Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing [Paperback]

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Author), Lee Stringer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2000

In this elegantly produced, extended conversation celebrating the writing craft, Kurt Vonnegut and acclaimed "Grand Central Winter" author Lee Stringer explore what it means to be a writer -- and what it means to be human.

It is an increasingly rare occasion these days to find two writers willing to speak candidly, thoughtfully, and concretely about the intersection of life and art. And that these two writers happen to be Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer makes "Like Shaking Hands With God" a truly historic and joyous occasion. The setting is a bookstore in New York City in October 1998. Before a crowd of several hundred, Vonnegut and Stringer jump into the aesthetic fray, taking up humanity, writing, salvation, art, and the challenge of living, day to day.

As Vonnegut would say, "It was a magical evening." A passionate and inspiring discourse between two extraordinary writers, "Like Shaking Hands With God" is a book for anyone interested in why the simple act of writing things down can be so much more important than the amount of memory in our computers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions): writer of wild, satiric, outrageous fiction. Lee Stringer (Grand Central Winter): one-time homeless crack addict who discovered that pencils are not just drug implements. Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer: a mutual admiration society. Like Shaking Hands with God: a transcription of two moderated conversations between Vonnegut and Stringer--one before a bookstore audience, one over lunch.

Shaking Hands has a slender profile and a pretty cover. But the only thing slight about these conversations is that they leave the reader wanting more. The book is billed as "a conversation about writing," but it is as much about life as about writing. Neither Vonnegut nor Stringer is interested in holing up in a garret to write. Vonnegut makes any excuse to go out and rub elbows with the folks who buy lottery tickets. Stringer wonders, "Can you write anything on Park Avenue, really?" Vonnegut laments his happy childhood as "no way for a writer to begin." Stringer panics--while he wrote his first book as if on a high, the next one may emerge from an awareness of Oprah and marketability.

Vonnegut and Stringer are passionate about one another's work, passionate about life, and passionate about writing, but not so much so that they ever, for a moment, lose their sense of irony or humor. In the age of the sound bite, literature can be deemed, on some level, useless. Stringer praises writing, in that context, as "a struggle to preserve our right to be not so practical." And Vonnegut? "We are here on Earth to fart around," he proclaims in Timequake (excerpted here). "Don't let anybody tell you any different!" --Jane Steinberg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

American Society of Journalists and Authors Newsletter An enthusiastic conversation about why and how they write...One of those brief dips into the psyche of very good authors that can be so motivation to all of us at various stages of our careers, no matter what we write or aspire to write. -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (November 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743410580
• ISBN-13: 978-0743410588
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,125,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #89 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors

More About the Author

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922. He studied at the universities of Chicago and Tennessee and later began to write short stories for magazines. His first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and since then he has written many novels, among them: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You Mr Rosewater (1964), Welcome to the Monkey House; a collection of short stories (1968), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick, or Lonesome No More (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1988) and Hocus Pocus (1990). During the Second World War he was held prisoner in Germany and was present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience which provided the setting for his most famous work to date, Slaughterhouse Five (1969). He has also published a volume of autobiography entitled Palm Sunday (1981) and a collection of essays and speeches, Fates Worse Than Death (1991).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, January 13, 2000

By 

Chris Bonney (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed Stringer's Grand Center Winter and am a life-long fan of Vonnegut. But I was terribly disappointed by this edited transcript from a couple of conversations between the two writers. Given the great potential of such gifted writers, this book seems little more than mutual admiration; it's short on substance or gravity and provides little insight to those of us who may be interested in the art of writing. I would have probably felt far better about this if it had been, instead, a magazine piece. But at this price I expected more substance.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A WRITERS' CONVERSATION, November 16, 2000

By 

Bonita L. Davis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing (Hardcover)

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut is good! Well almost anything. I was attracted to this gem featuring two authors of different generations conversing about the meaning of writing in their lives. I expected an enlightening tome that would set my mind to thinking and provide me with new insight.

Neither happened. Vonnegut and Stringer are good writers but these interviews just didn't come off well in print. A question is raised as to what the two writers had in common. Stringer gave some good points but Vonnegut rambled on into the wild blue yonder. Of the two, Stringer appeared to stay focused on the questions and provided the reader with insight as to how writing impacted on his life and freed him from his own internal demons.

As a collector's item in your Vonnegut library, yes, do indeed purchase it. If you want something more in depth with Vonnegut and Stringer read their works. This text just doesn't get to the heart of their writing world.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The art of Being, May 20, 2006

By 

Eric J. Lyman (Roma, Lazio Italy) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing (Paperback)

This is a wisp of a book. At less than 80 pages, I read it in one evening in the time it took me to eat a few tapas and down two pints of beer. By the time the check arrived, I was already writing down my thoughts inside the back cover.

But what an enjoyable wisp it is!

Almost everyone I know is a fan of Kurt Vonnegut, and so the colorful and curmudgeonly wisdom he brings to the table here is no surprise. But who is this Lee Stringer guy? By the end, I began to think of him as a superior version of James Frey (author of the badly written pseudo memoir "A Million Little Pieces") with the main difference that Mr. Stringer (1) writes well and (2) his tales about life on Skid Row are true. Actually, now that I think of it, that's kind of like saying I'm like Shakespeare except that he (1) writes a lot better and (2) he's been dead for almost 400 years.

Anyway, back to the book: I admit that Like Shaking Hands With God doesn't offer a great price-per-word ratio (it's slim and relatively expensive) but it does offer a great deal of wisdom on its handful of pages. Based on two conversations between two friends with a lot of respect for each other, these guys are smart, they know how to express themselves, and they've been around the block a few times.

The book bills itself as "a conversation about writing" and it is that. But it's more of a conversation about being, but a kind of being that involves writing. For a lot of avid readers, that's a perfect fit.