He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn't good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950s, he was employed by Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that had jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and walked out, self-employed again.

I looked in the SI Vault and couldn't find anything written by Vonnegut, but this anecdote is reported widely around the web.

Maybe there will be more evidence at the memorial library opening soon in Indy.

Via Brian Sample