Kurt Vonnegut, Semicolons, Abraham Lincoln and Fisting

Kurt Vonnegut called semicolons “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

I loved many of Vonnegut's novels but there was that undeniable discomfort with gayness, queerness, trans-anything.

I remember him spending many paragraphs in one novel trying to understand why anyone might enjoy fisting.

I realized (even at the age of eleven or whatever I was) he was trying to write a disproof of fisting. To revoke fisting's raison d'etre.

And even at eleven (having no opinion whatsoever on fisting) I saw how vulnerable and naked even a brilliant author appeared when he tried to rewrite the brute facts of existence...or existence's vagaries.

Personally, on a matter like that I am inclined to fall back on Abraham's Lincoln's rather self-referential: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

Perhaps I'm misattributing that quote but that's the preponderance of the agreement apres Google (like that's any assurance).