Getting To Know: Kurt Vonnegut
By Russell Bartholomee

Who He Is:

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most singularly original and important American writers of fiction of the twentieth century.  Sometimes dismissed by the uninitiated as a "mere" science fiction author, Vonnegut is in actuality responsible for some of the most thought-provoking and entertaining prose in modern literature.  He is also a bit of a living contradiction.  An avowed atheist, he nevertheless imbues many of his characters with genuine faith and explores themes which wrestle with the divine.  Often scathingly sarcastic with a biting wit that approaches cruelty, he is also a master of satire, farce and slapstick.  His characters are just as likely to be saints as sinners, victims as villains, tragic as comic—and are sometimes a mixture of all of the above.  If you look to his books for the answers to the eternal questions that have always plagued mankind, you will very likely walk away disappointed.  If instead you are willing to have your assumptions challenged as you muddle through with the rest of us, Vonnegut's work is often just the thing.


How To Spot Him:

Vonnegut has looked like an old curmudgeon for most of his career, even when he was still a young curmudgeon.  He has a head full of mostly kempt, curly brown hair, and his trademark well-groomed mustache hangs above a bemused, cat-that-ate-the-canary-and-got-away-with-it grin.  Look in his eyes and you will be met with a gaze that seems slightly amused, possibly at your expense.  Born in Indiana, he is now a resident of New York and is often accompanied by his favorite photographer (and wife) Jill Krementz.


Vital Fact:

Kurt Vonnegut served in the US Army in World War II, and fought (and was almost immediately captured) in the Battle of the Bulge.  He spent almost all of his time in the War in a German prison camp in the city of Dresden, a city that contributed exactly nothing to the Nazi war effort.  Famous for its porcelain figurines and considered safe from the attack, the city was nevertheless firebombed by Allied forces (who knew that US prisoners of war were being held there) as an act of revenge for the Battle of Britain.  Vonnegut was one of the few who survived the bombing, taking shelter with other soldiers in a slaughterhouse.  He spent the rest of the war cleaning up the devastated city until Germany was liberated.  This event shows up in whole or in part in many of his novels, most famously in Slaughterhouse Five (much of which is taken directly from Vonnegut's own experiences).


Not So Vital Fact:

I had a band in college called The Monkey House, named for Vonnegut's collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House.  He did a lecture at a nearby university at that time, and I went with a stack of books for him to autograph and a copy of my band's demo tape.  After a great lecture, I gave him the tape and explained that I had named the band after his book.  He looked interested and asked what kind of music we played.  I informed him that the music was a sort of eclectic modern rock, REM meets Jane's Addiction.  His smile quickly faded, he put the tape in his shirt pocket and deadpanned, "Maybe my daughter will like it."  Then he signed my books.  With each signature, he added an asterisk.  Having read Breakfast of Champions, I knew what that extra doodle meant.  A friend who was with me did not, and asked for clarification.  If you ever get Kurt Vonnegut's autograph and wonder aloud what the asterisk means, he'll look at you incredulously and say, "Don't you read my books?  That's my asshole."  You've been warned.

Where To Start:

Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) - "The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.  They weren't only equal before God and the law.  They were equal in every which way."

You thought I was going to say Slaughterhouse Five was the best place to start, didn't you?  Well, even though it’s his most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five is a poor place to start if you’ve never read Vonnegut.  It's a fabulous book, and I highly recommend that you get around to reading it, but it’s too non-linear to function well as an introduction to Vonnegut’s storytelling.  I suggest you devour it only after you get your feet wet with at least one of the other books in this section. 

Welcome to the Monkey House may well be the best place to start to get to know Kurt Vonnegut.  It is a superb collection of 25 short stories that were originally published in various periodicals from the early 1950s until the late 1960s.  Vonnegut began his writing career as an author of short stories (back when one could still actually make a decent living that way), and this volume contains some of his very best stories.  Especially strong is the magnificent “Harrison Bergeron,” a masterful bit of science fiction that deftly illuminates the facts about human jealousy and the desire for control.  Set in the not-too-distant future, society has finally managed to make all people equal, not by elevating the weak but by handicapping the strong and talented.  If a person is mentally agile, they are made the wear devices that interfere with their thinking.  If physically strong, they must wear contraptions that hinder their physical prowess.  Also terrific is “Who Am I This Time?” a very funny story about a couple of shy actors in community theater who find love within the pages of Tennessee Williams and live out their romance vicariously through the characters they portray.  Throughout, you get fine examples of all the many types of stories Vonnegut is able to tell.  Some of the stories are sweet, some funny, others terrifying.  But all are exquisite examples of Vonnegut’s craft.  If you like at least most of the short stories in Welcome to the Monkey House, you’ve got a lot of great reading ahead of you.  If you don’t like any of them, you might want to skip the rest of the column.

Galápagos (1985) - "Now there is a big-brain idea that I haven't heard much about lately: human slavery.  How could you ever hold somebody in bondage with nothing but your flippers and your mouth? "

Since it was the first Vonnegut novel I ever read, I'm going to suggest that you also start with Galápagos, which deserves to be thought of in the same high regard as his better-known books.  Galápagos takes the reader back one million years to A.D. 1986, the beginning of the human race.  No, that's not a typo.  The book imagines that a handful of humans on a tourist cruise to the Galápagos Islands survive a nuclear holocaust.  The only human survivors become the new Adam and Eves, repopulating the world with human offspring.  Thanks to the radiation levels, however, humans start to mutate and evolve into aquatic creatures akin to seals.  Full of tremendous wit and Swiftian satire, Vonnegut's tale of the end and beginning of the human race is an insightful examination of the deep flaws of human greed and our capacity for self-destruction.

Cat's Cradle (1963) - "Pay no attention to Caesar.  Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on."

Probably Vonnegut's best-known book apart from Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle is a much better introduction to the author's work.  Incredibly inventive, the book answers the question of whether the world will end in fire or ice with a third choice—ice-nine.  This fictional substance freezes at room temperature and must be heated to melt back to regular water.  Worse, if ice-nine makes contact with regular water, it instantly converts that water into ice-nine.  Developed by an atomic scientist for purely whimsical purposes, the substance's potential as a weapon attracts the attention of the US government.  The fact that using ice-nine at all practically guarantees the ultimate destruction of the entire globe?  A minor quibble.  A scathing indictment of the power-hungry military industrial complex and the arrogance of let's-make-it-because-we-can science, Cat's Cradle is also a very funny book. 

Bluebeard (1987) - "I am the erstwhile American painter Rabo Karabekian, a one-eyed man.”

One thing that Vonnegut is not usually known for is a happy ending.  With Bluebeard, however, he proves that he can write a happy ending without resorting to cornball sentiment and mushy contrivances.  The book is the fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, whom Vonnegut depicts as one of the founders of the abstract expressionist movement.  The artist becomes rich and famous for arranging colored tape in random patterns on canvas, a gimmick that the artist considers to be of little value.  Even so, he amasses great wealth, even as his confidence in his artistic abilities steadily diminishes.  When the glue on the tape eventually fails, galleries and collectors the world over find themselves in possession of blank canvases that have shed the now non-sticky tape.  Karabekian’s low opinion of himself is suddenly agreed upon by the rest of the world, to whom he is now a fraud and a footnote in the history of modern art.  I did say it had a happy ending, didn’t I?  It does, but I wouldn’t dare ruin it for you.  You’ll have to see for yourself how Rabo Karabekian comes to terms with his own sense of self-worth.

Mother Night (1961) - "My name is Howard W. Campbell, Jr.  I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination.”

In this exceptional novel, Kurt Vonnegut makes a Nazi war criminal the hero of the story.  Howard W. Campbell, Jr. is an American-born man who grows up in Germany and spends World War II as a Nazi propagandist, sending out anti-American messages and misinformation on behalf of the Third Reich.  However, Campbell is really an agent of the American government, and his treasonous, hate-filled “pro-Nazi” messages are really coded messages to Allied commanders which are helping the strategic war against the Germans.  Campbell knows this, as do a tiny handful of federal agents, but the rest of the world takes him at face value—an ex-pat American traitor who was the English-speaking mouthpiece for evil.  Once the war is over, Campbell is a man without a country, reviled by those he was secretly serving, revered by hate groups, and full of remorse for the knowledge that even while he helped the Allies win a strategic war, he was also aiding the enemy’s morale and contributing to the demoralization of his fellow citizens.  Campbell’s conundrum provides the moral that Vonnegut explains in his introduction: “We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
 

Breakfast of Champions (1973) - "This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.”

The two men in question in the quote above are Kilgore Trout (a science fiction writer that Vonnegut refers to in many of his novels) and Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy owner of a car dealership.  Trout writes the sort of pulp science fiction that only gets published in adult magazines.  Hoover is a wildly successful business man who has it all—but is losing his mind.  He has just read a book by Trout, the premise of which is that the reader is the only person on the planet, and that every other person is a machine designed to test him.  Hoover’s malfunctioning brain convinces him that this book is the truth, revealed to him from on high.  The results are both tragic and comic, but always entertaining.  Vonnegut did some groundbreaking things in this book, including filling the pages with his own doodles and illustrations and bringing himself into the story as a character.  In the scene where Trout and Hoover finally meet, Vonnegut himself is sitting at a table observing the whole thing.  When he wonders why the two main characters just keep staring back at him, he realizes that they are only waiting for him to give them direction.  He’s the author, after all.  Breakfast of Champions is an amazing book, one which richly deserves its reputation as a classic of modern fiction.


Where To Go From There:

Slaughterhouse Five (1966) – I want to be perfectly clear again that I am not putting down this novel by placing it in this category.  While it’s not my favorite of Vonnegut’s novels, Slaughterhouse Five is as good as anything he ever wrote, and is more that worthy to be his most well-read book.  It’s just that the story can be off-putting and difficult to follow if you’ve never read Vonnegut before.  The first time I read it, it took me almost a third of the way through the book until I understood how the story’s non-linear progression worked.  After I started over, I was hooked on the life of Billy Pilgrim, who has become unstuck in time.  He lives every moment of his life out of order; one moment he’s 16, the next he’s 50, and then he’s 4.  He has seen his birth, death, and everything in between over and over again, just not in order.  Billy Pilgrim is a husband and father on earth, having fought in World War II and survived the firebombing of Dresden (sound familiar?).  This event is the defining moment of his life, the one to which he returns most frequently in the book.  Our hero is also abducted by aliens at one point, and he learns about life the universe and everything from his benevolent captors.  The book deals with two main ideas.  One is that there’s not much we can do to avoid our fate.  The other is that we should do whatever we can to avoid the senseless slaughter of events like the bombing of Dresden.  Much deeper than most science fiction, much funnier than most anti-war novels, Slaughterhouse Five is simply, as Kevin Bacon told us in Footloose, “a great book.”

Fates Worse than Death (1991) – Actually not a novel, but a collection of essays and lectures, Fates Worse than Death is still vintage Vonnegut.  The apt subtitle of the book is “An Autobiographical Collage,” and it certainly is a revealing work, taken as a whole.  In a sense, it’s a sequel to a similar earlier volume called Palm Sunday.  That book is very good, but Fates Worse Than Death is the stronger of the two.  Among other varied and sundry topics, Vonnegut insightfully discusses art, literature, his family, mental illness, Jackson Pollack, architecture, the world’s funniest dirty joke, his former son-in-law Geraldo Rivera, and of course the firebombing of Dresden.  The last item is mentioned in a very funny segment in which the author recounts a speech in which he lists many famous bombings, categorizing each as either “good” or “bad.”  After the speech, a woman scolds him, saying that no one ever deserves to be bombed.  Vonnegut’s reply: “Nothing could be more obvious.”  The whole book crackles with wit and is as close to a proper autobiography as Vonnegut has written.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) – This is really one of my favorite of Vonnegut’s books.  Eliot Rosewater is a man who feels complete and utter love for every single member of the human race.  He is the heir to a vast fortune, and he uses the money—get this—to help people.  Of course, his family does whatever they can to stop him from “wasting” their fortune on these needy people.  They treat Eliot as if he were insane, though his motives are absolutely pure.  Even the needy people are not blameless, many of whom do whatever they can to exploit Eliot’s generosity.  Through Eliot, Vonnegut explores the very fabric of selflessness and human charity, of greed and hypocrisy.  It’s a truly touching story, with a very satisfying ending.
 

Also Recommended:

I’ve left out a number of excellent books, assuming that if you read all of the above, you’ll probably seek out the rest as well.  Well worth your time are:

Player Piano, an Orwellian tale that is also Vonnegut’s first novel.  Recommended to fans of 1984 or Brave New World.

Sirens of Titan, a fantastic work of science fiction, as good as the best Ray Bradbury.

Deadeye Dick, a twisted tale of accidental murder and fate. 

Palm Sunday, an earlier and very well-written collection of essays.

Bogambo Snuff Box, a terrific collection of short stories that makes an excellent companion to Welcome to the Monkey House. 

Also great are Hocus Pocus, Slapstick, Wampeters Foma & Granfaloons, and Timequake.

What To Avoid:

This is a tough category for me, since I honestly don’t think Vonnegut has written a bad book.  So I’ll simply say that a very few of his books are only recommended to committed fans.  Among them are:

Jailbird – The story of civil servant Walter F. Starbuck, who (among other things) named names for HUAC and was tangentially connected to the Watergate scandal.  It’s a good book, but it takes a while to get started, and the character is harder to sympathize with than most of Vonnegut’s protagonists. 

Happy Birthday, Wanda June – As far as I know, this is Vonnegut’s only published play.  And though there are admirable things about it, it’s understandable that he is not best known for his contribution to the world of theater.  The main character is an abusive Neanderthal of a man (similar in many ways to Hemmingway), who disappears in the jungle for years.  He never treated his family well, and when he returns at long last, he continues to mistreat them.  The title character is a seven-year-old girl who gets hit by a truck on her birthday.  Rumor has it that the author was drinking a lot when this was written.  I don’t entirely disbelieve it.

Pretty much every movie made from one of Vonnegut’s books, with a couple of notable exceptions (see below) – Many filmmakers have tried to capture Vonnegut’s zany humor and dark commentary.  Almost all have failed miserably.  If anyone ever tries to talk you into seeing the film versions of Slapstick (called Slapstick of Another Kind) or Breakfast of Champions, hit them.  It’s not that these novels wouldn’t make great movies, it’s that Bruce Willis shouldn’t be in them.

 
What To Watch:

Slaughterhouse Five (1972) – An outstanding adaptation of the classic novel by George Roy Hill.  It very closely follows the book, and completely captures its feel.  Vonnegut himself has commented often about how much he enjoyed the film.  It is not merely a good adaptation of a great book, though.  It’s a great film in its own right.

Mother Night (1996) – Not as stellar as Slaughterhouse Five, but this is still worth watching.  Nick Nolte stars as Howard W. Campbell, Jr.  The film more or less sticks to the book, and since the source material is so strong, this faithful adaptation works quite well.

Back to School (1986) – This Rodney Dangerfield “comedy” is an absolute waste of time.  However, Vonnegut makes a really funny cameo in it.  At one point, Rodney’s character hires Vonnegut to write a paper for him—and gets a C.  That a college professor would consider his writing to be mediocre is the only intelligent joke in the whole film, and Vonnegut’s sheepish look as Dangerfield scolds him is actually very funny.  I’m not saying you should rent it.  But if you’re stuck at a relative’s house on a holiday and it’s on, look for this scene.


Everything Else You Need To Know:

http://www.vonnegut.com/- The official website, primarily concerned with what Vonnegut is up to presently, including his artwork and essays.

http://www.kurt-vonnegut.com/other.shtml – A fairly thorough site with plenty of biographical information and a decent photo gallery. 

http://www.vonnegutweb.com - Another extensive fan site, with oodles of information about the author, his life, and his work. 

 

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