The Vonnegut Encyclopedia by Marc Leeds

Author:Marc Leeds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

And wampeters come and wampeters go, Bokonon tells us.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters—one waxing in importance, one waning.

Karlswald. In the short story “D.P.,” reprinted in Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), the German village on the Rhine within the American zone of occupation where the American German youngster Karl Heinz lives in an orphanage, hoping for the return of his American father. Karl is nicknamed “Joe Louis” by the village carpenter, in tribute to the most famous black man he knows.

Karpinski, Big John, Dorene, and Little John. Rabo’s neighbors to the north in East Hampton. Little John is a poor student, is arrested for selling dope, joins the Army during the Vietnam War—which brings great pride to Big John—and comes back in a body bag. Though their family farm has been in operation for three generations, Big John and Dorene are preparing to sell it in six-acre parcels for a housing development.

Big John is a wounded Korean War veteran. The six-acre lot Rabo lives on was sold to his second wife, Edith, and her first husband by Big John’s father. This final series of sales liquidating the Karpinski ancestral homeland brings the following insight from Karabekian. (Blue 36) Big John and Dorene will become cash millionaires in a condominium in Florida, where winter never comes. So they are losing their own sacred plot of earth at the foot of their own Mount Ararat, so to speak—without experiencing that ultimate disgrace: a massacre.

Kasabian, F. Donald. In Bluebeard, Rabo Karabekian recalls the achievements of Armenian Americans, among them F. Donald Kasabian. (Blue 4) Armenians have done brilliantly in this country during the short time they’ve been here. My neighbor to the west is F. Donald Kasabian, executive vice-president of Metropolitan Life—so that right here in exclusive East Hampton, and right on the beach, too, we have two Armenians side by side.

Katmandu (see also John Fortune). Rudy Waltz’s play about his childhood hero, the dairy farmer John Fortune. The play has its origins in one of Rudy’s high school essays. Rudy’s teacher Naomi Shoup went to pieces after reading the essay and urged him to become a writer. For years Rudy continued to work on changing the essay into a play, and in 1959 he wins a contest for new playwrights. His prize includes an engagement at New York City’s Theatre de Lys, the same theater where Vonnegut’s Wanda June was produced.

“Katmandu” is such a disaster that it runs for just one night on February 14, 1960, fifteen years and a day after the firebombing of Dresden. The next morning, Rudy and his brother Felix fly back to the snowed-in Midland City in search of their parents, only to find out their father has died.

Rudy stays with his brother and sister-in-law in New York while the play is in rehearsal, and for the first time in his life he could separate himself from the Deadeye Dick legacy. Able to stand outside himself, Rudy realizes, I no longer cared about the play.

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