Making Lemonade: Kurt Vonnegut’s Recipe for Living Well

“How would Kurt Vonnegut describe what I’m going through?” is one question anyone could ask in times of trouble and peril, knowing the result would be at once honest, compassionate, hilarious, and optimistic. This salon, hosted by Eyal Shay, will be a place for participants to become familiar with a real-life hero and reflect on their own lives through a Vonnegutian prism.

Kurt Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day in 1922. It is symbolic that his life would turn out to be a hero’s journey to help himself and millions of others take the sting out of misfortune and maleficence by infusing souls with humor, acceptance, optimism, and love.

Vonnegut’s life and work can’t be seen as separate things. A trauma-ridden early life shaped Vonnegut into an acclaimed author who recognizes the absurdity of life, the limitations of our will and power, and the importance of proactively adopting what is really important for human flourishing. He himself chose to adopt a precarious profession, a hopeful attitude (which he struggled to keep up), and 4 children.

In this salon, we will briefly go over what made Kurt Vonnegut the literary and humanistic giant that he was. We will play a game to make us all familiar with some of his best quotes and share personal stories (optional) which we will attempt to describe in a Vonnegutian way, making lemonade from the lemons we were given.

With the salon over, we will each go on to live for as long and well as possible, before finally dying. So it goes.

Reading List:

• Kurt Vonnegut’s Wikipedia entry
• Any Vonnegut short story or novel (they are short!)

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