A recent Christmas gift from my girlfriend, And So it Goes is the authorized biography of probably my favorite author- Kurt Vonnegut. I have to give the author Charles Shields plenty of credit- it sounds like he barely got to spend any time talking about the book with Vonnegut before Kurt died in 2007, yet between that and family interviews and old records and letters he came up with a fairly in-depth look at Kurt Vonnegut's entire life. And throughout the whole thing, I kept coming away with one idea- Kurt was kinda a dick. That's an idea that Shields keeps coming back to, namely the important differences between Kurt Vonnegut the person and Kurt Vonnegut the, um, narrator. Because it's so easy to confuse the philosophies of the protagonists in his books with the man himself. Although many of his books feel pretty cynical, I always felt there were undertones of positivity, or at least an idea of "just enjoy life and be good to eachother." This is the guy whose only lesson to teach to infants is "God damn it, you've got to be kind" (God Bless You Mr. Rosewater), and yet when you look at his real life you see a miserable man who frequently berated children, had affairs, threw hissyfits about his critics, and broke friendships in pursuit of money. Oh well. I've still got a few more books of his to read and many other collections if I feel like getting to them, and I'll certainly have to read them with this new info at the forefront of my imagination. Maybe the man himself wasn't perfect, not even close, but at least some of his books feel like they are.
You'd know better than I would, having just read this, but didn't his mother kill herself on Mother's Day basically within six months or so of his Dresden ordeal? When he was 21 or 22 years old? That's gonna scar a man. I believe he'd end up a dick. Funny thing is, I've read a few interviews he and Joseph Heller gave together, and Heller comes off as an even bigger prick, sans mother suicide and Dresden survival badge.
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