Kurt Vonnegut

'So it goes ...' (The Bus 8.35)

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.34) 18 January 2024

The Stop

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was an American writer celebrated for his ‘wryly satirical’ novels. Known for an unusual writing style characterised by long sentences, little punctuation and his vehemently humanist point of view, Vonnegut is considered one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century. Blending literature with science fiction, fantasy, humour and various postmodern techniques, his novels are absurd social commentaries highlighting the ‘horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilisation.’¹

Kurt Vonnegut, 1965/Britannica

Born in Indiana to a well-to-do family, Vonnegut began his literary career by working on his high school newspaper, and continued in journalism by writing for the student newspaper at Cornell University, where he majored in biochemistry. In 1943, Vonnegut enlisted in the US Army and was sent to fight in Europe. After the Battle of the Bulge, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a POW camp near the industrial city of Dresden. While in Dresden, Vonnegut was put to work in an underground meat locker making vitamin supplements, a fortuitous placement as he survived the Allied Forces’ firebombing of the city in February 1945. Following the war, Vonnegut worked as a reporter for the City News Bureau while taking graduate courses in anthropology at the University of Chicago. A subsequent job in public relations led him to question the inherent ‘deceitfulness’ of that profession, and he quit to become a full-time writer.

Vonnegut initially published short stories, many with themes concerning technology and the future, which led him to be classified by some critics as a science fiction writer. His first novel, Player Piano (1952), elaborated on these themes by exploring a wholly mechanised and automated society which over time lost all sense of its humanity. In his second novel, The Sirens of Titan (1959), human history is discovered to have been manipulated by a race of aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Requiring a replacement part for their spaceship in order to return home, the aliens decide to design human history as their factory which will - eventually - develop enough to produce the desired part.

Vonnegut abandoned science fiction altogether in Mother Night (1961), the story of an American playwright serving as a spy in Nazi Germany, and in Cat’s Cradle (1963), a novel exploring what happens when the Caribbean practitioners of an island religion based on ‘harmless trivialities’ come into contact with an atomic substance that destroys all life on Earth. This novel is notable for introducing Vonnegut’s ‘slyly irrelevant voice’ which he would develop into a ‘metafictional’ style in his subsequent work. Similarly, in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965), Vonnegut introduces the writer Kilgore Trout, his ‘fictional alter ego’ who appears throughout his later work.

By the late 1960s, Vonnegut was a popular author, but the 1969 publication of Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade firmly established his reputation, with the book ‘lauded … as a modern-day classic’. Breakfast of Champions (1973) followed, and though less critically successful than its predecessor, became a best seller. Over the next decades, Vonnegut remained a prolific writer, though he would never reach the levels of acclaim he had in the 1960s. Later novels would include Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990) and Timequake (1997) – the latter a ‘loosely structured meditation on free will.’

A lifelong atheist who nevertheless admired the socialist teachings of the Biblical Sermon on the Mount, Vonnegut believed socialism could provide a better life for Americans than the ‘social Darwinism and ‘survival of the fittest’ ideas that dominated mid- and late-century capitalism. He regretted that communism and socialism had become ‘unsavoury topics to the average American’, as he thought they were both beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems. He also found it ironic that during the Reagan years, despite the administration’s professed support for Christian beliefs, ‘anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American’. He found this a true shame, as he believed the Sermon taught humans a sort of ‘mercifulness that can never waver or fade.’

For a large portion of his life Vonnegut suffered from depression, and in 1984 attempted suicide. He bounced back after this low and would continue to publish, but over time his mental and physical health continued to decline and, towards the end of his life he was ‘very feeble, very depressed and almost morose.’ A fall in his New York City brownstone led to brain injuries from which he died a few weeks later on 11 April 2007.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to another instalment (16:44) of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, this time with PJ Harvey. A powerfully intimate concert, it’s an excellent example of this artist’s unique exploration of ‘how human boundaries can shatter, reassert themselves or be rendered irrelevant.’ A great way to spend a quarter of an hour - and if you’re unfamiliar with Harvey’s 30 year career, I’d suggest giving her a listen.

PJ Harvey (NPR Tiny Desk Concert)

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or: The Children’s Crusade (1969). This anti-war novel has a bleak, fatalistic message, but couches it in some fantastic dark humour. A modern day classic, it is an absurdist, nonlinear work blending science fiction and historical facts, specifically Vonnegut’s own experience as prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the Allied firebombing.

Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of US Serviceman Billy Pilgrim, captured and imprisoned in a German POW camp during the last years of World War II. But for Billy his experience is unlike anyone else’s, for Billy discovers he is ‘unstuck in time’ and has the ability to move both forwards and backwards through his lifetime in an arbitrary sequence of wide-ranging events. Whether his birth and childhood, his time in the military, his experience in Dresden during the firebombing, his career as a bored optometrist in New York, or as the lover of an actress on the distant planet Tralfamadore to which Billy’s been abducted and placed on exhibit in a sort of zoo - it all adds up to an absurdist take on the meaning of life which, in Vonnegut fashion, is explained as: ‘so it goes.’

From the back: Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a classic for many reasons and needs to be read, or re-read if it’s been awhile.² Highly recommended.

For more information, here is a good commentary from a Guardian Reading Group: Slaughterhouse-Five (Reading Group).

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut:³ ‘So it Goes’ (Nick Lowe, 1978), ‘Sirens of Titan’ (Al Stewart, 1975), ‘Blue Monday’ (New Order, 1983), ‘The Last Man on Earth’ (Wolf Alice, 2021) and ‘Uncle John’s Band’ (The Grateful Dead, 1970). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (1961):

‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next Stop …

1. I was first introduced to Vonnegut through his satirical dystopian 1961 short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’, which - if you’ve not read it - is worth checking out: 'Harrison Bergeron'. I’ve read Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and Bluebeard, but unfortunately that’s where my first-hand Vonnegut ends. However, after doing research for today’s Stop, there are now further books added to the ever-growing To Be Read stack. If only there was enough time. Sources for today’s Stop include: Kurt Vonnegut (Britannica) and Kurt Vonnegut (Biography).

2. It’s also a book frequently challenged by those narrow-minded, uneducated, squeaky-wheel individuals who are terrified that others might think differently from themselves. Which is as good a reason to read it as any other.

3. Nick Lowe’s song is titled after the Tralfamadoreans’ catchphrase used to summarise their fatalistic philosophy: their response to each example of the world’s madness and absurdity that unfurls throughout Slaughterhouse-Five is the deceptively simple, pointed utterance: ‘So it goes.’ The Al Stewart track is his homage to the eponymous Vonnegut novel. New Order’s Stephen Morris was inspired by a sketch in Cat’s Cradle titled ‘Goodbye Blue Monday’ and the Wolf Alice tune quotes that same novel. The Grateful Dead connection is even more specific. Vonnegut hung out with Jerry Garcia, who optioned his novel (Sirens of Titan) for a film that never got made. Additionally, the Dead’s publishing company was named Ice Nine after the deadly substance in Cat’s Cradle. In ‘Uncle John’s Band’, the lyrical question ‘Wo-oh, what I want to know is, are you kind’ is lifted directly from a quote from Vonnegut: ‘Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - ‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.’’ You either are or you aren’t. And there’s really only one correct answer to that question.