Kurt Vonnegut in The Simplest, Most Difficult Secret of Happiness – The Marginalian
Written by Maria Popova
“Don't do things because you want to make money – they won't make you enough money. And don't do things because you want to be famous – because you'll never be famous enough,” John Green advises budding writers. “If you worship money and things … you will never have enough. Never feel like you have enough. It's true,” David Foster Wallace commanded in his first timeless speech on the purpose of life. But what does it really mean to “have enough?”
There is no better answer than the one given directly Kurt Vonnegut – a man of discipline, a hero of literary style, a modern intellectual, a single wise father – in a poem he wrote The New Yorker May 2005, reprinted in John C. Bogle's Enough: Real Steps for Money, Business, and Life (public library):
JOE HELLER
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, important writer and humorist
you are dead now
and I was at a party given by a millionaire
at Shelter Island.I said, “Joe, how does that make you feel
knowing that our guest was just yesterday
you may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
benefited throughout its history?”
And Joe said, “I've got something he can't have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “I have enough knowledge.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
Coach Vonnegut on how to write stylistically, the responsibility of the writer and the limitations of the brain, story situations, his daily routine, his emotional advice to his children, and his favorite provocative illustrations.
