Vonnegut Under Glass ? Writing Kurt Vonnegut

On the Facebook fan page for And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life, someone posted this remark:

?Kurt Vonnegut was the sort of author that one misses personally, without, in my case, having had the privilege of ever meeting him. I have spent hours reading his books, and consider him as a friend. I hope this biography only adds to my appreciation of the man. Nothing could subtract from it.?

That possibility? subtracting from, or altering Vonnegut?s readers? perception of him? has been on my mind since I undertook the Vonnegut biography five years ago. I suspect most biographers think about this.

Vonnegut tends to be embraced by readers (those who like his work) when they are young and becoming aware of hypocrisy, irony, and double-dealing. They read about how the world is ruined through a ridiculous mistake in Cat?s Cradle, or the paradox of how nothing is certain except accidents in Sirens of Titan. For the first time in their lives, I suspect, they feel the cold fog of existential despair descend on them.

Pvt. Kurt Vonnegut, 1943

Yet, his voice on the page is intimate; his fictional landscape is strewn with clues for the initiated, with ?in? references just for them. He invites camaraderie, implies that you, the reader, are a lot brighter and more mature than others probably suspect. Like a Dutch uncle, he figuratively buys you your first beer.

As Holden Caulfield said, ?What really knocks me out is a book that, when you?re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.?

Vonnegut was that kind of author.

In addition to being a novelist and short story writer, however, he was also a younger son, a fraternity brother, an infantry private, a husband, a father, a newspaper reporter, a freelance advertising copywriter, a foreign car salesman, an amateur actor, a sculptor, a ham-and-egger novelist for the first half of his life, a creative writing teacher, a fisherman, a chain smoker, a wiseacre, and a summer resident in the Hamptons.

He lived for eighty-four years, during which time he had two wives, three children by his first wife, three nephews he raised because their parents were dead, and one adopted child. Vonnegut, made choices and changed because ?one man in his time plays many parts.?

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Most of his fans know him through his books, and public appearances (dozens of which are on YouTube) as a wry, curly-haired iconoclast, social pundit, and author of funny, outr?, postmodernist novels.

Kurt and his first wife, Jane, newlyweds (photo Walt Vonnegut)

I know where you can find that fellow. He?s at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis, under glass.

There he is from about age forty-seven onward. On one wall is a blow-up of him speaking at an anti-war protest rally on a college campus. Some of his best known remarks appear on other walls; his typewriter is illuminated in a clear, plastic display case; and his collected first editions and memorabilia are showcased quite handsomely. It?s the best of Vonnegut, a kind of advertisement. His books are for sale at the museum, as a matter of fact, along with official mugs, mousepads, and hoodies.

But the purpose of biography is different from that of a museum. Its purpose is to ask, ?What can we learn from this person?s life?? If the biographer has done his or her work well, and has recreated a life in full? richly researched and critically written? we will know the person as well as his children, his best friend, his editor, his wife, and his lover did. We will be invited into the experience of that person?s life. We?ll wince when he makes a terrible mistake, rejoice when he recovers, pump our fist in the air when he achieves his dream, or sigh when he is defeated through fate, hubris, addiction, or foolishness.

A little soft-shoe, 1968 (photo Anne Bossi)

His life must be described in detail, with facts, footnotes, letters, interviews, paintings, photographs, excerpts? even receipts, hotel bills, contracts, and canceled checks. All put in the service, at first, of establishing a chronology.

A chronology is only the sketch of a life, however. The portrait is the narrative done over it, which, if executed properly, should bring into high relief the person?s true character. We want, as the book develops chapter by chapter, not Dorian Gray? changeless, perfect, ideal? but in the end, access to the secret attic where the picture is!

When we finish reading a biography we should know the person? not as he wanted us to know him? but as he was, as revealed by what he said and did, what others said about him, his letters, and his work.

Will the true Vonnegutians be satisfied with And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life? I don?t know. I only ask that they reserve judgment? of him and me? until the last page.

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Source: http://writingkurtvonnegut.com/2011/07/02/a-biographers-notebook-17/

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