interview with vonnegut

excerpt -

KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I don't mean to intimidate you, but I have a master's degree in anthropology.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: I'm intimidated.

KURT VONNEGUT: From the University of Chicago-- as did Saul Bellow, incidentally. But anyway, one thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.

So yes, I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.

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