Recently Read: "Letters" by Kurt Vonnegut

Letters by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On April 11, 2007, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. passed away. I was just beginning my second trimester, and did not yet know we were going to have a son. My husband and I had a girl’s name all picked out, but were still throwing boy names around. After the news came of Vonnegut’s death, my husband and I were discussing it over dinner. I’ve read more of his works, and was telling him why he was one of my favorite writers. My husband realized that Vonnegut spelled his first name the same as Kurt Cobain, one of his favorite musicians. That night, we knew we had found our boy’s name. Our son Kurt just celebrated his sixth birthday, which happens to fall on the anniversary of John Lennon’s birth. The kid does not lack inspiration for greatness, and I look forward to seeing what he accomplishes in life.

So, I become incredibly excited whenever a new Vonnegut book comes out, probably much more excited than my husband was at the prospect of a Nirvana reunion.

I was especially intrigued when I learned “Letters” was being published. I added it to my Amazon wish list prior to its release date, something I rarely do. Vonnegut’s books tend to have an autobiographical tinge to them, and I was anxious to have insight into his personal life via this collection of correspondence. I also read how this collection included letters to schools that banned “Slaughterhouse 5,” and correctly assume he would have put those people squarely in their place. I was not disappointed. The letter written to one  Charles McCarthy, chairman of the Drake School Board of Drake, North Dakota, on November  16, 1973 alone is worth the purchase price of the book, the hardback issue.

Especially fascinating were Vonnegut’s letters to his children, particularly the ones to his daughter Nanny after he and his wife Jane separated. These letters were particularly raw and openly honest about his state of mind, depression and the shortcomings as a father he saw in himself. He addressed all his children, including “the orphans,” the nephews he raised after the tragic deaths of his sister and brother-in-law, as adults. I noticed he tended to speak candidly to them as if they were more trusted friends than his children, often offering sage advice regarding life and career. In one letter to his daughter Nanny, he spoke quite frankly about the divorce, his relationship with Jill, and reassured her repeatedly that it was not of any doing of hers or her siblings, that he did not leave her mother for another woman, and that he still deeply cared for and valued his friendship with her mother, Jane.

In a letter dated November 2, 1972, he writes to Nanny:
“You have caught onto something I only learned in the past month or so – that terrific depressions are going to crunch me down at regular intervals, and that they have nothing to do with what is going on around me.”

In a letter dated March 17, 1974, he acknowledged the difficulties of the divorce and changing family dynamic:
“As for Jill herself: … It would help a lot, though, if you would understand that she has been very good to me during the most shattering years of my life, and that she was not the one who did the shattering. Jane didn’t do the shattering, either, and neither did money or success. The entirety of life did the shattering.”

His relationship with Nanny was particularly troubled and difficult. Vonnegut often took the blame for their lack of closeness and understanding of each other.

“It is only natural that you should feel reserved and insecure when you’re with me, since I’ve caused two huge disruptions in the continuity of the family, and since you saw so much of me when I worked at home, when I had to raise such hell in order to gain privacy in which to write.  Also, I was worried sick about money all the time, and I had no friends on Cape Cod who had any idea what my sort of work entailed.  Just to clarify the two disruptions I’m talking about, I mean the adoption of the Adams and my leaving the Cape for New York. So there we are.” (January 10, 1973)

Yet, he was capable of being hurt and at least once let her know.

“I would find such indifference to my feelings painful, even if it came from a little kid. You are chronologically a grown-up now. But you are clearly unable to imagine me as a living, interesting, sensitive, vulnerable human being. God only knows what you think I am.” (August 19, 1975)

It was these scattered letters to Nanny that I found most touching, his repeated attempts to connect with his daughter and his struggles to forge relationships with all his children, as well as his continued devotion to his first wife and love. I found it strange that even though there were many letters to his children, including the Adams boys and his first wife Jane, there are no letters at all to his second wife, Jill and the daughter they adopted together. All we know of these relationships is from references in letters to others.

The book opens with an introduction written by the editor, which reads as a fascinating, witty mini biography. The letters are organized chronologically, each decade its own chapter with an introduction also written by the editor. There were actually only a few letters regarding censorship or politics, but the few were truly treasured gems. In the chapters of letters from the 1960s and 1970s, there were quite a few letters that spoke of his time in the army and as a POW in Dresden. These were fascinating as well. The bulk of the letters were of a professional nature among industry colleagues, or updating friends and family of his latest professional endeavors. While some of this is interesting and I learned a great deal about Vonnegut’s varied body of work, after a while it became tedious. At the most, these served as the background from which the really interesting passages stood out.

The editor, Dan Wakefield, was a close friend of Vonnegut’s for most of his life. In a way this really added to the content, as he shared much detail in the introductions to each chapter and in the notes for individual letters. Through these details and Vonnegut’s own words, a picture was painted of Vonnegut as a troubled, complicated, flawed man and artist, and a loving, devoted and loyal person. As a close friend, Wakefield is able to show us Vonnegut as few others could, but he is also able to protect his friend and mentor. In the Editor’s Note, Wakefield states that he omitted passages of letters to avoid repetition and edit out private details and irrelevant or obscure references. This makes me wonder what the ellipses replace, and what secret skeletons are left in the Vonnegut closet. Perhaps it is just as well.

It is often debated whenever the private correspondence of deceased famous people is published to an international audience, whether this is an invasion of privacy. Surely, people like Vonnegut and Ed Abbey intended for their day to day correspondence to be digested by the masses. Usually these books are researched, collected and edited all with the expressed approval of family, but does the family even have that right? I have been to many museum exhibits showcasing the letters of the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. The only difference here is the passage of time.

In October 1995, Vonnegut’s brother Bernard asked why information about the artist was necessary to judge paintings. His response:
“Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a good time or you don’t. You don’t have to say why afterwards. You don’t have to say anything. … People capable of loving some paintings or etchings or whatever can rarely do this without knowing something about the artist. Again, the situation is social rather than scientific. Any work of art is one half of a conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to know who is talking at you. … So I dare to suggest that no picture can attract serious attention without a human being attached to it in the viewer’s mind.” (October 11, 1995)

This can easily be applied to the pictures painted by an author, not to mention one who also happened to draw and design silk screen prints. I believe that it is possible to get quite a lot out of a piece of art as it stands alone. Some of the most moving poems in the classical canon are by “Anonymous.” I have often been incredibly moved by a painting or photograph before knowing anything about the artist. However, you can only get so far before your mind starts to subconsciously fill in the gaps of missing information. After a while, you start imagining a fantasy of the artist, your own personal version, necessary to continue the conversation initiated by the piece of art. This is inevitable unless you learn more about the author or artist, which is why people publish biographies and autobiographies. Publishing correspondence is simply an extension of that, as it gives us added insight of authors who have passed away. After all, if we continued to keep things private after the person passed away, we wouldn’t have been able to read any poems by Emily Dickinson.

Overall, this collection of letters was not what I was expecting. I expected more pearls of wisdom and less snippets of a normal, humdrum life. It was still an interesting read, giving both insights into the life of the author and also life in general throughout the decades. Vonnegut’s letters were mostly void of the creative tone that encompass his novels, though his quintessential cynicism and wit is prevalent all the way to the letters written shortly before his death. Despite not having an overly happy and satisfying life, Vonnegut continued to be productive till the end, accomplishing much in both his personal and professional life. I hope, when he closed his eyes for the last time in early April 2007, he was able to find the peace that comes with great accomplishment.


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