So It Went

Been reading a lot of authors' bios lately.  For instance, just finished And So It Goes, Charles J. Shields' life of Kurt Vonnegut. (Shields had the cooperation of his subject, but Vonnegut died almost as soon as he started). Like Joseph Heller, Vonnegut's WWII book simmered for many years until it came out and made him famous.  His generation served in the war, and many big novelists made their name soon after, but Vonnegut, who landed in Europe and was captured almost immediately, wasn't sure how to write about his experiences as a POW, especially his time in Dresden, before and after it was firebombed.

Born in 1922, he was the youngest child of a successful German-American family from Indiana.  They were hit hard by the Depression, however--his mother would commit suicide.  His older brother Bernard was a brilliant scientist and the family in general looked down on something so "ornamental" as writing.

He attended Cornell for a couple years, where he studied science--as his family demanded--but enjoyed his work in journalism more. (He wrote pro-isolationist editorials). Then America joined the war, and he was about to flunk out anyway, so he enlisted.  After the war, he attended the University of Chicago--without receiving a degree--and then, with help from his brother, got work in General Electric's PR department out in Schenectady.

He got married, had kids, and spent his free time writing.  It took a while to break into the market, but he had talent, and with help from certain editors who liked him (including an old acquaintance from Cornell) was soon selling regularly to the slicks.  He did well enough to quit GE and move to where he thought a writer should be--Cape Cod.

He wrote short stories for a market that would soon dry up due to television.  Meanwhile, he published five novels, including Player Piano, The Sirens Of Titan and Cat's Cradle, but none made a splash.  He was also involved in other ventures, such as owning a SAAB dealership and working in theatre.  When his sister and brother-in-law died, their kids came to live in the already packed Vonnegut household.

In the mid-1960s, he accepted a teaching post at the Iowa University Writers' Workshop, but things weren't looking up.  He was in his forties, barely known as an author, and didn't seem to have any prospects.  But things soon changed. His works were re-released by a new publisher and his easy-to-read, satirical style went over big with the 60s generation.  And then he finally wrote his WWII novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and hit the big time.

The trouble with the bio is at this point the drama is mostly over.  You have a lot of depressing facts about Vonnegut's troubles with the women in his life, with his children, and with the world in general.  His public reputation--he often came across as a sweet, funny, middle-aged hippie--didn't always comport with the sometimes callous and querulous man he could be.  But as a writer, after Slaughterhouse Five, he puts out one bestseller after another, so his need to make it is gone.  And since Shields spends little time on Vonnegut's literary output, the second half of the book isn't nearly as compelling as the first.

Vonnegut was aware in later years that his reputation was falling.  It seemed to pain him.  At present, it's hard to say what his place is in American letters.  He wrote some funny, smart and charming books, but they're fairly glib, don't have particularly deep characters, and are often shot through with simplistic politics.  Still, they're read, and I'd guess he's got as good a chance of living on as any of his contemporaries.