He had a run-in with the University of Chicago later about trying to get his master’s degree finished while he was at the Workshop. He’s been forever irreverent toward all things like credentialing and degrees and the institutions of higher ed, skewering them mercilessly wherever possible. He also had no degree whatsoever, so he was hyper self-conscious about coming onto a college campus. He said, “I felt subhuman.” His career was absolutely drying up at this point. Two years before, Esquire had published a list of what they called a Who’s Who of the entire literary world in 1963 and Kurt, being very self-conscious about trying to build his career, looked at it and couldn’t find himself. Once Vonnegut arrives, he feels like a fish out of water. He happened to know him through some people and knew that he (Kurt) was trying to make a go at a career and decided to see if he would come out to Iowa. So why was Vance Bourjaily reaching out to Vonnegut? He was desperate. They were going for literary prestige, people like John Berryman, Robert Lowell, highbrow poets, and a definite high art/low art distinction was there. This was not what the Workshop was doing at that time, reaching out to broken sci-fi writers. He couldn’t have been further away or further removed from a literary culture.īy 1965, though, he actually heard word from the writer Vance Bourjaily at the Iowa Writers Workshop, at the behest of the director, who had reached out to him to see if Vonnegut wanted to fill a vacancy for a faculty position at the workshop. He was hustling for a buck and had to work at a Saab dealership in West Barnstable on Cape Cod. At the time he was unknown, a sci-fi paperback writer, just like in the Beatles song. Iowa was totally instrumental to his success. Did his time at Iowa make a difference or was it just coincidental?ĭavid Dowling: It’s not coincidental at all. By the time he leaves, he’s on the cusp of world fame. The Daily Vonnegut: When Kurt Vonnegut arrives at Iowa Writers Workshop in the mid 1960’s, he’s an obscure writer known mainly for science fiction. What was an obscure science fiction writer doing teaching the most promising writing students in the country? In his chapter on Vonnegut’s time at the Workshop, Dowling traces Vonnegut’s metamorphosis from relative anonymity to literary superstardom.ĭowling shared his thoughts with The Daily Vonnegut. ![]() When Kurt Vonnegut joined the Workshop faculty during the mid-1960’s he stood out for his lack of distinction. Dowling explores the history of America’ preeminent creative writing program. In A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2019 – Yale University Press), David O.
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