Two books recently out reassess Kurt Vonnegut’s personal and social legacies. Book by book, “Unstuck in Time” chronicles the unintentional development of the man’s political life, while “And So It Goes,” a straightforward biography, adjusts his popular, fanciful image as a grandfatherly saint with accounts of alcoholism, cruelty and resentment of his professional peers. —ARK
In These Times:
In Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut’s Life and Novels (Seven Stories, November), Gregory Sumner documents, novel by novel, spanning 1952 (Player Piano) to 1997 (Timequake), how Vonnegut developed as both a writer and touchstone for reform. The reformist role began without intent, slowly building until Vonnegut accepted and sometimes even embraced it. Near the end of his life, even as he stopped publishing fiction meant to influence readers’ worldviews, Vonnegut spoke out publicly against powerful people who were subverting democratic government. He told anybody who would listen how George W. Bush had entered the White House by mounting “the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops style coup d’état imaginable,” and that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were “psychopathic personalities” who intended to disconnect “all the burglar alarms prescribed by the Constitution” as they expanded executive power.
… It’s [And So It Goes] no hagiography, revealing Vonnegut as often self-centered, sometimes downright mean and seemingly forgetful about his privileged life growing up. Shields explains how Vonnegut treated his first wife poorly after more than two decades of marriage. He could come across as an uninterested and sometimes insensitive father. He often drank to excess. Vonnegut sometimes demonstrated meanness to reviewers and other writers who did not seem to adequately appreciate his accomplishments. However, And So It Goes is also rich with examples of Vonnegut’s generosity, such as helping rear four children whose parents (Vonnegut’s sister and brother-in-law) both died young.
Editor’s note: This item originally began, “Two books recently out take a stab at shaping Kurt Vonnegut’s personal and social legacies.” We changed it after receiving a complaint in the comments below. No insult was intended to the authors of the highlighted books.
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By robZtv, January 3, 2012 at 8:23 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Shields bio does a good job synthesizing in chronological order biographical details scattered throughout Vonnegut’s writings, interviews, and speeches but the overall slant of the book seemed unduly negative. It casts more shadow than it does shed light.
My recently deceased father was a great fan of Vonnegut. One Christmas, “Santa”
gave my eldest sister, who was about 15 at the time, a hardback copy of Breakfast
of Champions. My sister was so blown away that we passed it back and forth
between us five kids. I got to read it when I was about 12 years of age. I became
hooked to Vonnegut’s absurdist view of the world. Slaughterhouse Five, God Bless
You Mr. Rosewater, Slapstick, etc. attacked the Establishment with a soft and glove
that hid an iron fist. Ivy League schools as training camps for America’s future
leaders was a big victim, Conservatism and its hypocritical, underlying greed also
fell victim to his words. I pray that the next generation (twenty-somethings on
down) are exposed to Vonnegut. There were some books that Vonnegut didn’t
take pride in, but I never read a Vonnegut piece that didn’t teach me a little
something about the absurd world in which I live. Even though I suspect he was an
atheist, as am I, God bless him.
Forget about reading books “about” Kurt Vonnegut. Instead, start passing out copies of Slaughterhouse Five to as many people as you can…...His work speaks for itself and S5 is possibly one of the most important books written in the 20th Century by an American.
I’m old (and cranky) enough to have been influenced by Vonnegut’s writings even before Slaughterhouse Five came out at the end of the ‘60s, and so am looking forward to reading at least the biography if not both books. I have to say, however, that it’s hard to trust a volume that can’t even get its title quote right; Vonnegut never said “And so it goes.” The line from Slaughterhouse Five (uttered by the narrator whenever a character - or random bacterium, for that matter - shuffled off to its reward was “...So it goes.” “And so it goes” is more properly associated with Linda Ellerby.
One of my top ten, he referenced Mickey Mouse on occasion with
acrimonious disdain on what he thought was slickly trite, petty, and
banal, and calling anything lilliputian would have been elevating its
status several stories in the realm of the all.
One reviewer of a biographer said, and so it seems, Vonnegut believed
in common decency and common sense, in mankind over machines.
Writing a Q&A column for In These Times, Feb. 28, 2003, Vonnegut
gave voice to his utter contempt for George Bush, “And we weren’t
hated, as Bush would have it, because of our liberty and justice for all.
We are hated because our corporations have been the principal deliverers
and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes which have
wrecked cultures.” What is being challenged by OWS today is deeply and
ironically reminiscent.
Unrelentless, he again gave a succinct assessment of George in a 2003
interview with David Barsamian, “We have a President who knows
absolutely no history, and he is surrounded by men who pay no attention
to history. They imagine that they are great politicians inventing
something new. In fact, it’s really quite old stuff: tyranny. But they
imagine they’re being creative.”
Those who were creative took up the ordeal that raised massive public
consciousness to not only the insanity of the Vietnam War but all war.
KV: “Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to
that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless
butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter,
every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist,
every poet aimed in the same direction.” What he saw as a dissipation of
that energy to what he analogously called banana creme pie, has been
called forth from the dead in 2011 by the Occupier Movement.
In the words of Vonnegut at a public event to honor Howard Zinn, he
said of people’s protests that he saw 8-years ago just didn’t get the
media coverage, “The right of the people to peacefully assemble and
petition their government for a redress of grievances is now worth a
pitcher of warm spit.” If only he could see protesters now! Not only
here, but in every corner of the world, here and in Russia! Who could
have figured Russia?
Lamenting the often incoherence of the Republican regime of George
W. Bush, he kept hope alive that enough people would see into the
greed and thick-mindedness of the conservative right to take some
action. It did not happen then in 2003 but it was certainly in the vat
of discontent and fomenting to a head in 2011. He complained that
government “satirizes” itself. The conscious of the Bush years and
actions can testify to that truism that left this nation in the worst
financial fiasco in 80 years leaving millions of Americans out of
work and in an increasing population in poverty.
“Let not eternal light disturb our sleep, O Cosmos, for Thou art merciful. Deliver me, O Cosmos, from everlasting wakefulness. On that dread day when the heavens and earth shall quake, when we shall dissolve the world into glowing ashes in the name of gods unknowable, I am seized with trembling and I am afraid until that day of reckoning shall arrive. Hence I pray, Deliver me, O Cosmos, from everlasting wakefulness on that day of wrath, calamity and misery. Rest grant us, O Cosmos, and let not light perpetual disturb our sleep.”
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By robZtv, January 3, 2012 at 8:23 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Shields bio does a good job synthesizing in chronological order biographical details scattered throughout Vonnegut’s writings, interviews, and speeches but the overall slant of the book seemed unduly negative. It casts more shadow than it does shed light.
Report thisBy Hollywood Russ, December 15, 2011 at 10:55 am Link to this comment
My recently deceased father was a great fan of Vonnegut. One Christmas, “Santa”
Report thisgave my eldest sister, who was about 15 at the time, a hardback copy of Breakfast
of Champions. My sister was so blown away that we passed it back and forth
between us five kids. I got to read it when I was about 12 years of age. I became
hooked to Vonnegut’s absurdist view of the world. Slaughterhouse Five, God Bless
You Mr. Rosewater, Slapstick, etc. attacked the Establishment with a soft and glove
that hid an iron fist. Ivy League schools as training camps for America’s future
leaders was a big victim, Conservatism and its hypocritical, underlying greed also
fell victim to his words. I pray that the next generation (twenty-somethings on
down) are exposed to Vonnegut. There were some books that Vonnegut didn’t
take pride in, but I never read a Vonnegut piece that didn’t teach me a little
something about the absurd world in which I live. Even though I suspect he was an
atheist, as am I, God bless him.
By Shenonymous, December 13, 2011 at 11:55 am Link to this comment
Agreed, Shields sounds bitter about something.
Report thisBy mrfreeze, December 13, 2011 at 11:02 am Link to this comment
Forget about reading books “about” Kurt Vonnegut. Instead, start passing out copies of Slaughterhouse Five to as many people as you can…...His work speaks for itself and S5 is possibly one of the most important books written in the 20th Century by an American.
Just read the man’s words.
Report thisBy lane08, December 13, 2011 at 12:02 am Link to this comment
Hardly know a writer or painter this description wouldn’t fit.
Report thisBy hidflect, December 12, 2011 at 4:32 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@Charles J. Shields
I sense… fury?
Report thisBy sciencehighway, December 12, 2011 at 3:57 pm Link to this comment
I’m old (and cranky) enough to have been influenced by Vonnegut’s writings even before Slaughterhouse Five came out at the end of the ‘60s, and so am looking forward to reading at least the biography if not both books. I have to say, however, that it’s hard to trust a volume that can’t even get its title quote right; Vonnegut never said “And so it goes.” The line from Slaughterhouse Five (uttered by the narrator whenever a character - or random bacterium, for that matter - shuffled off to its reward was “...So it goes.” “And so it goes” is more properly associated with Linda Ellerby.
Report thisBy Shenonymous, December 12, 2011 at 1:04 pm Link to this comment
One of my top ten, he referenced Mickey Mouse on occasion with
acrimonious disdain on what he thought was slickly trite, petty, and
banal, and calling anything lilliputian would have been elevating its
status several stories in the realm of the all.
One reviewer of a biographer said, and so it seems, Vonnegut believed
in common decency and common sense, in mankind over machines.
Writing a Q&A column for In These Times, Feb. 28, 2003, Vonnegut
gave voice to his utter contempt for George Bush, “And we weren’t
hated, as Bush would have it, because of our liberty and justice for all.
We are hated because our corporations have been the principal deliverers
and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes which have
wrecked cultures.” What is being challenged by OWS today is deeply and
ironically reminiscent.
Unrelentless, he again gave a succinct assessment of George in a 2003
interview with David Barsamian, “We have a President who knows
absolutely no history, and he is surrounded by men who pay no attention
to history. They imagine that they are great politicians inventing
something new. In fact, it’s really quite old stuff: tyranny. But they
imagine they’re being creative.”
Those who were creative took up the ordeal that raised massive public
consciousness to not only the insanity of the Vietnam War but all war.
KV: “Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to
that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless
butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter,
every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist,
every poet aimed in the same direction.” What he saw as a dissipation of
that energy to what he analogously called banana creme pie, has been
called forth from the dead in 2011 by the Occupier Movement.
In the words of Vonnegut at a public event to honor Howard Zinn, he
said of people’s protests that he saw 8-years ago just didn’t get the
media coverage, “The right of the people to peacefully assemble and
petition their government for a redress of grievances is now worth a
pitcher of warm spit.” If only he could see protesters now! Not only
here, but in every corner of the world, here and in Russia! Who could
have figured Russia?
Lamenting the often incoherence of the Republican regime of George
Report thisW. Bush, he kept hope alive that enough people would see into the
greed and thick-mindedness of the conservative right to take some
action. It did not happen then in 2003 but it was certainly in the vat
of discontent and fomenting to a head in 2011. He complained that
government “satirizes” itself. The conscious of the Bush years and
actions can testify to that truism that left this nation in the worst
financial fiasco in 80 years leaving millions of Americans out of
work and in an increasing population in poverty.
By EmileZ, December 11, 2011 at 6:08 pm Link to this comment
“Let not eternal light disturb our sleep, O Cosmos, for Thou art merciful. Deliver me, O Cosmos, from everlasting wakefulness. On that dread day when the heavens and earth shall quake, when we shall dissolve the world into glowing ashes in the name of gods unknowable, I am seized with trembling and I am afraid until that day of reckoning shall arrive. Hence I pray, Deliver me, O Cosmos, from everlasting wakefulness on that day of wrath, calamity and misery. Rest grant us, O Cosmos, and let not light perpetual disturb our sleep.”
—excerpt from “Humanist Requiem” by Kurt Vonnegut
Wikiquotes Vonnegut page:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#Fates_Worse_than_Death_.281991.29
Report thisBy Charles J. Shields, December 11, 2011 at 4:44 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
“[T]ake a stab…?” Five years of research and writing six days a week; 550 pages with 1,900 footnotes. “[T]ake a stab?”
Report this