[atari 2600]

 

http://vonnegutsasshole.blogspot.com/

[atari 2600]

Look at this asshole:


Sandra Tsing Loh is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, a regular commentator on NPR's This American Life, and the author of many books, including the semi-autobiographical A Year in Van Nuys. She's also said "fuck" on the radio at least once, and has played piano on a flatbed truck during rush hour traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. She's that cool.

Sandra informed me that her husband, Mike, believes his asshole resembles Ann Coulter. Thankfully, Sandra's asshole isn't quite so annoyingly Republician or homophobic.

 

[atari 2600]

http://vonnegutsasshole.blogspot.com/

 

Monday, April 16, 2007

Authors and Their Assholes: Day One


To be honest, this wasn't originally intended as a tribute to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. It started as a goofy experiment, just to find out how many authors I could persuade to send me drawings of their own assholes. But then Kurt went and died on us last week. So now it's become something else.

As Kurt was fond of saying, so it goes.

The idea was cooked up several months ago, over far too many beers in a San Francisco bar. Some writer friends and I were enjoying a post-book reading cocktail, and though I can't recall anymore who brought it up (or why), we began discussing Kurt Vonnegut's asshole. Not his actual asshole, of course. Rather, his infamous asshole doodle, which first appeared in his brilliant novel Breakfast of Champions.

For those of you who've never read the book, Vonnegut wrote it (or so one theory goes) as if he assumed his readers were somehow unfamiliar with most of the basic things on this planet that we take for granted. Just explaining cows and chickens and clocks and tombstones wasn't nearly good enough. He had to show all of these things to us before we'd really understand. So every few pages, he'd write "Here is what a dinosaur looks like" or "Here is what a 'No Trespassing' sign looks like," and then include an illustration of that object.

In the book's prelude, Vonnegut explained that his illustrations would be purposively childish and immature. And by way of example, he drew this crude rendering of his anus:

It should be shocking. But somehow, Vonnegut's asshole has a certain innocent charm. And that's probably because he wasn't trying to titillate or offend his readers. He was just showing us something that he considered perfectly normal and unremarkable. For most people, an asshole is something that's very, very private - and certainly nothing they'd want to share with the world. But Vonnegut had nothing to hide when it came to his asshole. It was as if he thought that owning a sphincter was just an ordinary part of being human.

Vonnegut's asshole had a profound effect on me as a kid. (There's really no way of writing that sentence without it sounding a little odd.) I was 10 or 11 when I first read Breakfast Of Champions, and it was the first book that I picked out on my own. I can still vividly recall the day when I got to the page with Vonnegut's asshole drawing. I was in school, reading the book over a plate of cold tater tots during lunch, and I guess I laughed a little too loud. My teacher at the time - a humorless old bastard named Mr. Spearing - walked over and glanced at my book. When he saw the asshole drawing, he was livid. "That is not funny at all," he screamed at me. "It's just childish and immature! It's absolutely disgusting!" He ripped the book out of my hands and refused to let me read it in school again.

He spoke with my parents about it later and called the book "dangerous." I couldn't wrap my head around that. Really? A book could be dangerous just because one of the pages had an asterisk that kinda resembled an asshole? That was all it took? It was a life-changing moment for me. That's when I realized just how powerful humor - even childish, immature humor - could really be. If an asshole illustration is enough to make you howl in protest, it speaks volumes about your own insecurities. If you don't like something, just don't look at it. Don't read it. But if an idea makes you want to burn a book or snatch it out of a child's hands and hide it where nobody (least of all you) can ever see it again, it obviously touched a nerve.


This is what my writing friends and I discussed in that San Francisco bar. We debated why Vonnegut's asshole drawing had caused so much controversey, and what it meant, if anything. We wondered if he was trying to take the piss out of literary hubris, or at least his own lofty reputation. It's difficult to take anybody seriously, even an icon like Vonnegut, when you've seen his bunghole. At some point (and this may have been the booze talking), I suggested

 

that it might be interesting to find out how other authors would've illustrated their own sphincters. Would it resemble Vonnegut's unmistakable asterisk? Or would they take more creative license and draw something a bit more unique?

The next day, a few of the writers took me up on my challenge and sent drawings of their assholes. No two were exactly the same, and some of them were downright fascinating. Before long, I decided to solicit asshole drawings from every writer I knew, asking them to contribute to my growing collection. I didn't necessarily want an accurate depiction of their asshole. I wanted something a little more conceptual. I asked them: "What is your asshole's personality? Is your asshole happy or sad? Angry or carefree?"

I had planned on unveiling the entire "Authors & Their Assholes" collection at some point this summer. But then Vonnegut died, and suddenly the whole thing had much more urgency.

http://vonnegutsasshole.blogspot.com/

[Rob Instigator]

great read thanks

[terminal pharmacy]

always with something interesting to post, thanks atari