Vika Eksta

antons_v @ 01:07 pm: Pakaļas ķirurģija :D
I got a good letter today, Friday, August 23rd, 1996, from a young stranger named Jeff
Mihalich, one would guess of Serb or Croat descent, who is majoring in physics at the University
of Illinois at Urbana. Jeff says he enjoyed his physics course in high school, and got top grades,
but "ever since I have had physics at the university I have had much trouble with it. This was a
huge blow to me because I was used to doing well in school. I thought there was nothing I
couldn't do if I just wanted it bad enough."
My reply will go like this: "You might want to read the picaresque novel The Adventures of
Angle March by Saul Bellow. The epiphany at the end, as I recall, is that we shouldn't be seeking
harrowing challenges, but rather tasks we find natural and interesting, tasks we were apparently
born to perform.
"As for the charms of physics: Two of the most entertaining subjects taught in high school or
college are mechanics and optics. Beyond these playful disciplines, however, lie mind games as
dependent on native talent as playing the French horn or chess.
"Of native talent itself I say in speeches: 'If you go to a big city, and a university is a big city,
you are bound to run into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Stay home, stay home.' "

To put it another way: No matter what a young person thinks he or she is really hot stuff at
doing, he or she is sooner or later going to run into somebody in the same field who will cut him
or her a new asshole, so to speak.

Kurt Vonnegut, (1997) "Timequake", Ch. 38.

Tags: Vonnegūts, humors, literatūra, lūzeri