Billy put his hand up at the very first part of the program, but he wasn’t called on right away. Others got in ahead of him. One of them said that it would be a nice time to bury the novel, now that a Virginian, one hundred years after Appomattox, had written Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Another one said that people couldn’t read well enough any more to turn print into exciting situations in their skulls, so that authors had to do what Norman Mailer did, which was to perform in public what he had written. The master of ceremonies asked people to say what they thought the function of the novel might be in modern society, and one critic said, ‘To provide touches of color in rooms with all-white walls.’ Another one said, ‘To describe blow-jobs artistically.’ Another one said, ‘Toleach wives of junior executives what to buy next and how to act in a French restaurant.’
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (London: Triad Paladin, 1989; 1969), p. 154.