The bad about Vonnegut

'Nil nisi bonum' seems an inappropriate response to the death of so subverting an artist as Kurt Vonnegut.

So here are a few recent judgements on the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, taken from the pages of the TLS.

"Coy", "arch", "winsome" and "cute": William Boyd.

"Lugubrious" and 'wearing": Morris Dickstein.

"Folksy philosophising": Peter Ackroyd

"Compassionate yet patronizing": Sandy Starr.

And on the central issue for any post mortem, the connection between Vonnegut, the author David Irving and the bombing of Dresden, in 1945:

First,  Daniel Johnson:

"The denunciation of Allied bombing was a theme of East German propaganda rather than West German public discourse: the destruction of Dresden in February 1945, which had been carried out solely to assist the Soviet advance, was declared a uniquely heinous atrocity, comparable in horror only to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and exceeding both in numbers killed.

Ironically, it was Goebbels who had already assigned Dresden a special place in the mythology of the air war; his propaganda was simply adopted by his Communist successors. In Britain and America, it took on a symbolism of its own, bringing together such unlikely bed- fellows as David Irving (who propagated Goebbels's grossly exaggerated death toll of 135,000) and Kurt Vonnegut, who witnessed the raid as a prisoner and later made it the subject of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five."

And, our columnist, J.C.

"Irving's reputation as a historian is irremediably tarnished by Holocaust denial, for which he is now serving a prison sentence in Austria, and by other offences, but his contribution to post-war American literature seems for the time being secure.

For his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut drew on his experience as a prisoner of war in the former slaughterhouse in Dresden, and on Irving's book The Destruction of Dresden, which provided the statistical grounding. The famous refrain "So it goes" follows a recitation of various facts, including the numbers who perished, which are now, like much of Irving's work, discredited. The American edition of The Destruction of Dresden - full publication details included for readers' benefit -is brought to the hospital in Vermont where Vonnegut's hero, Billy Pilgrim, is a patient, and given to the Harvard professor with whom he is sharing a room.

Irving's erroneous assertion that Dresden was a target of no military significance is also recycled in Slaughterhouse-Five: on his way to the prison camp, Billy is told by an envious Englishman that it is "a beautiful city" and that he "needn't worry about bombs. Dresden is . . . undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance".

In a personal chapter at the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut employs the alleged statistical disparity -almost twice as many killed at Dresden as at Hiroshima: 135,000 and 71,379 respectively -to rhetorical effect, stating that, when he started writing the book, few had heard of the raid: "Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima, for instance. I didn't know that, either. There hadn't been much publicity". In the thirty seven years since publication of Vonnegut's novel, there has been plenty of that, no little thanks to Irving. So it goes".

Comments

[Alex D-F]

Hey, malicious obituaries! No authentic lover of literature could fail to warm to this genre, even if not consecrated in antiquity.
But if you are going to hack at corpses, please sharpen your axe first. For your own sake - I wouldn't want you to dirty your shirt cuffs.
The adjectives of Boyd, Dickstein and Starr are just that: adjectives.
Ackroyd is not exactly Der Husserl unserer Zeit for his offhand remark about Vonnegut's 'folksy philosophizing' to be accorded any significance.
Johnson's observation refers to the location in which Vonnegut's theme is discussed, an aspect which has no bearing on the validity of the theme in itself.
J.C.'s remarks, if they are intended to smear, don't stick. Any sentient reader would not blame V. for drawing on information from I. prior to I. being discredited for reasons not germane to V.'s oeuvre. The same sentient reader, far from deeming this a black mark against V., would think the less of J.C. for essaying such an insinuation.

[Mark Wekander]

The number of persons killed in Dresden, whether 130,000 or 50,000 is irrelevant to the message of Slaughterhouse Five. I would say that it is obvious that Vonnegut is against the normal histories that emphasize causal relationships, creating a sense of inevitability. The point seems to be that even with convetional weapons, we are capable of creating astonishing amounts of misery. Vonnegut's main interest is how our thinking about events stops us from making ethical choices. Billy Pilgrim, the anti-hero of Slaughterhouse Five, does not stop his son from going to Vietnam because he believes that everything is inevitable. His fantasy of time travel, a way of explaining the memories that paralyze him, lets him travel through time from place to place in a deterministic world where he can change nothing and therefore is responsible for nothing and can deny the permanence of death. Vonnegut's critics are often as deaf to the irony of his prose as many of his fans, who see him as the saint of nihilism. Whether it is a weakness of Vonnegut that his readers missed his most important ironies is not a simple question. Vonnegut preached the constant questioning of authority and I think this also meant the speakers in his novels.

[M. K. Bock]

So sad to see the TLS put the boot in like this. If you start debating estimates of numbers of people killed, or throwing Kurt Vonnegut in with Irving and Goebbels then you've really missed the point.

[Sam]

I was surprised to see no mention of the issue JC raised in any of the remembrances of Vonnegut, which seems to me to be a black mark as well.

Vonnegut's death also occasioned another surprise -- I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had opened either of the Vonnegut books I own. They must be the loneliest books in my (small) library, most of which have been handled to tatters.

Still ... when I observe the tendency of some people to "gavel authors out of literature," I'm reminded of Gore Vidal's memorable line:

"Literature is, primarily, a chain of connections from the past to the present. It is not reinvented every morning, as some bad writers like to believe."

I don't think Vonnegut's place in that chain is very much in doubt.

[Tony Francis]

Some questions for Clayton Burns: What is the fascination with Zizek and his book "The Parallax View"? Why would he choose this title for his book, when there was another famous conspiracy theory book (by Loren Singer)of the same title, (and coincidently, of the same era as Vonnegut)? What is the purpose of delving into the meaning of Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum" statement? This was an outgrowth of Aquinas' existential theology, and provided an artificial starting point for proof of existence. It was of no deeper meaning when Descartes said it, than it is now. It came from the medieval Scholastic Realism/Nominalism debate (and was a rejection of the same). I notice Zizek tortuously delves this question, among many others. But to what end? Your comments would be appreciated.

[Clayton Burns]

Dear Sir Peter, here are the 3 April 13th questions that I promised you (better late than never). Sorry to mention the sensitive subject of "The Parallax View."

1.Has TLS covered this book in any way? Is something in the works? If not, why not get Zizek to review his own book from the standpoint of the exasperated author who realizes he may have left a few loose threads or even made a couple of errors in reasoning? The MIT text is slightly unfinished but I won't go into that now.

2.Has the international Henry James industry made interesting plans for the centenary of the New York Edition? Has any member of this industry commented in a compelling way on Zizek's reading of "The Wings of the Dove," which he keeps reprinting as if it were a very significant analysis? Will anybody ever notice that the textual and critical history of "The Turn of the Screw" is strangely involuted? But better not to get into that in depth now.

3.When will TLS undertake a comprehensive examination of corpus linguistics tools such as the Oxford collocations dictionary (very impressive), and the COBUILD dictionaries and grammars? Mysteriously, we still have no grammar reader, chapters from "Great Expectations," and from James, for example, to exhibit past conditional hypotheticals and so forth. (If I had known how exciting Kundera rewriting Kundera could be, I would have put my mind to reading every page in reverse.)

If you require more questions of me, Sir Peter, I am willing to hand in another set for May 13th.

[Tony Francis]

Just a quick update... "poo tee weet" is a bird that Billy Pilgrim hears at the end of Slaughterhouse-Five. It is also a blog. Philosophically deep stuff, no doubt.

[Tony Francis MD JD]

Why I don't like Vonnegut: Few benefitted from war more than Vonnegut. First, he survived WW II. But it was Vietnam and the disaffected generation of that era which made Vonnegut. He spoke to them. He was an anachronism, a medieval harlequin, educated beyond his ability to find employment. So he traveled about the land, mocking and entertaining, and growing fat and rich in the process. The goliard motto: "eat, drink, plow deep the maidens you may find, and be merry." Except with Vonnegut, it was "be miserable." He offered us cynicism, fatalism, nihilism, atheism and little else. This was the work of a depressed mind. One can't hate Vonnegut. He was too charming for that. I outgrew "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" books when I was 13. I outgrew Vonnegut when I was 20. It is the fate of writers to be remembered, and criticized by generations unborn, or to be forgotten. One result is as distasteful as the other. I don't know which will be the fate of Vonnegut. But for me, he is as irrelevant as the space cadet books of my childhood.

[Andrew]

TOBH I thought yours quite a petty, point-scoring piece, Sir Peter. Which of the two of you were in the rough vicinity of Dresden during the spree of mass-slaughter?

[Andrew]

The absolute mass-slaughter of the bombing of Dresden was in the true sense diabolical. If we accepted the hypothetical existnce of the diabolical or satanic, I presume we would admit that it is in the interests of such an entity or force, that the most diabolical acts are accepted by the "good" and reasoned into acceptance.

[Tony Francis]

Andrea... I was wondering: what is a poo-tee-weet? I've asked everyone I know. No one has a clue, but we are unamimous: it can't be a desirable or enviable state in which to find oneself!

[Tony Francis]

I don't want to bespoil all this youthful exuberance for Vonnegut. If you like his writing, have at it! I am going to change what I posted yesterday. I don't think many under the age of 40 have ever heard of him. Anyway, after you are 50 years old, ask yourself, "Is Vonnegut really great literature?"

[Aithi Hong]

In response to the first commenter:

Maybe it's due to the fact that Slaughterhouse-Five is required reading at my school, but this morning when I went online all of my friends, juniors and sophmores in high school, greeted me with, "Vonnegut's in heaven now." He was already a great favorite for many before the book was assigned, including myself. So maybe the under-30 crowd is deserving of a little more faith. In any case, he'll definetly be missed around here.

[Andrea Bishop]

@ Tony Francis
I am 27 years old, have all but two of KV's books, and my leather bound copy of Slaughterhouse is signed. He will not be a footnote. He will be missed - greatly. "Poo-tee-weet?"

[Clayton Burns]

Thanks, Sir Peter, for your interesting post. I am nearing the end of my tortuous or even torturous analysis of Zizek's "The Parallax View."

The only review of any value that I have noted is Jameson's in LRB, but it is to be examined on the basis of what it leaves out. "The Parallax View" is the best recent book to stimulate questions as to the foundation of philosophy and theory in language and literature.

[Tony Francis]

When I was in college in the early 1970's, Vonnegut was all the rage in literature classes. It had to do with so many Viet Nam vets, and the general anti-war feeling of the day. I doubt many people under age 30 have ever heard of Vonnegut. His novels were creative, if not weird, even downright bizarre. I wonder if he will be remembered as more than a small footnote in the history of US literature.

[ricardo moraes]

Sir Peter, then I remember the first time I read Slaughterhouse Five, and the movie with the beautiful Valerie Perrine. Vonnegut wrote another great book, Breakfast of champions, but Slaughterhouse is far superior.It is sad,but although it's been a long time since I read his books, I always think of his works with respect. Here in Brazil he is almost unknown;it is a pity.