Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue presented Kurt Vonnegut, right, with the New York State Author Award and John Ashbery, second from left, with the State Poet Award at an event last January sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, headquartered at UAlbany. William Kennedy, left, is director of the Writers Institute.

ands flapping and unruly nest of curly brown hair vibrating, Kurt Vonnegut prowled the stage of the University’s Page Hall with the zeal of a TV evangelist. “You become a writer to make your soul grow, not to make a living,” Vonnegut said in a smoky, sonorous growl as he scrawled with chalk on a blackboard and limned the mysteries of what makes a story compelling and universal. The newly installed New York State Author was preaching to the converted, some of whom had driven long hours and across multiple states to see their literary idol. He didn’t disappoint.

Playing to a crowd with an exuberance normally reserved for a rock concert — more than 1,000 people overflowed the auditorium and scores more milled around outside — Vonnegut had the assembled throng cheering wildly, laughing until their sides hurt, and pondering the meaning of life. Vonnegut’s literary performance showcased the unique blend of acerbic wit, brilliant interplay of the absurd and the sublime and linguistic genius that has made the 78-year-old author of Slaughterhouse Five, Player Piano and Cat’s Cradle a pre-eminent man of American letters.

Vonnegut discussed his ties to the Albany area (he worked as a publicity writer for the General Electric Co. in Schenectady in the late-1940s) and invoked the memory of his late brother, Bernard Vonnegut, a distinguished University professor and internationally renowned atmospheric scientist, who died in 1997 at age 82. The author’s academic background is in science (anthropology) as well, and Vonnegut gleefully poked holes in the notion that great writers are the exclusive domain of English departments. “You won’t find them there,” he said, “but in the chemistry department or among the kitchen staff behind the steam tables.”

Earlier on this January day in a ceremony at the State Capitol presided over by Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue, Vonnegut accepted the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit. John Ashbery, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, was installed as the State Poet and received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit. Donohue called Vonnegut “one of our lasting, inimitable, unusual treasures” and she described Ashbery as “a luminous citizen of the literary republic.” The two-year honorary titles, administered by the New York State Writers Institute, carry a prize of $10,000 each and require Vonnegut and Ashbery to give free public readings to advance the cause of literature across the Empire State. They amount to lifetime achievement awards. Previous state authors include Grace Paley, E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, William Gaddis, Peter Matthiessen and James Salter. The state poet roster includes Stanley Kunitz, Robert Creeley, Audre Lorde, Richard Howard, Jane Cooper and Sharon Olds.

shbery, 73, whose 20 collections of poetry are infused with experimental language and dazzling imagery, proved a foil to Vonnegut’s manic energy at Page Hall with a reading of new prose poems that was as elegant and subdued as his blue business suit.