhood semi-sweetheart to choose him over her fiancee.
Essentially, it was the short story version of a pretty big event in a then young Mr. Vonnegut's own real post-war Indiana life.
And a few years ago it was made into a very fine short film version....
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Tip O' The Toque to the fine folks at 'Open Culture' for this one....
You can find lots more great KV stuff at his museum/library...
Multi-level stratification strategy?....It's when a story has all kinds of facets, some of them semi-hidden, such that everyone can find something different in it...When your kids are little you are always looking for this kind of stuff...Think 'The Princess Bride', for example...
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6 comments:
I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Vonnegut at SFU back in 1967? 1968? The English Dept. had brought him in for a (not very well attended) seminar, followed by a small meet-and-greet at the faculty club afterwards. I found him entertaining, droll and approachable; Cat's Cradle had just come out, and he autographed my copy (I lost it years ago).
Now I'm 72, and scared as hell over the way the world has turned out. We are led by monsters, and Mr Vonnegut turns out to have been prescient. Science Fiction? HA!
Everyone, keep well!
Anon-Above--
Wow! What a great memory....If I've got the dates right you must have been an undergraduate student at the time...What a thrill.
This was before Schlactof-Funf was published, correct?
I'm sure the reception would have been over-the-top if it had come after that.
Somehow, I think you might like....this.
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Yeah, 3rd (67) or 4th(68) year English grad. I was there at the SFU "Creation"...the quad only had 3 sides the first year. This was before Slaughterhouse was published.
What a cool website...thanks for sharing! And this was before smoking became worse than murder or incest. I definitely remember him smoking like a chimney! Wonder what he smoked up here in Canada...probably not Pall Malls (American, and hard to find)!
Mike
Thanks great clarification's Mike--
Good question about the Pall Mall replacements.
I do remember being able to find them, albeit for a whole lot of dough, in the late 70's/early 80's.
Hey - what did you do with all that English?
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HAHAHAHA!
Became a salesman. (Good living, and actually English turned out to be quite useful!
Yeah, I remember Pall Malls even back in those days, but you had to really SEARCH for them (Mr Vonnegut smoked a good pack and a half during the seminar/reception, so unless he found a really good source I don't think he could have smoked them (unless he had SFU supply a carton or two as part of his contract!)
Definitely different times.
Mike
Definitely different times Mike - glad it all worked out.
SFU must have been a very interesting place back then.
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