Few Amer­i­can nov­el­ists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry looked as pro­fes­so­r­i­al as Kurt Von­negut, at least in a rum­pled-fix­ture-of-the-Eng­lish-depart­ment way. But though he did rack up some teach­ing expe­ri­ence, not least at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop, he could hard­ly have been a con­ven­tion­al lec­tur­er. This is evi­denced by the 2004 clip above, in which he explains his ideas about the “shapes” tak­en by all sto­ries — an idea he first for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed as his master’s the­sis in anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. Though the the­sis itself was reject­ed (a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry lat­er, the uni­ver­si­ty accept­ed Cat’s Cra­dle in its stead), its ideas proved pow­er­ful enough to enter­tain Von­negut’s audi­ences up until the end of his life.

On his chalk­board, Von­negut draws a ver­ti­cal and a hor­i­zon­tal axis: the for­mer charts the pro­tag­o­nist’s for­tune, good or ill, and the lat­ter rep­re­sents time (from B to E: “begin­ning, entropy”). He then plots the curve of an espe­cial­ly sim­ple and reli­able sto­ry form, “man in a hole,” which involves some­one get­ting into trou­ble — down­ward turns the slope — then get­ting back out again.

But the pro­tag­o­nist should end up a bit high­er on the scale of for­tune than he began, because “the read­er thinks, ‘Well, by God, I’m a human being too. I must have that much in reserve if I get into trou­ble.” Then come the sto­ries of oth­er shapes, includ­ing such pop­u­lar favorites as “Cin­derel­la” and Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis.

“This rise and fall,” Von­negut warns us, “is, in fact, arti­fi­cial. It pre­tends that we know more about life than we real­ly do.” When he attempts to describe the shape of Ham­let, he ends up com­ing across one rea­son the play is regard­ed as a work of genius: “we are so sel­dom told the truth,” but Shake­speare tells us the truth that “we don’t know enough about life to know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Rather, “all we do is echo the feel­ings of peo­ple around us.” As Von­negut’s read­ers know, a dim­mer view of human nature than his would be hard to come by. But if he did­n’t have faith the abil­i­ty of sto­ries to teach us good from bad, he did have faith in their abil­i­ty to teach us that we aren’t about to fig­ure it out for our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

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

Why the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Reject­ed Kurt Vonnegut’s Master’s The­sis (and How a Nov­el Got Him His Degree 27 Years Lat­er)

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Iden­ti­fies the Six Main Arcs in Sto­ry­telling: Wel­come to the Brave New World of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Some good news: Maya Angelou’s 1969 mem­oir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a recount­ing of her first 17 years, includ­ing a rape at the age of 7 or 8 by her mother’s boyfriend, and her sub­se­quent emo­tion­al trau­ma, no longer leads the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s Office for Intel­lec­tu­al Freedom’s list of banned and chal­lenged books.

The bad news: there will always be titles assigned to high school­ers that vivid­ly depict young people’s actu­al expe­ri­ence, that par­ents and com­mu­ni­ty groups will tar­get on sim­i­lar grounds.

New African list­ed some of the ver­ba­tim objec­tions that have been lev­eled against I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - that it encour­aged “pro­fan­i­ty”, was filled with “descrip­tions of drug abuse, sex­u­al­ly explic­it con­duct and tor­ture”, preached “bit­ter­ness and hatred against whites”, was “like­ly to cor­rupt minors” and con­tained “inap­pro­pri­ate­ly explic­it sex­u­al scenes.”

Angelou, who accused the book’s detrac­tors of not read­ing more than two words of it, bri­dled that any­one would “act as if their chil­dren are not faced with the same threats.”

Mol­lie Godfrey’s TED-Ed les­son, ani­mat­ed by Lau­ra White. above, points out how rad­i­cal Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was for a work of its time:

Her auto­bi­og­ra­phy was one of the first to speak open­ly about child sex­u­al abuse and espe­cial­ly ground­break­ing to do so from the per­spec­tive of the abused child. For cen­turies Black women writ­ers have been lim­it­ed by stereo­types char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as hyper­sex­u­al. Afraid of rein­forc­ing these stereo­types, few were will­ing to write about their sex­u­al­i­ty at all but Angelou refused to be con­strained. She pub­licly explored her most per­son­al expe­ri­ence with­out apol­o­gy or shame.

Robert P. Doyle, vice-pres­i­dent of the Free­dom to Read Foun­da­tion, revealed that the ALA was inspired to launch Banned Books Week in 1982, when the Amer­i­can Book­sellers Asso­ci­a­tion dis­played I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and oth­er works in a cage out­side the entrance to their annu­al con­fer­ence:

The dis­play gen­er­at­ed a lot of press atten­tion. And the book com­mu­ni­ty real­ized that we have not only an oppor­tu­ni­ty, but a respon­si­bil­i­ty to engage the Amer­i­can pub­lic in a con­ver­sa­tion about the First Amend­ment as it relates to books and lit­er­a­ture. A coali­tion was formed imme­di­ate­ly with the authors, pub­lish­ers, and major dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters (book­stores and libraries) in the U.S. to draw atten­tion to the impor­tance of the free­dom to read, to pub­li­cize threats to that free­dom, and to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to com­bat the lack of aware­ness.

Many of the book’s high pro­file defend­ers dis­cov­ered it at a for­ma­tive age, includ­ing rap­per Com­mon, who decid­ed to become a writer after encoun­ter­ing it as a 5th grad­er, and Oprah Win­frey, who was blown away to learn that anoth­er young Black girl had also endured sex­u­al abuse:

I read those words and thought, “Some­body knows who I am.”

No less mov­ing is a com­ment on Godfrey’s TED-Ed les­son left by a teacher in Texas:

Caged Bird helped saved my life. Thank­ful for the day my 11th grade Eng­lish teacher at a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian school hand­ed it to me and said, “read this, sweet pea”…I still encour­age my stu­dents at a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian school in TX to read it.”

“I am glad you got the help you need­ed,” anoth­er view­er respond­ed. “I live in Flori­da, and that teacher who helped you would be charged with a felony here. I’m dead seri­ous.”

Lis­ten to Maya Angelou dis­cuss I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in this 1970  inter­view with Studs Terkel. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library Gives Every Teenag­er in the U.S. Free Access to Cen­sored Books

Texas School Board Bans Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.