"Yon Yonson" or "Jan Jansen" is an infinitely recursive folk song, most popular in the midwestern United States. The song being set in Wisconsin is a satirical reference to Wisconsin's Scandinavian-American culture and heritage. It is also well-known for its use in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
The song is often sung in a Scandinavian accent (e.g. j pronounced as y, w pronounced as v). This accent is revealed by the name "Yon Yonson", which when recited in American English is usually rendered "Jan Jansen" or "John Johnson". The Swedish pronunciation "Yon Yonson" probably dates the origin of the song to soon after the Swedes' arrival in the United States. [1]
A possible origin of the song is the dialect stage comedy Yon Yonson by Gus Heege and W. D. Coxey (1890). [2] [3] The play's setting included a Minnesota lumber camp. Despite no evidence showing that the song was actually performed as part of the play, it gave birth to 'Yon Yonson' as a stock character in Scandanavian-American pop culture. [4]
Numerous versions of the song exist, but all are similar to the following:
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life". When he died in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."
Motherfucker, sometimes abbreviated as mofo, mf, or mf'er, is an English-language vulgarism. It is a form of the profanity fuck. The word is usually considered highly offensive. However, in common usage, it is rarely used to refer to one person having intercourse with a woman who is a mother. Rather, the word usually refers to a mean, despicable, or vicious person; or any particularly difficult or frustrating situation. Conversely, it can be used positively, as a term of admiration, as in the term badass motherfucker (BAMF), meaning a fearless and confident person.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years. Throughout the novel, Billy frequently travels back and forth through time. The protagonist deals with a temporal crisis as a result of his post-war psychological trauma. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience that Vonnegut endured as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
The Sirens of Titan is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.
Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1976, it depicts Vonnegut's views of loneliness, both on an individual and social scale.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Swedish Americans are Americans of Swedish descent. The history of Swedish Americans dates back to the early colonial times, with notable migration waves occurring in the 19th and early 20th centuries and approximately 1.2 million arriving between 1865–1915. These immigrants settled predominantly in the Midwest, particularly in states like Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, in similarity with other Nordic and Scandinavian Americans. Populations also grew in the Pacific Northwest in the states of Oregon and Washington at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles started as an informal "drinking club" between American World War II pilots, for humor and camaraderie. Any member who was asked "Are you a Turtle?" needed to reply, loudly, "You bet your sweet ass I am", or buy the questioner a drink. The Turtle Club also has a number of membership cards with instructions on recruiting new members, which requires asking three to four riddles for which it is difficult to think up answers other than the obvious vulgar ones. The answer to "What goes in hard and comes out soft" is "gum". It was historically exclusively a men's group. It is an amorphous group and is organized formally in some places and loosely in others, and is popular in bars.
Birger Sjöberg (1885–1929) was a Swedish poet, novelist and songwriter, whose best-known works include the faux-naïf song collection Fridas Bok and the novel Kvartetten Som Sprängdes, a somewhat Dickensian relation about stock-exchange gambling in the twenties, and the frantic efforts to recover.
Death on Credit is a novel by author Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published in 1936. The most common, and generally most respected English translation is Ralph Manheim's.
Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut. The collection provides insight into Vonnegut's thoughts on various subjects, including writing, war, and his own literary career. The book is known for its eclectic mix of genres and personal reflections.
The Dave Howard Singers is a cult Canadian alternative rock band/project originally formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The project is based around the talents of singer-songwriter Dave Howard and the signature sound of his Ace Tone organ. During the second half of the 1980s, the band were resident in Britain, where they were a cult act making several appearances on nationwide television.
William Frederick Kirk was an American baseball writer, columnist, humorist, poet and songwriter.
Augustus J. "Gus" Heege was an American playwright and actor, whose works were popular at the end of the 19th century.
The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library is dedicated to championing the literary, artistic, and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, and Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It opened in January 2011 and was located in The Emelie, a structure on the National Register of Historic Places at 340 North Senate Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana, until January 2019. Funding for a new building at 543 Indiana Avenue was secured, and the library reopened to the public on November 9, 2019.
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young is a 2013 collection of nine commencement speeches from Kurt Vonnegut, selected and introduced by longtime friend and author Dan Wakefield.
Adolph B. Benson, born Adolph Berndt Bengtsson, was an American scholar, educator and literary historian. Adolph Benson's research focused primarily on the study of Swedish-American culture.
Languages of Truth is a collection of essays by Salman Rushdie. It was published in May 2021 by Random House.
