Granfalloon 2022 is presented concurrently with the Indiana University Writers Conference and the Bloomington Handmade Market. Events take place in venues on campus and around downtown Bloomington. The festival offers engaging creative experiences from art and theater to film, live music, crafts, writing, puppets, the Nature Tour of the Century, and more.
Many of the Granfalloon 2022 events and activities pay homage to Vonnegut’s 1986 novel Galapagos, in which Kurt grapples with big questions about evolution, environmental degradation, global economic collapse, and the many, many problems caused by big human brains. (Can you imagine living in such a world?)
About the Playlist
On the right-hand side of this page, you'll see a brief playlist we've curated, highlighting selected songs from the musical artists featured at this year's Granfalloon Festival. These artists include Lung, Slow Pulp, Divino Niño, NNAMDÏ, and Car Seat Headrest, as well as Indiana natives Oreo Jones and Japanese Breakfast. Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" button in the application to save.
Galápagos, Vonnegut's eleventh novel, takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America’s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry–and all that is worth saving.
Translations:
The IU Libraries hold a number of translations of Galapagos, in whole or in part, including editions in Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, German, Swedish, French, Dutch, Hebrew, Slovak, Czech, Japanese, Chinese, and Polish.
Critical explorations:
Harmony, Indiana, was settled in 1814 by the followers of the German pietist George Rapp. A decade later, the settlement was purchased by the Welsh cotton manufacturer and philanthropist Robert Owen, who renamed it New Harmony and attempted to establish a community there based on utopian social and educational ideals.
New Harmony is believed to have provided the inspiration for Vonnegut's New Ambrosia, the (doomed) utopian community that features in his novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). Learn more about New Harmony's rich nineteenth-century history as a utopian and intellectual community.
"Harmonie, 1816." From Cottman, Centennial History and Handbook of indiana. Public domain. Source: Internet Archive, via Wikimedia Commons.