Lucky Mud & Other Foma A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut's Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship

A fascinating deep dive into Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre and legacy, illuminating his unique perspective on environmental stewardship and our shared connections as humans, Earthlings, and stardust.

Vonnegut’s major apocalyptic trio—Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galápagos—prompt broad global, national, and species-level thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book, Lucky Mud and Other Foma, tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as “planetary citizenship” and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing.

• Jarvis takes us on a deep dive into the Vonnegut archives at the Lily Library in Indiana to review the countless drafts of Vonnegut classics like Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions.
• Where else can Vonnegut fans learn about "The Rover Boys", an unpublished essay that the teenage Kurt wrote about his cross-country trip with friends?
• We learn about the scripts Vonnegut tried to sell to network television during his days as a little-known freelancer in the 1950's and how his study of anthropology at the University of Chicago informed The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. 

Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of “poisoning” the minds of young people “with humanity . . . to encourage them to make a better world.” Often that literary activism meant addressing real social and environmental problems—polluted water, soil, and air; racial and economic injustice; isolating and dehumanizing technologies; and lives and landscapes desolated by war. Vonnegut’s remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artificial extended families to vital communities and engaged democracies. Reminding us of our shared connections as humans, as Earthlings, as stardust, Lucky Mud helps fans, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds experience how Vonnegut’s writings purposely challenge readers to think, create, and love.

CHRISTINA JARVIS is Professor of English at State University of New York at Fredonia, where she teaches courses in sustainability and twentieth-century American literature and culture, including several major author seminars on Kurt Vonnegut. She is the author of The Male Body at War: American Masculinity during World War II, and has published in journals such as Women’s Studies, The Southern Quarterly, The Journal of Men’s Studies, and War, Literature, and the Arts. She lives near the shores of Lake Erie in Western New York.
 

List of Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Tilting the Axis


I. Foundations


1. Becoming a Planetary Citizen


2. Views from Titan, Tralfamadore, and the Blue Tunnel: Writing for a “salubrious blue-green orb”


II. Place


3. A Hoosier’s Symphony of Place: From Fresh Water to Salt Water to Quartz Porcupine Quills


4. Apocalyptic Landscapes: Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galapágos


5. Midland City: Asphalt Prairies, Drug Stores, and Racism at Breakfast Time


III. Humanity and Technology


6. M-17 Houses, EPICAC, Jenny, and Wolfgang


7. What Are People For?: Communities, Pacifism, and Secular Humanism


Epilogue: Vox Humana—Make Kurt Live!


Notes


Appendix: Timeline of Vonnegut’s Planetary Citizenship
Acknowledgements
Selected Bibliography
Index