My brand new wife Rosemary (a Canadian from New Dublin, Ontario) and I went to a Kurt Vonnegut lecture held at the American Mexican Cultural Institute in the Zona Rosa in Mexico City around 1969. This institute was backed by the CIA. But they brought the Dave Brubeck Quartet and other good stuff. To me what was salient about the entertaining lecture was that Vonnegut stated that he had invented the term “open beaver”.

My introduction to Kurt Vonnegut (and Gore Vidal with Messiah) was through my love of science fiction in the late 50s and early 60s. The vision of lions escaping from the zoo in Dresden in Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five is in my head.