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Three of the major chroniclers -- and participants -- in the American era
that created FSU will come to campus in March to help celebrate the
transformation of Florida State College for Women into Florida State University.
Joseph Heller, William Styron and Kurt Vonnegut -- authors of some of the
most powerful works of the second half of the 20th century -- are scheduled to
speak in Tallahassee March 20 - 22.
All three, now in their seventies, fought in World War II, went to college on
the GI Bill and wrote about the war, albeit in different ways.
The three are coming at the invitation of Donald Foss, FSU's dean of arts and
sciences, who said he wanted the celebration to include a discussion of the
changes of the post-war world from the artistic viewpoint of the three great
writers.
Dr. Leon Golden, a classicist and head of the FSU humanities program, chose
the writers and asked them to talk about "War Stories: Reality and Metaphor."
"When we talked about three writers, Vonnegut was an immediate idea of mine
because Slaughterhouse Five is a very powerful work," Golden said. "We thought
of Styron in terms of Sophie's Choice, which is indeed a war story of a different
kind. And Heller's war story, Catch 22, is now a phenomenon of our language, not
just a book.
"In addition to that, all three of these men are veterans of World War II, so
they all had personal war experience, and that's where reality and metaphor comes
in. Their own experiences shaped what they were doing, but they added much more
to their work.
... Not only that, but they all know and like each other."
Heller said he was looking forward to hearing what the other two will say in
the three-day colloquium.
"It almost seems as though we were at different wars, the experiences are so
different," Heller said in November from his home in Connecticut.
The works that came from those experiences were radically different. While
Heller and Vonnegut wrote of the experiences of men at war, Styron made a career
of exploring the emotional lives of people very different from himself -- Jews
during the holocaust, women and American blacks.
Styron said he plans to talk at FSU about "the enduring metaphors of
Auschwitz and Hiroshima... the two major events that symbolize for me World War
II.
"Auschwitz was a symbol of oppression," he said in December from his
Connecticut home. "We are still suffering from the shock of this event... and its
mad meaning. Hiroshima demonstrated the absolute power of self-destruction that
the human race is capable of. It's a symbol of survival that we have not used
nuclear weapons since then."
And America didn't just survive the war. In some ways, Styron noted, the
nation became better in the aftermath of the war.
The war, for example, "democratized education," said Styron, who studied at
ChristChurch School and Davidson College and graduated from Duke.
"Many people were totally excluded from college before the war," he said.
"... But after World War II, it was a breakthrough. People started to think that
everyone should have the right to go to college."
And in fact, the need for educating the returning soldiers was the impetus
for opening FSCW to men students.
Like Heller, many of those who came to FSU in 1947 might not have gone to
college at all without the help of the GI Bill.
"At the age of 21 or 22, when I did get out of the army, I saw it as a
brilliant opportunity," said Heller, who studied at the University of Southern
California, New York University, Columbia and Oxford, "whereas earlier I never
thought seriously of going to college or even wanted to, and very few people that
I grew up with had college in their future."
Each writer will speak for approximately an hour. All three will be at each
lecture to participate in discussions and answer questions.
All three are scheduled to participate in a panel discussion Saturday morning
we will in Ruby Diamond Auditorium.
Tickets will be free, and it's doubtful everyone who wants one will get one.
"We're not selling the tickets," Foss said. "Although doing this is not cheap, I
decided rather than sell this, it would be appropriate for FSU to do this for the
students and the larger community."
He said he will announce a procedure for acquiring the tickets.
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