Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
- Artist/Author/Producer: Kurt Vonnegut
- Confronting Bodies: Drake Board of Education
- Dates of action: November 7,1973
- Location North Dakota, Drake
- Description of the Art Work
- Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five, was created from his
experiences during WW II. The novel takes place during "..what he
believes to have been 11 days, he wandered around as an infantry scout,
improvising his own tactics (all his training had been in artillery), not
knowing where the lines were or whether there were any lines, and living
with death in a cartoonic embrace. As a groggy war prisoner he witnessed
the bombing of Dresden, "a terrible thing for the son of an architect to
see." (Wilford Sheed, The Now Generation Knew Him When, 9-12-69, pg. C9)
- Description of incident
- Bruce Severy,an English teacher at Drake High School in North Dakota
ordered Slaughterhouse Five for one of his classes. "On 7 November
(1973), Mrs. Sheldon Summers, school custodian, burned 32 copies of the
book because the board members had decided that it was pornographic."(
Modern Fiction Studies,Kurt Vonnegut on Censorship and Moral Values, Vol.
26. Iss. 4. 1981, pg. 683)
- Results of incident
- The Board of Education did not reconsider its actions.
Source: New York Public Library, New York City