Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64

The Paris Review: So every afternoon you would go to the Echo office—

Kurt Vonnegut: Yeah. And one time, while I was writing, I happened to sniff my armpits absentmindedly. Several people saw me do it, and thought it was funny—and ever after that I was given the name “Snarf.” In the annual for my graduating class, the class of 1940, I’m listed as “Kurt Snarfield Vonnegut, Jr.” Technically, I wasn’t really a snarf. A snarf was a person who went around sniffing girls’ bicycle saddles. I didn’t do that. “Twerp” also had a very specific meaning, which few people know now. Through careless usage, “twerp” is a pretty formless insult now.

TPR: What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

KV: It’s a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

TPR: I see.

KV: I beg your pardon; between the cheeks of his or her ass. I’m always offending feminists that way.

TPR: I don’t quite understand why someone would do that with false teeth.

KV: In order to bite the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs. That’s the only reason twerps do it. It’s all that turns them on.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64 / Interviewed by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, Richard Rhodes / The Paris Review