Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday, described as "an autobiographical collage", is a collection published by Delacourt in 1981. It largely consists of previously uncollected articles, unpublished speeches, a short story, and a musical comedy by Vonnegut, with the addition of an account of his ancestry written by family friend John G. Rauch, a memorial speech by his great-grandfather Clemens written for his own funeral, a letter by his daughter Nanette, and lyrics to two songs by the Statler Brothers. The works are connected throughout by new material by Vonnegut. It is dedicated to his "cousins the de St. Andrés everywhere", asking "[w]ho has the castle now?" A epigraph from Instructions in Morals by Clemens Vonnegut is included after the introduction: "Whoever entertains liberal views and chooses a consort that is captured by superstition risks his liberty and his happiness".

Contents

All works by Kurt Vonnegut unless otherwise noted:

Introduction

Declaring it "a very great book by an American genius", Vonnegut says this work—the result of six years of labor—is a new literary form combining the novel and "front-line journalism", with bits of musical theater, a short story, letters, history, and oratory. It reminds him of his brother Bernard's early experiments with radio. Using a home-made transmitter he invented, Bernard once overwhelmed every other signal in the local area. Vonnegut proposes the name "blivit" for this new literary form, which was defined in his youth as "two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag". Other works combining fact and fiction can be called blivits as well, perhaps requiring a third category in The New York Times Book Review. Until then, Vonnegut suggests that this book be ranked in both fiction and non-fiction categories and eligible for the Pulitzer Prize for "fiction, drama, history, biography, and journalism".

This work is comprised of pieces written since his previous collection, Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons in 1974. However, Vonnegut found the fragments could arranged into an autobiographical collage, especially if including some pieces he didn't write, by adding "much new collective tissue". Rather than finding this work to be a masterpiece, he says it is clumsy, raw, and simple. It is dedicated to the de St. Andrés, the maiden name of Vonnegut's maternal great-grandmother which had made his mother thinks she was descended from some kind of nobility. This was an innocent belief, and much of his work has argued that most human behavior, even when awful, is innocent. The actress Marsha Mason who had starred in one of Vonnegut's plays once said to him that the problem with New York City was that nobody there believe "that there is such a thing as innocence".

I: The First Amendment

• "Dear Mr. McCarthy"
• "Un-American Nonsense"
• "God's Law"
• "Dear Felix"

II: Roots

• "An Account of the Ancestry of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, by an Ancient Friend of His Family" (John G. Rauch)

III: When I Lost My Innocence

• "What I Liked About Cornell"
• "When I Lost My Innocence"
• "I Am Embarrassed"

IV: Triage

• "How to Write with Style"

V: Self-Interview

• Self-interview from The Paris Review

VI. The People One Knows

• "Who in America is Truly Happy?"
• "Something Happened"
• "The Rocky Graziano of American Letters"
• "The Best of Bob and Ray"
• "James T. Farrell"

VII. Playmates

• "Lavina Lyon"
• "The Class of '57" (Don and Harold Reid of the Statler Brothers)
• "The Noodle Factory"

VIII. Mark Twain

• "Mark Twain"

IX. Funnier on Paper Than Most People

• "How Jokes Work"

XI. Religion

• "Do Not Mourn!" (Clemens Vonnegut)
• "Thoughts of a Free Thinker"
• "William Ellery Channing"

XII. Obscenity

• "The Big Space Fuck"

XIII. Children

• "Fear and Loathing in Morristown, N.J."
• "Dear Mr. X" (Nanette Vonnegut)

XIV. Jonathan Swift Misperceived

• "Jonathan Swift"

XV. Jekyll and Hyde Updated

• "The Chemistry Professor"

XVI. A Nazi Sympathizer Defended as Some Cost

• "Louis-Ferdinand Céline"

XVII. A Nazi City Mourned at Some Profit

• "Dresden Revisited"

XVIII. The Sexual Revolution

• "Flowers on the Wall" (Lew DeWitt of the Statler Brothers)

XIX. In the Capital of the World

• "Palm Sunday"