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HailstonesAuthor(s): TONY TRACYSource: The North American Review, Vol. 294, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue(MARCH–APRIL 2009), p. 38Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20697765 .
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THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
at "Corporations
2009 TOPICS
Spring Youth Culture
Summer
The Moral Life of Corporations
CosmopoUtanism
To order: email [email protected]
call-434.243.8935
visit ? www.hedgehogreview.com
The Hedgehog Review is an inter
disciplinary journal of critical reflections on contemporary culture published by the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Culture
at the University of Virginia.
students in a small classroom in what is now called Lang Hall. In 1977, riding the crest of his great fame, he returned to speak to an overflow audience of a
thousand in Langs big auditorium. Two more appearances followed in
succeeding decades, and as in 1977 (and most likely back in 1966 as well) Kurt's lectures were followed by small get togethers on Loree's famous sunporch.
Just half a dozen of us at most, folks who over the years had become a
mutual support group of and about
Vonnegut. Leaning back on the couch, Kurt was so at ease?not just because
his speaking duties were completed, but because he could be himself.
Not that he wasn't, up there on stage in Lang's auditorium. His rapport with even a huge audience was such that
people guessed it must have been like this a hundred years ago with Mark Twain. But on Loree's porch?the same
place where I'd been made to feel so
comfortable back in 1972?he was
being himself, not just among friends but with a small enough group that he
could enjoy a true give-and-take of
jokes and conversation, a true vernac
ular his public speeches could only emulate.
Its how anyone likes to unwind after a formal occasion. Loree's porch had become his favorite place for it, antici
pated in letters beforehand and recalled so happily afterwards. The feeling is
replicated in Chapter 62 of Timequake, where to celebrate the novels end Kurt hosts a cast party in which all of us take
part. For any readers who wonder what was going on with him and Loree?and the rest of us, for that matter?this scene is a good example.
Further Reading: Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him
by Loree Rackstraw, Da Capo Press, 2009. Kurt Vonnegut's America
by Jerome Klinkowitz, University of South Carolina Press, 2009. The Vonnegut Statement: Original Essays on the Life and Work of Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr., ed. Jerome Klinkowitz and John Somer, Delacorte Press, 1973.
TONY TRACY
Hailstones
No precursor of rain or wind, distant thunder or ceremonial lightning strike, no siren's blare or TV's pageantry of warnings, not even a sense of atmospheric change, acrid smell of ozone leaking in,
just the sudden burst of hailstones that caught us dumbfounded in the yard. Pea-sized, at first, they barely stung. But they quickly swelled, and flinching, we ran for safety under the soffit's overhang. The storm, if you could call it that, ended as abruptly as it began, and soon my boys were picking iced-marbles from the lawn.
They dropped them in their mouths like frozen berries, milky pearls of hard candy. Their eyes widened. Across their faces
swept goofy grins. Treats, they think, sent from another world.
38 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2009
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