Kurt Vonnegut Diagrams the Shape of All Stories in a Master’s Thesis Rejected by U. Chicago

“What has been my pret­ti­est con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­ture?” asked Kurt Von­negut in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Palm Sun­day. His answer? His master’s the­sis in anthro­pol­o­gy for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, “which was reject­ed because it was so sim­ple and looked like too much fun.” The ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty and play­ful­ness of Vonnegut’s idea is exact­ly its endur­ing appeal. The idea is so sim­ple, in fact, that Von­negut sums the whole thing up in one ele­gant sen­tence: “The fun­da­men­tal idea is that sto­ries have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a giv­en society’s sto­ries is at least as inter­est­ing as the shape of its pots or spear­heads.” In 2011, we fea­tured the video below of Von­negut explain­ing his the­o­ry, “The Shapes of Sto­ries.” We can add to the dry wit of his les­son the pic­to-info­graph­ic by graph­ic design­er Maya Eil­am above, which strik­ing­ly illus­trates, with exam­ples, the var­i­ous sto­ry shapes Von­negut described in his the­sis. (Read a con­densed ver­sion here.)

The pre­sen­ter who intro­duces Von­negut’s short lec­ture tells us that “his sin­gu­lar view of the world applies not just to his sto­ries and char­ac­ters but to some of his the­o­ries as well.” This I would affirm. When it comes to puz­zling out the import of a sto­ry I’ve just read, the last per­son I usu­al­ly turn to is the author. But when it comes to what fic­tion is and does in gen­er­al, I want to hear it from writ­ers of fic­tion. Some of the most endur­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures are expert writ­ers on writ­ing. Von­negut, a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor, ranks very high­ly among them. Does it do him a dis­ser­vice to con­dense his ideas into what look like high-res, low-read­abil­i­ty work­place safe­ty graph­ics? On the con­trary, I think.

Though the design may be a lit­tle slick for Von­negut’s unapolo­get­i­cal­ly indus­tri­al approach, he’d have appre­ci­at­ed the slight­ly corny, slight­ly macabre boil­er­plate iconog­ra­phy. His work turns a sus­pi­cious eye on over­com­pli­cat­ed pos­tur­ing and cham­pi­ons unsen­ti­men­tal, Mid­west­ern direct­ness. Vonnegut’s short, trade pub­li­ca­tion essay, “How to Write With Style,” is as suc­cinct and prac­ti­cal a state­ment on the sub­ject in exis­tence. One will encounter no more ruth­less­ly effi­cient list than his “Eight Rules for Writ­ing Fic­tion.” But it’s in his “Shapes of Sto­ries” the­o­ry that I find the most insight into what fic­tion does, in bril­liant­ly sim­ple and fun­ny ways that any­one can appre­ci­ate.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.