The sixties were a turning point for the whole country and for Kurt Vonnegut as a writer. His work would have special resonance for the dynamic new youth culture and its values, especially in questioning the status quo and challenging the accepted wisdom (though Kurt did it through storytelling rather than the usual political or cultural manifestos). The two most specific and significant events of importance to Vonnegut, though, were his being invited to teach at the highly regarded Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and his offer of a three-book contract from publisher Seymour Lawrence, which gave him financial freedom to devote himself full time to his writing.
Vonnegut was interviewed in October of 1966 by the noted academic critic Robert Scholes, while Scholes was teaching in the English department of the University of Iowa and Vonnegut was teaching at the Writers’ Workshop. Scholes was the first and most perceptive academic critic to write about Vonnegut’s work. In The Fabulators, a 1967 study considering Vonnegut along with critically acclaimed novelists like Lawrence Durrell and Iris Murdoch, Scholes explained that Vonnegut “uses the rhetorical potential of the short sentence and short paragraph better than anyone now writing, often getting a rich comic or dramatic effect by isolating a single sentence in a separate paragraph or excerpting a phrase from context for a bizarre chapter-heading. The apparent simplicity and ordinariness of his writing mask its efficient power …”
During their interview, when Scholes asked Kurt if he expected a turn in his fortunes as a writer, Vonnegut said, “I never expect anything good to happen. I never expected the university to hire me. I thought I was going to starve to death.”
He was “offered the job [at Iowa] at the last minute when Robert Lowell decided not to appear,” Kurt told Steve Wilbers, who was writing a history of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a dissertation in 1976. “I needed the money. I needed the stimulation. I needed the change in scene … It turned out to be a very bright thing for me to do. Suddenly writing seemed very important again. My neighbors on Cape Cod didn’t read me, didn’t read anything, so I had felt like a pointless citizen there. In Iowa City I was central and spectacular. This was better than a transplant of monkey glands for a man my age.”
“I was also elated by belonging to a huge and extended family of artists. As for my students: They were so able and interesting, most of them, that I thought of them, almost from the first, as colleagues. I remain in touch with many of them to this day, and colleagues are what they have truly become.” His students included Gail Godwin, John Irving, and others who went on to become writers, editors, and college professors. His fellow teachers, the writers Richard Yates, Nelson Algren, Vance Bourjaily, Paul Engle, and José Donoso, a leading Chilean novelist, also became friends for life.
In an autobiographical opening to Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut wrote cryptically: “I taught creative writing in the famous Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa for a couple of years … I got into some perfectly beautiful trouble, got out of it again.”
His reference was to a brief affair and lifetime friendship with one of his students who was “a single mom, with two kids,” in her second year of graduate work at the Writers’ Workshop: Loree Wilson Rackstraw. Kurt later gave her permission to use any of the letters and other writing he sent her, which she quoted from in her book about their friendship (Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut As I Knew Him). She wrote that their friendship “was sustained mostly by the U.S. Postal Service over the years.”
Kurt received the lowest salary of any of the Iowa faculty because he did not hold an advanced academic degree—in fact, he did not have a college degree at all. Since he had finished his course work for the master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, Vonnegut needed only to write a thesis the anthropology department would accept to get his M.A.—and, with it, a much-needed raise in salary. So he tried again.
This time he wrote a thesis comparing stories of primitive societies to contemporary short stories. This, too, was rejected—he was told that it wasn’t valid to compare primitive and civilized societies. In 1971 (after he was rich and famous and did not need a twenty percent raise anymore) he was awarded a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago, on the grounds that his novel Cat’s Cradle (published in 1963, before Vonnegut went to Iowa) made “a contribution to the field of cultural anthropology.” So it goes. Kurt spelled out his reaction in Palm Sunday, “The University of Chicago … can take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooooooooon.”
While teaching at Iowa in 1966, Vonnegut wrote a review of a new Random House dictionary for The New York Times Book Review and got a fan letter that would change his life. The letter was from Seymour Lawrence, a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly Press, who had opened his own publishing company the year before in a one-room office at 90 Beacon Street in Boston. He admired the style and humor of Vonnegut’s review and told him to stop by his office if he ever needed a new publisher. Lawrence had also begun to hear murmurings of an underground following for Vonnegut’s novels, especially Cat’s Cradle, which was being passed around in well-thumbed paperback copies by admiring college students.
Kurt left Iowa when he got a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 (on his second try) and went back to Dresden to see if it would help him with the novel he’d been trying to write about his experience there in WWII. He then returned to Cape Cod to finish the book. Knowing he would soon be running out of money again, and unable to interest his previous publishers in his unfinished novel, he went up to Boston and rang the bell at 90 Beacon Street, introducing himself to Sam Lawrence and offering him the unfinished manuscript. Sam read it and offered Vonnegut a three-book contract for both hardcover and paperback rights. It was a publishing windfall for an author in those days, and Kurt warned Sam Lawrence his books “didn’t make money.” He said his last one had sold only 1,500 copies.
“You write the books,” Sam said, “and I’ll worry about the money.”
Neither of them had to worry about money again. Lawrence bought the rights to all Kurt’s previous books, first published Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968, and the next year brought out Slaughterhouse-Five, which became a worldwide bestseller.
Had Slaughterhouse-Five been written and published in the 1950s, it would not have made the same impact. The timing of the novel’s publication was eerily right, for by 1969 many Americans had become critical of the war in Vietnam, not only because the Tet Offensive of 1968 illustrated how badly we were faring in the conflict but also because of the revelation of atrocities like the My Lai Massacre, the use of napalm against civilian populations, and the saturation bombing of Cambodia and Laos that began in March of 1969—the same month Slaughterhouse-Five was published. A novel based on the firebombing of Dresden during WWII would not have seemed as relevant in the preceding decade as it did now; it would not have struck such a nerve.
The events in Vietnam and the protests against the draft, led by college students, increased the growing influence of the youth culture, who made Vonnegut their literary hero in questioning the accepted wisdom of the status quo. Kurt was as surprised as anyone and had never wanted to be a “spokesman” of the young. He was very leery of the hippie phenomenon and wrote a searing account of one of their heroes, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles and assorted movie stars (“Yes, We Have No Nirvanas,” published in Esquire and collected in his book Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons). He satirized the stylish popularity of Eastern meditation, saying we had the same thing in the West—reading short stories, which also lowered your heart rate and freed your mind from other concerns. He said short stories were “Buddhist catnaps.” He thought the Maharishi was a phony but he loved the music of the Beatles, spoke up for Abbie Hoffman, and admired Allen Ginsberg.
When the hippie leader Ray Mungo (founder of the Liberation News Service) and my friends from his commune told me they wanted to meet Vonnegut, I said they would have to do it on their own. After Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt was swamped with letters and requests for meetings, asked for advice, invited to speak and be interviewed, and I didn’t want to add more intrusions into his privacy. When the commune delegation showed up at his doorstep on Cape Cod, he didn’t invite them inside but asked, “What can I do for you people?” He took them for a walk and talked and listened to his young admirers and it all ended with laughter and mutual appreciation.
Vonnegut never changed his style of dress, eating, or smoking during that decade (or any other), sticking to Pall Malls over pot, whiskey over cocaine and LSD, meat and potatoes over vegetarianism, and was skeptical of all new fads.
“I did smoke a joint of marijuana once with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable,” he confessed in A Man Without a Country. “It didn’t seem to do anything to me one way or the other, so I never did it again.”
January 23, 1960
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Stephen Potter was the British author of popular books of mocking self-help, most famously Gamesmanship and One-Upmanship.
The book referred to here as “Nation of Two” would be published as Mother Night.
Hakenkreuz is the German word for “crooked cross,” the Swastika, symbol of the Nazis.
Dear Knox:
Thanks for the blind carbon—something like those fish in Mammoth Cave who’ve lost their eyes. An old man I worked with at General Electric never kept carbons. When somebody asked to see a carbon of such and such a letter, the old man would sit down and write the carbon he thought the somebody would most like to see. The old man’s name was Clyde Waggoner. He was hired away from the N.Y. World by G.E. in the year of my birth, 1922. Let’s see—that was a year before you were born, wasn’t it? I make Mary Otis for vintage 1927. How close am I?
One of the great things in The Iceman Cometh is where the male lead tells about his married life and how his wife thanked him sincerely for whatever he did and would have thanked him for murdering her if she had had the opportunity. Why do I bring that up? Well, it turns out not to be particularly relevant—in fact not relevant at all except that I find myself thanking you often. I don’t expect this to drive you to murder.
I thank a lot of people often—but mostly for nothing. Most people aren’t very good at their jobs. You are superlative at yours, which is editing, and, since I am a writer, my gratitude is extravagant.
Like symbiosis—which, as Stephen Potter pointed out, was removed from the list of O.K. words in 1951. And wasn’t 1959 a fine year for viable? And my children all know that you and I were present at what must have been the birth of perjorative. (I just tried to look it up, can’t find it anywhere. I must have misspelled it badly.)
So how is the house? Beautiful, I’ll bet. There was a simple formula in Better Homes and Gardens once about how much a person should spend on furniture. For a ten thousand dollar house you should have ten thousand dollars’ worth of furniture. You can extrapolate from there to cover your own situation. The only person who ever really did it, I suppose, was William Randolph Hearst.
Another very long chapter of “Nation of Two” goes to the typist this weekend. In about two weeks I hope to have maybe 100 more pages, which will take us to about page 150, which should entitle me to another good whack of money, eh? Process this thing quickly, and we will hit the Nazi revival right on the nose. Big black Hakenkreuz on the cover.
Kurt
February 3, 1960
West Barnstable, MA
TO NORMAN MAILER
Dear Norman:
That was gracious of you to reply to my rude and silly note. And you are right in saying that what I write is slick. My mood with respect to my writing is wry. Eliza Doolittle’s father was one of the undeserving poor and I am one of the undeserving artists.
I wish you much luck, since you are the writer in my generation who could do the most with some real good luck. I would love to see somebody in my generation do something marvellous.
The ten-year-book will be important, without question. You are going to be disappointed in one respect, however: no matter what you say or how you say it, it will be published and widely read. When society found out it was honoring works of art by censoring them, it stopped doing it.
On your way to or from Provincetown, please do us the honor of stopping by. We’re on 6A. We have no horse or Mary Jane, but plenty of gin, God knows. Since part of your big novel takes place on Cape Cod, and, since we’ve lived on the Cape for ten years now, we could tell you some true and useful things that you might not know.
Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
February 24, 1960
West Barnstable, MA
TO NORMAN MAILER
Dear Norman:
Delightful news in yours of February 18.
Honored.
Please don’t let us down.
Like we will kill a lobster.
As a Marxist, you should know about the Socialist Labor Party, if you don’t already. I went to an SLP fund raising party at Waltham a while back, and it was like a Sunday school picnic—rosy-cheeked kiddies and buxom housewives all over the place, nice cars in the parking lot, lower middle class Swedes and Germans at the speakers’ table, and all the ham you could eat.
Only everybody was a Marxist.
So what’s the joke? Turns out it’s a free country after all.
As long as you’re ineffectual, which bodes well for me if not for you.
Yours truly,
Kurt
March 10, 1960
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
The “Gold Medal book” is the novel that would become Mother Night. The Sirens of Titan had been published in paperback by Dell the year before and would be brought out in hardcover the following year by Houghton Mifflin, though the projected one-volume edition of three novels did not materialize.
The last sentence of the letter, offering “a few bills” to help out Knox, who was presumably in a temporary financial bind, is typical of Vonnegut’s lifelong generosity to friends and fellow writers, even at this time of his own continuing money pressures.
William Zeckendorf, Sr., was a well-known real estate developer.
Dear Knox:
[…] Now that I’ve got a little money from McCall’s, I’m back to work on the Gold Medal book again. Houghton-Mifflin, incidentally, is quite serious about doing the Sirens in hardback, maybe bringing out it, Player Piano, and Cat’s Cradle (which I am capable of doing now) in one volume.
I was very sorry to find you so depressed by your property problems. The fact remains, however, that you do have valuable property, easily worth what you’ve put into it. You have absolutely not been hosed in that respect, have in fact increased the value of the property (beyond your investment) like a young Zeckendorf. The presently alarming period will soon be behind you, I’m sure. And if, during this period, a few bills would help, I think I could find them.
Yours truly,
Kurt
May 12, 1960
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
Richard Gehman was a prolific writer of magazine articles, nonfiction books, and novels, including Driven, referred to here. He was also prolific in his personal life, marrying five times and fathering forty children.
“Shell Scott” was the popular detective hero of more than three dozen private-eye novels by Richard S. Prather, published by Fawcett/Gold Medal Books; these paperback originals eventually sold over forty million copies and spawned their own Shell Scott Mystery Magazine.
Dear Knox:
Thanks so much for your long letter of April 29. I am glad to hear you in such boisterous spirits.
Not only did I read the whole letter—I read the books, too. $5,267.49 to Gehman! Yummy! That is certainly a grand advance. Driven, incidentally, is regarded as a damn fine book in these parts, and is the main reason Jane likes Gehman.
I will review all the books if you want me to, but I gather that what you’re after is a book by me. Well sir, just before taking off for Blighty on Sunday I will put into the hands of my typist some more pages. She will mail them directly to you whenever she gets them done.
How do these sons of bitches write thirteen books, or thirty-three, for Christ’s sakes—or sell serials to the Post and then to the movies? Twenty million copies of the Shell Scott books in print. That was a pretty damn demoralizing letter you wrote, now that I think of it.
I will tell you a true story. There is a little old nothing old lady in Indianapolis who kept telling Jane’s mother that we should call on some relative of hers while we were in England. We told Jane’s mother we wouldn’t have time for dull calling, but Jane’s mother forgot to tell the little old lady, so she put the plan into operation, and we are expected to come calling on the relative. […] The relative is having a cocktail party to which we are invited, and he is eager to do all he can to make our visit to London interesting. You know who he turns out to be? The cultural attache of the American Embassy, and the cocktail party is a big blast for all the top London theatrical people. […]
Love to everybody,
Kurt
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
Dear Knox:
Thanks for the very funny clipping about Boston advertising. It was waiting for me when I got back. I enclose a school paper of Edith’s—suitable for framing.
The trip was a smashing success. Some people came over last night to hear all about the trip, supposedly, but they spent the evening drinking up our tax-free Scotch and talking about their own exploits in the Old World. I bought you a necktie (Kenya Rifles), but somebody got it last night.
I continue to work on the book. I presume you got a few more pages from the typist last week.
Macmillan of England is quite interested in The Sirens. They haven’t made a firm decision about it yet.
Boy—did I ever see some pretty whores!
Yours buoyantly,
Kurt
June, 1961
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
UNTITLED POEM
Two little good girls,
Watchful and wise—
Clever little hands
And big kind eyes—
Look for signs that the world is good,
Comport themselves as good folk should.
Who is sad and funny strong,
And they wonder at a mother
Like a childhood song.
And what, and what
Do the two think of?
Of the sun
And the moon
And the earth
And love.
July, 1961
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Kurt’s reference to “this teaching job” that he hopes “will fill me with a little more zowie” was a school on Cape Cod for boys with behavior problems.
Gordon Forbes was considered one of the best “doubles” tennis players in the world.
Bill Stern was a famous sportscaster of the thirties and forties. He had his own radio show that featured stories of famous athletes who overcame great odds.
Dear Knox:
August would be fine. That’s not a bad guess as to when the fish will be back in force. During June, even the village idiot was taking ten and twenty a day, dangling an unbaited bent pin in the cesspool of the county jail. Now even Brooks, with live sea worms, is getting skunked.
As I told you, I’ve doubled the range of my boat by doubling the fuel supply, so maybe we can venture up the coast to Wellfleet, which has a reputation for bigger fish. Also—if the money falls in on me between now and then (I will never let go of that dream), we can hire Charley Mayo in Provincetown, and no kidding catch a tuna.
I am glad you find life stimulating. I do, too, kind of—but not nearly enough. I am hoping that this teaching job will fill me with a little more zowie. What I’d really like to do, I think, is make a movie. A commercial artist friend of mine up here nearly flipped his wig, and he did the very bright thing of going out to a working ranch in Colorado, ditching his twanging wife and kids, and riding and fishing and stepping in fresh bear dung and things like that. Did it for six weeks. What is called for is violent physical movement. The Brahmins up here have the violence thing beautifully worked out with tennis and sailing. I’m not good enough at either one to frisk with them, which makes me sulky and sore-headed, and explains, I’m sure, my yen for class warfare. I would be on the side of the volunteer firemen. I still can’t believe Gordon Forbes learned to be a tennis champ in such a short time. Even Bill Stern would have some trouble swallowing that tale. Some body.
I used to ride a horse pretty good, and I used to swim better than good. I suppose I had better take up those things again, or maybe painting, or maybe woodcarving, or maybe studding up those parts of the fucking house that are falling down.
What in hell are you doing that’s stimulating? Taking heroin? Tell me.
Yours truly,
Kurt
September 16, 1961
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Canary in a Cat House was a collection of twelve stories published as a Fawcett paperback; eleven of the stories were later included in Welcome to the Monkey House, published in 1968 in hardcover by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence. Axel’s Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 was a heavyweight book of literary criticism by Edmund Wilson, the leading critic of the time, on the works of the great writers of the era, including T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. Kurt opened his Saab automobile dealership on Cape Cod in the spring of 1957, and closed it that December. He continued to occasionally use his stationery with the SAAB CAPE COD letterhead.
SAAB CAPE COD
E. 6A, W. Barnstable, Mass.
FOrest 2-6161, 2-3072
Kurt Vonnegut, Manager
September 16, 1961
Dear Knox:
As you promised, Canary in a Cathouse is a damn good looking book. My thanks to the artists. Husband and wife, are they? I’d like to own the original art for the back cover when Gold Medal is through with it. Would that be possible?
I’ve put the completely edited copy of Mother Night into the mail for you. All I’ve done to it is add one page to the introduction. I think I must have sent you such a page earlier, along with a letter, and it was never spliced in. For cover art, what about a skeleton dressed and posed as a kittenish whore?
I’ve been reading Axel’s Castle—have learned that I am a classicist, now moving (by using the first person) into romanticism. Marvellous. Good for me. The trouble is that the radio is on all the time, with news every hour and bulletins any time, and the facts of life bop me at random between militarism, dadaism and onanism. It is hard to know whether to shit or go blind. […]
I’m doing a play on the side. That goes easy, God bless it. It isn’t arch. It is both comic and tragic, in the modern manner. I’m really very fond of the modern manner. When it’s done, I hope you’ll help me in getting it into the hands of some modern people.
Yours truly,
Kurt
SALES, PARTS, SERVICE FOR THE SWEDISH SAAB AUTOMOBILE
October 18, 1961
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Harvey Kurtzman was the cartoonist who founded MAD magazine and at the time of this letter was also editing a humor magazine called Help! The New York Times later described him as “one of the most important figures in postwar America” because of his impact on pop culture.
Dear Knox:
Thank you for the advance copy of Harvey Kurtzman’s fast-acting Help. I admire it. I think I understand some of it.
As a test of my understanding, let’s see if I can now sell an idea for money to Help. I offer the idea in the form of a letter which I would appreciate your forwarding. It goes as follows:
Dear Mr. Kurtzman:
I have been a queasy fan of yours for a good while now. I would be enormously pleased if something of mine got into Help. Would the idea of shelter-hopping kits interest you? Families too big or too lazy or too poor to build adequate fall-out shelters could buy from our company quite cheap kits guaranteed to open any shelter yet recommended by Civil Defense.
The cheapest kit, selling for $14.95, say, would consist of a World War Two surplus cylinder of Cyklon B, guaranteed by I.G. Farben, and a shaped charge for blowing the lock on any shelter door. More luxurious kits might include C.D. uniforms, all-clear signals; tape recordings of beloved family pets scratching to be let in, tape recordings of old A.B.C. speeches on the harmlessness of fallout; grenades, bazookas, flamethrowers, etc.
We recommend that no informed person go anywhere without the basic kit, since the necessity of getting into a shelter is likely to arise at any time. We therefore package the kits to look like attache cases, lunchpails, hatboxes, shopping bags, copies of Dr. Zhivago, etc.
As a rule of thumb, we recommend that, for minimum safety during nuclear war, each person be equipped to take over three shelters. We say this, because there are bound to be disappointments—meagerly equipped shelters, shelters furnished in bad taste, septic tanks mistaken for shelters, etc.
One town figured the appalling cost of building community shelters, decided instead to buy enough kits to take over the shelters of an adjoining town, thereby saving enough money to send the high school band to the next Orange Bowl game.
With every order goes a subscription to our news letter, which tells who is building shelters where, what they are putting into them, and how the owners intend to defend them. Etc. More details on request.
Kurt
Spring, 1962
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Kurt’s reference to the book that “took me ten years to do” was Cat’s Cradle.
Dear Knox:
[…] People in Cotuit and Indianapolis tell me that the book is getting a big display. They had trouble locating copies of Canary in a Cathouse. Not so with Mother Night.
I felt unusually peculiar during my last visit to New York, since two books were hanging fire simultaneously—Mother Night and the thing I did for Dell. I have reality for myself, apparently, only to extent that people approve or disapprove of what I write.
Also: the thing I did for Dell took me ten years to do, though it wasn’t worth anything like ten years—and I now have a sense of an era’s having ended. I never used to wonder what to do next. Now I wonder what in hell to do next. […]
I’ll let you know when the fish arrive. About the middle of May, I expect.
Kurt
January, 1963
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
The teaching job was the one for the school for boys with behavior problems that he had hoped—mistakenly, as it turned out—would give him more “zowie.” He taught there from September 1962 until January 1963.
Dear Knox:
[…] I quit the teaching job, after doggedly finishing out a full semester. It was killing work—and I don’t mind work all that much, but it was a racket, too. I’ll tell you how the racket works sometime. I’m writing a play about it. […]
Yours truly,
Kurt
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
Frederick Wiseman produced The Cool World in 1963, a feature film based on the novel by Warren Miller. He later gained renown as a documentary filmmaker, winning many awards for his work.
Dear Knox:
Thanks for the books.
An interesting young guy named Fred Wiseman is optioning Cat’s Cradle for a movie, on a limited partnership deal. The advance isn’t much, but I’ll own an actual 8% of the production. His other films—The Connection and The Cool World. As Jane points out, he has a fondness for C’s. Do you know him? He’s a lawyer who got hooked on films.
This property you talk about—is that your mother’s land on Lake George? How much will you sell me five acres for?
It is miserably hot up here, and the shrubs and trees are turning brown. No damn rain at all. […]
Yours truly,
Kurt
Summer, 1963
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
A.J.P. Taylor was a British historian whose controversial book The Origins of the Second World War argued that the outbreak of the war in 1939 was due to accidents of history rather than an intentional plan on the part of Hitler.
Dear Knox:
Take this cheerful thing of A.J.P. Taylor’s, and make some other people happy with it. I remember a girl I met once in Stow-on-the-Wold, and she said to me, “Don’t you try to sell England to me.” I still sell it every chance I get. Funniest people in the world. Ben Hitz, my best man, went to a wedding of a British cousin a while back, was charmed by the insulting speech the British best man traditionally delivers on the faults of the groom. The groom beamed and bowed throughout. You and Miller have done good work in bringing the creative insult into currency, but I can’t think of another American in the field. Your pal, Lenny Bruce, incidentally, turns out to be about as good a writer as any around. […]
Yours truly,
Kurt
September 25, 1963
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
The SRL referred to was the Saturday Review of Literature, a popular and influential weekly of the era.
Dear Knox:
Would you be at all interested in a collection of my non-fantastic stories, if they were called:
CLEAN STORIES FOR CLEAN PEOPLE
IN DRUGSTORES AND BUS DEPOTS.
Yours truly,
Kurt
P.S. Did you happen to see the letter in the SRL, where a professor at Hunter named his ten favorite novels during the past ten years—and Mother Night was one of them?
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
Dear Knox:
My boat is out of the water now, so why don’t you invite me to come to your Connecticut spread in order to shoot some upland game? About this bass thing: they are still around, and I went out the other day and got three very easily, and could have killed every fish in the harbor, if I’d had the time. I found out that they can take or leave a needlefish, but that they have to bite every popper they see. The needlefish is a class bait. The slobs use poppers.
You ask what I am doing for you as compared with all you are doing for me, and all I can answer is that I put you in a favorable light whenever the opportunity presents itself. If I had a lot of money, I would give you some.
I wrote you about a week ago, and asked you what you maybe thought was a snide question, but I was serious. I ask you again: is there a chance that a collection of my non-SF stories would sell under the title:
CLEAN STORIES FOR CLEAN PEOPLE
IN DRUGSTORES AND BUS DEPOTS.
Yours truly,
Kurt
November 12, 1963
West Barnstable, MA
TO MR. CORDELL
Walter Vonnegut, Sr., was an actor who was married to the actress Marjorie Potts. She played opposite George M. Cohan in the original Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! As a child, Walter, Jr., was also in the cast (he is Kurt’s cousin and the lifelong friend who is known in the family as “the Colonel”). Marjorie divorced Walter, Sr., who was an alcoholic, and married Don Marquis, an author and playwright who gained fame as the creator of Archy and Mehitabel. Archy was a talking cockroach who hopped from key to key on Marquis’s typewriter at night, writing poems and stories about Mehitabel the cat. The characters were reproduced in popular columns that Marquis wrote for leading newspapers of the 1920s and ’30s, including the New-York Tribune (renamed the New York Herald Tribune in 1924) and the New York Sun. Three books of poems by Archy were published.
Dear Mr. Cordell:
Your pleasant letter of November 4 only got here today. How nice to know that someone has read my book.
I don’t think we’ve met, which is too bad. I can’t think now which Vonnegut it was that went to Purdue. I’m glad I wasn’t the one who got pushed into the Candida part anyway. I would have been rotten.
Walter Vonnegut was my favorite relative. He was the most talented member of his generation (within the family, of course). Booth Tarkington spotted him, got him onto Broadway. His cousins and siblings looked upon him as a frightful failure, because he died of booze in his early fifties. But he’d had a lot of wonderful parts and brilliant friends, far, far from Indianapolis. Essentially, what he’d done was use himself up, which is what people are supposed to do. Not that I recommend booze.
Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
This was the day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Norman Mailer wrote an essay on “Hip” in Dissent magazine; it was later collected in his nonfiction book Advertisements for Myself.
Dear Knox:
After yesterday’s demonstration in Dallas, I think I finally understand Norman Mailer’s Philosophy of Hip.
What books do you think influenced Oswald most—after The Manchurian Candidate?
I’m writing to tell you that Canary in a Cathouse is apparently starting to pay off for me. I hope Fawcett got something out of it, too. I had a call from NBC Hollywood day before yesterday. Rod Serling wants to do a script of “The Euphio Question”. That indicates to me that somebody is keeping the book around, and is going to comb it from time to time. So thanks. […]
Kurt
January 21, 1964
West Barnstable, MA
TO MARK VONNEGUT
Mark was sixteen at this time.
Percy Leen and her husband, Dexter, were good friends of Kurt and Jane.
Dear Mark:
Well, you keep announcing boisterously and proudly new ways you’ve discovered of being a bum. You might give the next guy who wants to buy a painting from you a lesson in art appreciation that goes like this: A small tube of paint costs a dollar, a canvas costs two dollars, and the minimum legal wage in this country is now a dollar and a quarter an hour. Percy Leen did me the big favor of admiring my paintings and actually hanging them on her walls. I figure this honor cost me about forty bucks or more every time she awarded it to me. Americans have yet to catch on to the fact that painters actually have to pay for their materials, just as though they were in business or something. Jack Teagarden, the guy everybody agrees was the greatest living trombone player by far, died broke about a week ago. He didn’t take dope. He wasn’t a drunk. He just didn’t get paid much for being the greatest living trombone player. […]
We’ll see you soon. We’re going to bust our asses on the slopes again the day before we pick you up. We must be nuts. We have no talent that way at all.
Love,
K
April 9, 1964
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
The book he had just finished was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It was published the following year in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and was the first of Vonnegut’s books to be widely reviewed.
Dear old Knox:
Hey listen—I just finished a book about twenty minutes ago, and do I ever feel loony and great. Happy as a bird. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. […]
Boy am I happy.
Kurt
West Barnstable, MA
TO RUST HILLS
Rust Hills was fiction editor of The Saturday Evening Post.
John Barth and Alan Harrington were contemporary novelists.
Dear Mr. Hills:
How pleasant to hear from you. I’m honored that you should like Cat’s Cradle. As for the next book, which is called God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, I know that Holt plans to give you first look. They should have the final revision within ten days.
I was a client of Littauer & Wilkinson for about fourteen years, quit them a year and a half ago, sold God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater on my own, appointing Holt its agent. And then, because Max Wilkinson is probably my closest friend, things got patched up again in a half-assed, non-contractual way. All my short stories go through Max. When I get the book out of the way, I hope to do some short stories again. I sold a lot of stories to the Post in the bad old days, but you mustn’t hold that against me.
I’ve got the Barth and Harrington books on order. I’ve avoided them because I’ve suspected they were good.
I look forward to having lunch with you. I expect to be in New York in the middle of June. I’ll give you plenty of advance notice.
The book to follow Rosewater, incidentally, will be a novel about a small group of American P.W.’s caught in the bombing of Dresden. I was in such a group. I don’t know if such a tale would interest the Post, but the twentieth anniversary of the raid will fall on February 13, 1965.
Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Kurt refers here to his daughter Edith, his son, Mark, and Steve Adams, one of the three Adams boys he and Jane raised.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss playwright who gained fame with his play The Visit in 1956; his most recent play at this time had been The Physicists. The Tom Wolfe collection was The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.
Dear Knox:
Those are good and tempting directions you sent me, and I hope to use them in a month or so. I assume you know how to get here, in case you want to come here. We’d love to see you. Edith, who says we are always cutting up her friends, started cutting up our friends one night, but she had nothing but good things to say about you. […]
I suppose I’ve already crowed to you about this: Mark got into Swarthmore, and Steve got into Dartmouth, both first choices, in the toughest college entrance year in history. No scholarships.
So here I am at the male menopause, to all practical purposes complete. We filled out a very complicated scholarship application form for Swarthmore, had to account for every cent we had or might get, and Swarthmore wrote back that no scholarship was necessary. Mark was flabbergasted, and started investigating on his own to find out what I had hidden around, and Jane has stopped making poor mouths, though she will carry the lines made by them to the grave. I am rich.
Jane’s father died at about 74 a couple of weeks back—stroke, stroke, stroke, and then the old people’s friend, pneumonia. He looked just like Gary Cooper, talked less. During our nearly 20 years of marriage, he sent us one postcard. When Jane took on all the Adams kids he said not a word. He had been half-way through Marine basic when the first World War ended, so the V.A. sent a flag over to the mortuary, and the Mr. Joyboys spread it on the casket. My mother-in-law made them take it off because that sort of thing was only for men who had given their lives for their country. She was right. There was a huge gangster floral piece at the head of the casket. Jane looked at the card afterwards, and learned that it had been sent by the Wabash Valley Quarter-Midget Racing Association. Wrong corpse.
As you may have noticed, the Times gave me two damn unfriendly reviews. They have since asked me to review in quick succession a new book by Duerrenmatt and the Tom Wolfe collection. Doing the Tom Wolfe thing properly (for the Times, the Times, for Chrissake!) is a ball-buster. If they are too chicken to have a staffer do it, then they should pay me a grand.
I have started writing short stories again, in brand new ways. I’m changing fast. The new ways are probably terrible. I can’t judge.
Kurt
June 25, 1965
West Barnstable, MA
TO MILLER HARRIS
Miller Harris had written to the Cornell Alumni News for the Class of ’43 a report on Vonnegut’s accomplishments and publications, closing with Graham Greene’s quote calling Kurt “one of the best living American writers.” In 1963, Greene had called Cat’s Cradle one of his three favorite novels of the year, in the London Spectator.
Dear Miller:
I am most deeply touched—particularly since you came right out and said the lies about my career which I have only dared to hint at. I am not kidding: that little piece in the Alumni News will do more to firm up my reputation than anything that has been printed about me so far.
I am extremely dense, and so continue to be startled whenever I realize that you aren’t a cynical bastard at all. Since I now have it in my head momentarily that you are a sentimentalist, I will tell you that I have a son entering Swarthmore next fall, and that he is the age I was when you and I first met. I will give him your name and address, and tell him to call you in the expectation of making a powerful new friend. He is a tough little bastard, a 145-pound line-backer from Mount Hermon, who is blind as a bat without his glasses. His name is Mark, and I like him, and he’s very good at math and radical chess.
Since you advised me so well at the start of my career, I’ll ask you to do it again at the end of it: Should I become a resident writer at the University of Iowa? I got offered the job yesterday. They would pay me a grand a month, have me teach about five hours a week, and write the rest of the time. I guess maybe it’s a good idea, because I’d do just as much writing as I do now, and get $8,500 I wouldn’t get otherwise. How’s that for using the old head?
Listen: I think you can safely become Salinger now. The competition is through.
Come see us.
Love,
Kurt
July 11, 1965
West Barnstable, MA
TO JOHN C. GERBER
John Gerber was chairman of the English department of the University of Iowa and issued the official invitation to Kurt to teach at the Writers’ Workshop.
Dear Dr. Gerber:
I’m very pleased to be invited out there. What writer wouldn’t be? I have a novel about the Great Depression in progress, and will finish it there. My wife and children will stay here. There are too many of them to move.
I presume that the University has some sort of housing bureau. I’m too busy to come house-hunting, so would you ask them to reserve something for a Lecturer who hopes to do a lot of writing in the place, who will be visited occasionally by his wife?
Yours truly,
Kurt
August 7, 1965
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Dear Knox:
You’ve always been such a graceful and easy guest that you’re welcome to come fishing any time you like. I have a hide-a-bed in my study, and that’s for you.
I don’t put my boat out on a mooring any more, because kids were always taking it out without my permission (kids not my own), and the weather was bashing the engine night and day. So it sits on a trailer in my yard, and I don’t have to bother with going down to the yacht club and rowing out to a mooring any more. I just go down Scudder’s Lane and stick her in. With this particular rig, we can cross the Cape and kill blues for a change, if that would interest you. I haven’t tried that yet. I killed my first and last blue in 1952. They’re big this year.
I suppose I’ll take off for Iowa City about September 10. I don’t want to go, but everybody says it will be good for me. Jane will be left here with just two little girls. Think of it, all the people who used to live here. It will be a strangely good winter for Jane. She has taken up the piano, and, with me gone, she’ll take up reading and writing again. She used to be excellent at both. […]
Did I understand you correctly—that you are thinking of becoming an agent? Whenever you start talking about something like that, you become cryptic and evasive, not to say hunted-looking.
After a performance of Treasure Island at the Cape Playhouse last week, the cast went out on the lawn to mingle with the audience of children. The children, as has always been the custom, collected autographs of the American Theater Wing actors. Edith Vonnegut, as a gypsy, gave her autograph to Caroline Kennedy, a wide-eyed little kid. […]
Kurt
September 17, 1965
Iowa City
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Paul Engle was director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Dear Woofy:
My first act as Writer in Residence was to steal about eight pounds of this stationery while waiting in Paul Engle’s unguarded office for the great man to show up. When he appeared at last, he proved to be a lean, gray-haired, slightly crooked Supreme Court Justice dressed like Harry Belafonte. His only advice was to buy a season ticket to the football games at a 50% faculty discount, which I did immediately. It cost $15.00. If you would cause the check to bounce, you would be a heroine to Writers in Residence everywhere. Tomorrow we play Washington State. I hope we win.
To those, like yourself, who think universities are beautiful, with their chapels and botany buildings and schools of dentistry and all that, this must surely seem a lovely place—and even I am moved. Seriously, folks, I am glad to be back in the Corn Belt again. Word of honor: I like it. Word of honor: it’s good looking as anything. These people are boobs about a lot of things, but they’re just like the Jews when it comes to EDUCATION.
But you should see the apartment I have. I don’t recommend that you see it. I opened the door for the first time, and I thought, “My God, Otis Burger has been here before me!” It has a vileness, a George Price uninhabitability that no amateur could achieve. I must sleep in the very first Hide-a-bed ever created, which was created from the rusty wreckage of the first Stutz Bearcat. Jesus, is it ever a cruel and ugly old bed! I have a bath with a stall shower, a full kitchen, less ice-cube trays, no curtains or windowshades, and this livingroom–bedroom with the hide-a-bed. You wonder what creates beatniks? Landlords! “Live like a pig for $80.00 a month,” say my surroundings. Very well. Very well.
So I will write to the Del Prado, and say that we want the same room we had on our honeymoon four years ago. Better there than here, if you want to talk about love somewhere during the proceedings.
Well—I’m the guy who said that marvelous thing about queer travel suggestions being dancing lessons from God, and here I am, and there you all are. And I love you. What do I have from home? One picture that must stand for you all—my darling Edith’s picture of herself. That’s it.
K
September 17, 1965
[Iowa City]
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Nelson Algren and Vance Bourjaily were both on the faculty of the Workshop. Algren had gained fame with his novel The Man with the Golden Arm, which won the National Book Award in 1950 and was produced as a major motion picture starring Frank Sinatra. Bourjaily gained literary acclaim for his first novel, The End of My Life, in 1947 and published many other novels.
Some technical poop: We in Iowa City are on Central Standard Time, whereas most of the people around us are on Central Daylight Time. This means that, until you go back on standard time, you will be three hours later than me. I will explain: When it is three o’clock here, it will be six o’clock there. If you call me at ten p.m., it will only be seven here. After you go back on standard time, if you call me at ten p.m., it will be eight here. I can’t be any clearer than that. Tell Nanny, and then, when you need to know, ask her what the hell is going on with all this time business. Anyway, my phone isn’t hooked up yet. When it is, I’ll call you up and tell you what the number is. Ideally, you should call me most of the time. That way, you can take advantage of cheap calling rates that won’t be available to me until three hours later. Just wait until it’s six o’clock there, and we screw ’em good.
I stopped off to see your mother in Fort Wayne. She’s in a smashing new hospital with a woman who was struck by a tornado while asleep. Your mother is her same sparky self. She will be the sole survivor of World War Three. You should be thinking seriously of rigging an apartment for her. I’ve got a hunch, and I think she does, too, that maybe she had better live with us during a good part of what remains of her old age, which I would suppose to be plenty. The lawyer she sold Harve’s firm to is going to sue the hotel for a blue million. He is very burned up about that step down from the bathroom. Riah’s problem right now is to get somebody to take her from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis after her discharge, which will be within the next five days. No Cox has volunteered, and she’s damned if she’ll ask. I told her to try a Vonnegut, and she said she might. Bob has told her to go to Europe before she’s dead, and she has agreed to this. Maybe next summer.
Algren hasn’t appeared yet. I haven’t yet met Bourjaily. Things will get social tomorrow, I think—after the GAME. Engle has invited me to a big cocktail party. They don’t know how great I am yet. It will take them about six weeks to understand. A couple of letters were waiting for me: a nutty thing from Angela Jones, and an interesting thing from Warren Miller, who is editor of the Nation now. He wants me to review for him. All of a sudden, everybody is yelling for ignorant reviewers.
I didn’t put the slightest scratch in Mark’s automobile. It ran like a dollar watch all the way. I did blow a tire, though—ten miles outside of Iowa City. I’ll buy him a new one, and a radio, too. I love him. I will try to buy his love in return.
Explain to Mr. Jordan that I am not home just now, but that I will beat the shit out of him at Christmas. I am no kidding going to the gym every day. We have a swimming pool the size of Rhode Island, and punching bags galore.
Love,
K
September 21, 1965
[Iowa City]
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Dearest Jane:
Your charming package of messages arrived this morning, made my love and loneliness acute. Such pangs. I’m a homesick little boy. I’m on the second floor of the sort of frame house Penrod lived in. It’s crazy—all the land these people have, and they build their houses chockablock on teeny weeny lots. Maybe they’re sick of land. There are alleys everywhere. I had forgotten how romantic alleys are. My apartment is like this:
I like the apartment better each day. It’s friendlier than I thought—a nice, soft old shoe. I work well in it. I’ve already managed to send off a big part of the Rosewater treatment to Harrison. That whole package, which is more a complete scenario than a treatment, should be finished in ten more days. It should be worth some money to us. It’s full of brand new Rosewater lines and situations—had to be, since a book is a book and a film is a film. It’s kind of a sequel.
I will tell you what I really like: the looks and the feel of this town. The university is right in the middle of it, and the town exists only because of the university. The idea is medieval and exciting and beautiful. Dexter [Leon] would faint for joy. Give him my love, by the way. I can and do walk to all the stores and to work. The Unitarian church is a block away, and I went last Sunday. It’s a great club.
I don’t make my professorial debut until tomorrow afternoon. All that’s going on now is registration. I have yet to make new friends. I’m a laggard that way. Things will start bubbling tomorrow maybe.
Love you
K (over)
P.S. About your coming here: The stunt is to fly to Chicago, then Cedar Rapids, and I’ll pick you up there. Chicago is about 350 miles away. We can have a very nice time here. You say when.
September 24, 1965
[Iowa City]
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Gertrude Buckman worked at Collier’s and did typing for Knox and Kurt.
Marguerite Young was a writer from Indianapolis who later gained a literary cult following for her novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
Their dire warnings were unfounded, as Kurt became friends with Engle and Bourjaily, as well as his other distinguished colleagues on the writing faculty.
Dearest Jane:
I enclose letters from Mark and Steve. They guessed correctly that I was in far worse shape than you. Mark just might bust his ass this year. That’s a brutal schedule. Then again, he’s got a terrific case of the smarts, and he’s beautifully prepared. With such a challenging schedule, he may be one prep school kid who doesn’t lose his forward motion because college is such a pipe. Steve has a beautiful understanding of himself. A very good boy.
Things around here are starting to get amusing. As I’ve already said, at a minimum the town is a Utopia. I can walk to everything, and everything’s cheerful and clean. Three blocks from here is an enormous new indoor swimming pool. No one is ever there during school hours, and a dip costs me a dime. And there’s that neat church, and my laundry, and my dry cleaner, and all that crap. I am used to my vile pad now. I work pretty well here now, which is the main thing—and any minute now my telephone will be installed.
Nelson Algren arrived with his very pretty and young wife at the very last minute. He is most friendly to me, and knows my work well. Gertrude told me that Paul Engle was her least favorite person in this world, and Marguerite Young warned me that Bourjaily would cut my throat if I went over big with the students, so I am watchful. Bourjaily and Engle both treat me rather oddly. […] They never heard of me before, and I still act as though I were somebody. Algren is their prize. Algren is here, by the way, because he’s broke. He worked a deal where he wouldn’t come unless they gave his wife a job, too. She’s an actress, and they found her something to do in the Speech Department.
Queer as it seems, I still haven’t met my students. Registration and speeches by the president and faculty meetings and all that have used up this first week. I will finally hold my first class at 3:30 this afternoon. There is a curious thing about this obviously first-rate English Department: only ten per cent of its 600 undergraduates are men; and only 25 per cent of its graduate students are women. The graduate men all come from the East or West Coasts. Nelson and I have no futures in the field, since we have no degrees. Bourjaily is loaded with them, and is a university career man. We all have offices, by the way—but no telephones.
Along with your music appreciation course, I think you should also take some simple piano lessons, so you can follow the music better. Promise to do that?
This is a good idea—no matter how lousy it may feel to both of us from time to time. It’s like that crazy dieting we did. It will make us love life and each other and the children even more than we do.
K
[Iowa City]
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Dearest Jane:
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.
My enormous Form of Fiction class, which has grown to about 80 students, and which is still growing, thanks to late registrants, is being broken up into two sections (“A” and “B”—what else?), each meeting for two hours once a week. “A” meets from 3:30 until 5:30 on Tuesday, and “B” meets at the same time on Wednesday. So, from Wednesday at 5:30 until Monday at 4:30, when my workshop meets, I have nothing to teach. This may seem like a remarkably soft schedule, tailored to the airy needs of a writer in residence, but it is actually a little heavier than the schedules of most of the regular English staff. Allan Vestal, an old Shortridge friend who is a full professor in the Law School, teaches only four hours a week, and his classes are much smaller than mine.
I have incidentally changed the name of my course, since I am the only one teaching it, to Form and Texture of Fiction. Hi ho. It’s going pretty well. At our first meeting, the students were bitter about the hugeness of the class. They’re somewhat mollified by its being divided up, and I’m starting to get some friendly playback. They’re starting to catch on that Mr. Vonnegut can be funny. That’s the only thing I know how to be, and of course never got a chance to be funny in Barnstable. You’ve got to take the goods with the bads.
Anyway, as you can see: when you come out here for your first visit, we can go to Chicago (six hours by car), or do anything we damn please after class on Wednesday. If you are as interested in sex as you say you are, there is a really lovely book about it in my study—on a top shelf. It’s red, and it’s called The ABZ of Love.
Love from A to Z—
K
P.S. Nelson Algren has disappeared.
September 29, 1965
Iowa City
TO RUST HILLS
After his departure from The Saturday Evening Post, Rust Hills became fiction editor of Esquire.
Dear Rust:
[…] Having had one kid turn twenty, and having sent two others off to college, I am undergoing changes of heart and soul, so I’m trying to find new ways of writing that suit the changed organs. So there are bound to be clinkers—maybe nothing but clinkers for the rest of my days. But I am hopeful.
The news of your impending departure from the Post is going to break plenty of hearts in the writing profession. I just gave the news to Vance Bourjaily, and he cursed and moaned some. That you unselfishly busted your ass on behalf of good writing is widely known, and I will make it even more widely known this afternoon, when I meet with a class of sixty-five. I am trying to give my course strong undertones of sociological realism, making my students think hard about not only what stories and authors are, but what audiences are, too.
I have sniffed around a little, and there is every indication that you would be most welcome here. I think the presence of a first-rate editor would round out the staff handsomely. I gather that all the money has been spent for the coming academic year, so the possibility of your being taken on before next September is slim—but not invisible. I suggest that you write Paul Engle at 724 Bayard Street, if you’re at all serious. He is the man who can find extra money right now, if he really wants to, or make a spot next September absolutely firm. You had better write him immediately, though, because he’s leaving for nine months in Europe a couple of weeks from now.
You’d like it here. Really. It’s cozy.
Kurt
September 30, 1965
[Iowa City]
TO NANETTE VONNEGUT
Nanette “Nanny” Vonnegut is the second daughter and third child of Kurt and Jane. Mark Vonnegut explains that “I called Jane ‘Aunt Jane’ so as not to call attention to ‘the orphans’ [the Adams boys] not having a living mother or mom, which I didn’t stop until I was thirty. I called Kurt mostly ‘Dad,’ as I believe my sisters did as well. Most of Barnstable referred to Jane as ‘Aunt Jane.’ Kurt was ‘Unky K’ or ‘K’ to the orphans. ‘Aunt Mother’ and ‘Uncle Father’ must have been in jest or sarcasm.…”
Dearest Nanny:
I have sent you a very stupid birthday present today by air mail, and I hope it gets there in time. Just because it is stupid and didn’t cost much doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I hope you understand that. Because I am so far away (and so very lonesome), I have to let Aunt Mother get you something really good. Please tell me what the really good thing was.
I did you a big favor. I fixed things so that Aunt Mother and Edith can’t get mad at you because you got something from me and they didn’t. I sent presents to them, too. But their presents didn’t cost half as much as yours did.
I am getting a lot of good work done here, which is why I came here. I write a lot, and teach a lot. The students say they like me, and they have gone out and bought books I have written, and they say they like those, too. Most of my students have already graduated from college, but they keep on going to college anyway. I guess they are comfortable in college. Tell Aunt Mother that they are practically all men, older than Jim, and that the few girls are very nervous and unattractive, the way girls get if they go to college too long.
Tell Aunt Mother, too, that I signed and mailed the Harper’s contract today, and that Uncle Max will be coming to see her soon with the money.
I want you and Aunt Mother and Edith to come out here and live with me after Christmas vacation, or whenever your first semester ends. We couldn’t fit into this terrible little place I have now, but I am starting to look for something better. You will like this pretty little town. It is fun to walk around, and there are lots of movie houses and good stores, and practically everybody is either a kid or a teacher. There is also a beautiful indoor swimming pool, a huge one, that costs only a dime.
Love from your Uncle Father,
K
P.S. The last time I saw you, you were certainly one of the nicest people I had ever seen. Now I hear that you are learning to dance. That makes you just about perfect.
October 2, 1965
[Iowa City]
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Dearest Jane:
Things are a lot better. I went riding at the Bourjailys’ farm yesterday afternoon with Mrs. Bourjaily (Tina), found that I loved it, still rode damn well. I had forgotten that I ever did anything physical damn well, but, by God, even I must admit that I ride damn well. Vance doesn’t care for the sport. He is a great hunter, a blood sport man. Max, of course, despises all blood sport men, and I kind of think he is right. Only Vance has turned out to be a most generous, wise, and friendly man. I stayed for supper, and the Algrens came. They’re fine, too. Nelson gave me a big red sticker for my little automobile. It said, “STOP THE WAR IN VIET NAM!” I stuck it on my car, but the car was wet, and the sticker blew off before I was half way home, and I’m just as glad. My gladness doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about Viet Nam. It has to do with how I feel about stickers.
I haven’t moved into my new quarters yet, will probably do so in about five days. Two very clean Chinamen are living there now, for very temporary shelter. They’ll be leaving soon. The apartment is the entire first floor of a Victorian mansion. It is on seven acres, has an orchard, a grape arbor, a barn. It’s on a hill. This is a hilly place, which surprised me, and the river is lovely. You can just about imagine what the first floor of such a house is like: an entrance hall, a parlor to the right of it, a dining room back of that, and a kitchen as modern as ours back of that, and a porch back of that. And then, to one side of the dining room, and back of the entrance hall, a luxury bedroom and bath. The furnishings are gorgeous—pieces belonging to the same astonishing period as the house. There is a washing machine in the basement. The Chinamen have been sleeping in separate areas, one (they all look alike to me) in the bedroom, and one on a bed set up in the entrance hall. It will be fun spotting two beds for Edith and Nanny. If Edith wanted to come out right away, she could have the bed in the front hall, which isn’t nearly as exposed as it sounds. Everybody comes and goes by the back porch.
Paul Engle, who is about to leave for a nine-month tour of Europe, has been conscience-stricken about my bad living quarters and the hugeness of my classes. I am carrying as heavy a load as anybody in the English Department, which isn’t the way things are supposed to be at all with a Writer in Residence. Anyway, he has gotten me this great house, and has just begged the head of the English Department, Dr. Gerber, to give me a raise from $8,500 to $12,500—a raise instead of the cash bonus he originally suggested to help me afford the better house. He thinks what will happen is that I will get maybe a $1,000 raise, at least. If I got only that much, it would mean that suddenly my rent was all taken care of. Not bad. And I might get more.
Your adoring husband,
K
P.S. You write beautifully. I wish just one of my students had as much talent & charm & wisdom as you.
October 7, 1965
Iowa City
TO EDITH VONNEGUT
Kurt’s daughter Edith would come to Iowa City and attend University High School, which she would soon “find a paradise.”
Mom tells me that you are planning to come out here and live with me around November 12. That is fine with me. I have plenty of room for you, and I could sure use some company.
There are two high schools in Iowa City, and everybody on the English faculty tells me that they are both first-rate. They have to be good, because all the parents in town are college professors. Kids in this town, incidentally, seem to have one hell of a good time, as you will soon see.
The school closest to me—about six blocks from my house and two blocks from my office—is the University High School. It isn’t run by the city. It is run by the University’s College of Education. They are supposed to have a long waiting list, but I talked to the principal today, and he said you would be most welcome. I had a look at the art department, and it’s huge, and they’re doing all kinds of marvelous stuff. Art is big in the city. The University has a very famous art school, which has studies all around my office. Tell Mom that the principal of your new school and several of the teachers have doctor’s degrees. That shouldn’t worry you. That just means that you’ll get better teaching than you’re used to.
I had better warn you about a couple of things: I can be pretty boring company sometimes, and winters out here are unbelievably cold. But we’ll have a nice time anyway. This is a crazy Victorian house, with funny, elaborate furniture. You’ll have all the privacy you want. I’ll give you the two front rooms, and close the huge doors that can separate them from the rest of the house. That way you’ll have a bedroom and sitting room all your own, and a very flashy connecting bath we’ll have to share. Our kitchen is also flashy. You’ll be amazed by your sitting room. It has two nice couches, several easy chairs, a piano, and a chandelier. You’ll have to share it, of course, when Mom and Nanny come.
Love,
Dad
Iowa City
TO JANE VONNEGUT
Dear Jane:
Be sure to bring your bathing suit when you come. We can have an olympic pool almost all to ourselves on weekday mornings. It’s nice and warm.
I got you a sensational birthday present, so you really must come soon. There are a couple of parties over the weekend of the 29th, so you’ll get to meet my colleagues and their wives under cheerful and easy circumstances, Algren, Starbuck, Bourjaily, Donoso. Donoso is particularly neat. He is probably the greatest living Chilean novelist. Algren told him: “I always thought it would be fun to belong to a country that skinny.” […]
I gave my thesis to a thesis-typer around here named Mrs. Meek. She is, according to the schedule, four days away from having her second baby. I can believe it. She said I would get my thesis back either right before or right after the baby. She says that having babies makes her feel marvelous, makes her work even harder right before and right after. She’s a lot like you in that respect.
This place is full of the dumbest, sweetest mice. I haven’t the heart to harm them—and neither will Edith, and neither will you. They don’t do anything bad. They keep me company and make me laugh.
Sometimes the classes go good, sometimes they go lousy. That’s show business.
Harrison will be sending you another grand in about thirty days. Lawsy, how dem grands do pile up.
Love,
K
P.S. Remember: I can just as easily pick you up in Cedar Rapids as here (almost), so go there, if that’s any more convenient for you. Haven’t got a damn thing on all day Friday. […]
I wish my students could write […] simply and clearly, and keep a story moving as well. They are damned if they will tell a story simply and directly, and I have discovered the reason for this. It is not the fault of their previous teachers. It is their own fault: they have no stories to tell. I am going to take them on walks, and make them look at people. I have just ordered them to buy a book, which is to be the core text for my workshop. No workshop has ever had a text before. The book? That Steichen collection of photographs The Family of Man.
November 1, 1965
Iowa City
TO KNOX BURGER
“Tina” is the wife of Vance Bourjaily.
Dear Knox:
I received a report recently to the effect that you have been exceptionally blue—and it makes me so God damned sad. Please, buddy—won’t you do things about it? Life could be so great for you.
I am teaching very hard, since I am so hopelessly square. My kids can write, unfortunately. Algren’s kids can probably write, too, but he is doing himself and them a favor by telling them to get out of town. Jane is out here for a week. She has to go back to nurse her mother, who has a busted hip. And I gave her a polaroid for her 43rd birthday, and she took the greatest picture of Algren that the world has ever seen. We will get copies made. He is a most pleasant fellow, with a pixie wife about Mark’s age. He insisted that his wife be given a job, too, and she is busting her ass in the Speech Department, working about twelve hours to his one.
Bourjaily has very quickly turned into a friend. We had him and his wife over for drinks a couple of nights ago, and everybody said it was amazing that they came. It was the first time they had been out since the accident, evidently. I ride horseback with Tina from time to time. It’s crazy. I used to be a real good rider, and then I forgot all about it. I keep thinking I can’t do anything, which is dead wrong. I also swim every couple of days, and do pushups and situps, and smoke worse than ever, and write not at all.
During my first two weeks, I wrote a master’s thesis in anthropology, which I’ve owed Chicago for 18 years. I called them up when it was done, and they said I could still have the degree if it was any good. It might be good. I am waiting for the typist to return it to me so I can find out. It’s about how a story-teller, any good story-teller anywhere, works.
I’m glad I came, to the extent that I can be glad about anything. You want to come out here? Why not? There are four movie houses within a block of each other, and they change bills every three days. Scotch is $4.90 a quart.
Cheer up,
Kurt
November 12, 1965
Iowa City
TO PAUL ENGLE
Paul Engle was in Stockholm at this time.
Daniel Boorstin was a lawyer and university professor at the University of Chicago. His 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America popularized the term “pseudo-event”—an event whose main purpose was to serve the goals of advertising and public relations.
Murray Krieger was a literary critic whose 1960 book The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary Interpretation helped establish him as a leading literary critic and theorist.
Wayne Booth was another influential literary critic on the basis of his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction. He was also dean of the undergraduate school of the University of Chicago and a professor at the university.
Harper & Row reprinted Mother Night in hardcover in 1966.
Dear Paul:
I was pleased to have the nice clipping from England. I hadn’t seen it. It reached me yesterday, which was incidentally my 43rd birthday. Yesterday was also the day on which Vance asked me if I would like to come back for a second year. I said yes. Yesterday was also the day on which I played host to my editor at Harper & Row, Roger Klein. Roger made courtesy visits to Starbuck, Justice, Algren, and Bourjaily, and was very taken by my best student, Ian MacMillan. He promised to do his best to get Harper’s Magazine to publish something of Ian’s. You ask me to tell you of any good students in my care. Well, speaking conservatively, Ian is one of the three best writers I ever met. I’m going to see if I can’t make money start coming out of his ears within the next six months.
And I have two others who are somewhat shallow and derivative, but funny and shrewd—Berman and Lehrman. They could probably both make it in Hollywood.
My son Mark telephoned me (yesterday, again) from Swarthmore College to tell me that the Quakers aren’t inclined to do much for the living, swinging arts. He wants to come out here to live with me and study film. I’m going to make him stay there at least two years, to get the square academic foundation the school is justly proud of providing. My daughter Edith is already out here, finding the University High School a paradise. My wife was out here last week, but had to go back to nurse her dotty mother, who is recovering from a broken hip in our house on the Cape. She will be out here with me for the whole of the second semester.
What ideas have I had for improving the workshop? I’ve only had two ideas, and both are very likely lousy. The first would be to require workshop people to study some other art form, music, painting, or whatever. The second would be to create a seminar for a tiny core of students who, like MacMillan, can already write like crazy. If we had such an elite, the workshop could maintain its fancy reputation no matter how many poor students got in.
My wife and I had dinner with Dan Boorstin and Murray Krieger’s brother a week ago—in Chicago. You were mentioned favorably. Dan rigged things so that I got to see Dean Wayne Booth, and Booth is going to rig things so that I can speak at Chicago soon. He knew my work. I’m always amazed when somebody knows my work.
Say hello to all those yellow-haired sex maniacs for me.
Kurt
November 30, 1965
Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course, saved and passed on to me this assignment, explaining that Kurt “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” Ms. McConnell took to heart his advice to pretend to be a “useful editor on a good literary magazine,” and later became fiction editor of the Bellevue Literary Review as well as publishing stories, essays, and reviews for a number of literary magazines.
November 30, 1965
FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Beloved:
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all …”
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children …”
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
POLONIØUS
December 3, 1965
Iowa City
TO PAUL ENGLE
Paul Engle broke his ankle while on a trip to New York and was there at the time Kurt wrote this letter to him.
Dear Paul:
[…] I guess I’m doing fairly well here, but I’ve had a couple of classes die on me recently. That makes me feel lousy—a show that fails. I’m crazy about the workshops and the consultations. The academic classes are something else again, since I don’t really know anything. Up to now, my ignorance has made me strong. Now I don’t feel so hot about it. A lucky crapshooter is what I’ve been.
Anyway, muggy distress is good for me. My writing goes well. My daughter is living with me now, going to the University High School. My wife and another daughter will be out here after Christmas, and they’ll all contrive to keep me sane. This is a good little house, but there are surveyors all over the grounds, marking them up into what appear to be cemetery lots with room for two. […]
Cheer up. Your workshop here is an amazingly beautiful gift to the world. I wish you were here to talk to sometimes.
Kurt
[Iowa City]
TO KNOX BURGER
Dear Knox:
So how goes it? I’ve been careful not to tell people you’re not living with Otis any more. At least four other people have told me about it, though, a couple who don’t know you at all. You’re famous, and people notice what you do. […]
Speaking of wives—good old Jane will be out here in a week or two with Nanny, will stay till summer. Something telepathic has busted between us, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’d like to fix it. Sometimes when I talk to her I feel like the Ambassador from New Zealand presenting his credentials to the Foreign Minister of Uruguay. It’s formal and strange, and not at all sexy. I can’t get it up for her any more. Anybody else, simply anybody else, I can get it up for—but not for her, and she’s a darling, loyal girl. I’m punishing her for mothering all those kids, I suppose. I dunno. We’ll fix it up some way.
At Christmas I had the damnedest revulsion to Cape Cod, loved my family but hated the house—don’t want to live there any more. I’ve been invited to teach here for two more years, which will take care of this tired gypsy for 1966, 1967, and 1968 anyway. I’ve accepted. Mark is leaving Swarthmore in June, honorably, and is going to enroll out here. He wants to go someplace big, with a film department and a drama department and an art school and a music department and all that. We’ve got it. He got off a great crack about Swarthmore: “Swarthmore is a hot little incubator that spits out dead babies.” That’s my boy.
TO NELSON ALGREN
This was written on the bound proof of the Harper & Row hardcover edition of Mother Night.
Dear Nelson:
There’s a little stiffness when we talk—which is my fault. The thing is: I’m awed. You’re one of the few important artists of our time, and the only one I know. What a peculiar interlude this Iowa City thing has been, eh? I wonder if there’s any sadism in Paul’s bringing writers out here, knowing damn well that they’ll cease to write.
Affectionately—
Kurt Vonnegut
March 5, 1966
Iowa City
TO KNOX BURGER
David Markson was a novelist who had just received a big advance for a western spoof called The Ballad of Dingus Magee, which was made as a movie starring Frank Sinatra. Markson later turned to writing experimental novels, including Wittgenstein’s Mistress, that were highly regarded by many critics and writers, including Kurt.
Madame Nhu, known as “the dragon lady” because of her glamour and political intrigue, was the wife of the South Vietnamese president’s brother and chief adviser; she later blamed the U.S. for her country’s loss of the war.
Dear Knox:
[…] Jane and Nannie are out here now, and everything seems roughly O.K. I had psychosomatic angina for about a week in advance. It’s gone now.
I’m sorry that conversation with you in Chicago was so flat. When I heard about Markson getting $75,000, everything went white. People shouldn’t talk to me about money.
It isn’t any of my business how things are with you, but I still hanker to know. Is the break to be formalized and so on?
Nelson Algren is fucking up monumentally out here, as an old Wobbly would and should. He’s not only bopping the Workshop in newspaper interviews—he’s also down several thousand bucks in a pot-limit poker game run by racketeers from the Graduate School.
Madame Nhu’s father was out here a couple of nights back, explaining why we should bomb North Vietnamese population centers. The audience wanted to kill him.
Kurt
April 3, 1966
Iowa City
TO KNOX BURGER
Dear Knox:
[…] I got a big (for me) raise from the university, and they’ve made it clear that they want me to stay and stay and stay. I suppose I will. I don’t feel much like writing any more, and I don’t feel sad about it, either. Within the next few months I’ll finish the Dresden book, which will be about the size of the Bobbsey Twins, and that’ll be the end for a while. It reads like a telegram, and it’s the one I always thought it was my duty to write. A Message to Garcia.
So what happened on your expedition to the Bahamas?
Kurt
Iowa City
TO WILLIAM PRICE FOX
Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road, became a fellow faculty member and a lifelong friend of Kurt’s. William Price Fox was a humorist whose novels include Southern Fried and Ruby Red. Both Vonnegut and Yates liked his writing and successfully campaigned for him to be hired to teach at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Dear Bill:
Yates and I would like to get you on the faculty here, so we could have a clear majority in the Writers’ Workshop of people with no fucking degrees whatsoever. I’m one, Yates is two—you’d make three. And the fiction staff is five. But your manuscript arrived in the same mail with your friendly letter, and I’ve weighed it in my hands (the manuscript), and I’ve remembered all that’s gone before, and you’re going to be a blooming culture hero and millionaire. I’ll be frank with you, though: you’ll be short as long as you live. Some people are tall, and other people are medium or short, and that’s the way God wants it. So don’t come crying to me. Some people are both tall and talented, and there you have God again. Take life as it comes. That’s what I do. […]
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
P.S. Yates isn’t funny like we are. That’s a horse on him.
October 28, 1966
Iowa City
TO KNOX BURGER
Bill and Sarah were William Price Fox and his wife.
Evarts Ziegler was a highly respected Hollywood agent whom Knox introduced to Kurt.
Paul Horgan was a novelist and historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his history books on the American Southwest, where he had attended the New Mexico Military Institute. He had won a Guggenheim Fellowship and taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he became a professor of English.
Harry Mark Petrakis was a Greek American writer of short stories and novels and an autobiography, A Dream of Kings, which became a New York Times bestseller.
Dear Knox:
I’m terribly excited. I think we’re going to win our first Big Ten game in three years tomorrow. The Hawks against the Hoosiers.
I was out on the Coast a week ago, had topless pizza with Bill and Sarah after drinks with Ziegler. Ziegler sure has class. I liked him a lot. We have entered into a shapeless sort of business relationship. He will keep me in mind, but he won’t think about me so often that Max will be offended. He told me that the way to write for the movies was to create a strong central character that a famous actor would demand to play. So I came home and wrote Kirk Douglas into my war book: But then I crossed him out again, because the war I saw wasn’t really that way. I am stuck with the fine arts, I guess. Maybe I’ll get the Nobel Peace Prize, which is 60 G’s. Donald Kaul, a very good columnist for the Des Moines Register, suggested the other day that maybe the standard for the Peace Prize should be lowered, since nobody could be found to meet the present standards. He said maybe it should be awarded to somebody who was a really lousy shot.
That would be very nice if you would mention me favorably to Horgan and any other academic writers with power in the East. I think I have something very good going with the Rhode Island School of Design, but won’t know for sure until December. I hear hints out here that I’ll be offered an associate professorship and a big raise, but that isn’t sure, either. The academic year coming up looks like a big one—third down, six yards to go, ball on the opponents’ forty-five. Amazingly, I’ll have four kids in college next year—and one in the Peace Corps and one in junior high. I feel like a charwoman in an old Adolphe Menjou movie.
The Guggenheim Foundation wrote, saying that I had been mentioned to them as a guy who might make a good Guggenheimer. So I applied. Since I am now in my forty-fifth year, this is the last year in which I am eligible.
Harry Mark Petrakis used my Cape Cod house last week, was invaded by Dartmouth football players after the Harvard game. My boy Steve, by the way, the sophomore offensive end, has played in every game so far. He is slow, but tall and good at dancing. He made the All-Cape basketball team—and football team, and baseball team. He and Dartmouth were made for each other.
Mark will probably get out of Swarthmore and get into architecture at Penn. That will make me happy. He will be the third architect named Vonnegut. I wish he were the fourth.
Love to Kitty—
Kurt
November 5, 1966
Iowa City
TO SEYMOUR LAWRENCE
The “Holt book” became Slaughterhouse-Five, which Holt would turn down.
Seymour “Sam” Lawrence had recently started his own publishing firm, with his imprint at Delacorte Press (Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence), an arrangement in which Lawrence, working from Boston, would choose his own line of authors and Delacorte (in hardcover) and Dell (in paperback) would finance, print, and distribute the books. Lawrence had been editor of the literary magazine Wake at Harvard, worked for a year as a book salesman to learn the business, became director of The Atlantic Monthly Press at age twenty-nine and an editor of the Atlantic Press, where he brought in Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools for Atlantic/Little Brown; disgruntled that he didn’t get a share of that bestseller’s earnings for his efforts, he left the company. He briefly became a vice president of Knopf but was dissatisfied with working more with contracts than with authors, so he started his own company in a one-room office on Beacon Street in Boston in 1966.
He wrote to Vonnegut out of admiration for his New York Times review of the Random House dictionary.
Dear Mr. Lawrence:
How pleasant to hear from you. […]
My publishing plans are these: (1) to deliver a book I owe to Holt for a small advance, and (2) look around.
The Holt book is going slowly, since I have a heavy teaching load out here and am vaguely screwed up. Maybe it will be done in about six months. I sure hope so.
A good movie deal is just now pending. I have also put in for a Guggenheim. If either one pans out, I will become a full-time writer again.
If you have a proposition, you might tell my agent about it. He is Max Wilkinson, 500 Fifth Avenue.
Cheers,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 17, 1966
Iowa City
TO CAROLYN BLAKEMORE
Kurt had met Carolyn Blakemore when she was a secretary at Littauer and Wilkinson, his first literary agents. She had spent a weekend with him and Jane at their house on Cape Cod, and Kurt remained friends with her as she later became an editor at Lippincott.
Since I was snowed with student stuff when the Fox book arrived, I gave it to Yates. I’ve played hell getting it back. […]
The Iowa experience is wearing thin. Two years will be plenty, I think, unless a really whopping offer is made to make me stay. It is spiritually pooping to care desperately about student work that probably isn’t worth caring about. As I’ve told you, I do have a couple of humdingers, and I hope you get them. MacMillan especially.
Vance Bourjaily is the only writer really at home out here. He has a great big farm with woods and a lake, and his paycheck is big, and he has tenure, and he finds teaching easy as pie. His roots are down. Others stay one or two years, then flee, tearing their hair. They tear their hair because they haven’t done any of their own writing while here.
I love you.
Kurt
November 18, 1966
Iowa City
TO WILLIAM PRICE FOX
Kurt and Richard Yates were advocating that Fox be hired to teach in the Writers’ Workshop.
Alan Pakula had produced the film To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the Harper Lee novel, and went on to become a successful director. “The guy who had the option for peanuts” (on God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater) and “wouldn’t sell out” was Hilly Elkins.
Dear Bill:
[…] Yates and I are both making $11,000, with three months off in the summer and more than a month off in the winter. Be warned, though, that the students are so damned good that they will wear you out. I’m half way through my second year, and I’m beginning to think I’ve had enough. The vacancy you fill may well be mine. Or Yates’.
I had a big movie deal with Alan Pakula fall through last week. He wanted to buy Rosewater, but the guy who had the option for peanuts wouldn’t sell out, wouldn’t let go for anything, and I don’t think he’ll ever make the picture. The contract is a very bad one, drawn up by my publishers, God love them. […]
If you ever get really broke again, drop me a note. I might have something I could spare. But honest to God, Bill, you’re on your way up.
Hello to Sarah.
Kurt
February 4, 1967
Iowa City
TO SEYMOUR LAWRENCE
At a meeting with Sam Lawrence at his office in Boston, Kurt was offered the three-book contract for both hardcover and paperback rights. Delacorte/Dell was one of the few publishers at this time that were able to offer contracts for both hard and soft cover editions, which meant they were able to put up bigger advances than were customary in that era. This enabled Sam Lawrence, publishing through Delacorte/Dell, to build an impressive list of American fiction writers, eventually including Richard Yates, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Ann Phillips, Tom McGuane, Frank O’Connor, and others. Sam’s advances put many novelists, like Kurt, “on their feet as writers.” His faith that writers he believed in who had not yet become big moneymakers would eventually earn back their advances and make his company a profit was borne out—most dramatically of all by Kurt Vonnegut.
Dear Sam:
I’m glad you’re glad. I can’t imagine that you are as happy as I am. You’re putting me on my feet as a writer. I’ve been living off-balance ever since I started freelancing in 1950. We’ll do some good books together.
In building your list, you should definitely take a look at the works of Jose Donoso, whose agent is Carl Brandt. Jose has been teaching out here with me for the past two years. He is a world citizen, nominally a Chilean. He speaks English beautifully, and why wouldn’t he? He’s a product of Princeton.
I’m reading his latest novel, This Sunday, in manuscript. It is smashing. Fuentes is terribly excited about it, and so is everybody else who has seen it. And Donoso is full of books to come.
Ask Brandt for his form sheet. Knopf is publishing Donoso now. The marriage is weak.
Cheers,
Kurt
April 24, 1967
Iowa City
TO ROBIE MACAULEY
The story Robie Macauley, fiction editor at Playboy, bought became the title story of the collection Welcome to the Monkey House.
The short story called “Captured” was part of an early draft of what later became Slaughterhouse-Five.
Mr. Robie Macauley
Fiction Editor, PLAYBOY
Chicago, Illinois
Dear Mr. Macauley:
Thanks so much for buying my story, and for paying me so extraordinarily well for it.
You have asked for more, so please find enclosed a short story called “Captured,” which is actually the first episode in a war book I’m working on.
If it’s of interest to you, let Max Wilkinson know at 500 Fifth Avenue, New York. If not, return it to me here.
I’m about to leave this joint, as I know you did years ago. Two years is enough, I’ve found. We’re being absorbed by the English Department, and, on that account, we swing very little these days.
After June 24, I’ll be freelancing again—probably forever, with my base, in case you should want to reach me, in Barnstable, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Cheers,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
August 10, 1967
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO DICK GEHMAN
Kurt gives his advice to Gehman on coming to teach at Iowa.
Dear Dick:
That’s great. You’ll be an excellent teacher. Your ego will demand it, and so will your students. You’ll have an appalling number of real writers entrusted to your care. The classes don’t matter much. The real business, head-to-head, is done during office hours in the afternoons. Mornings are for writing—and so are most of the afternoons. The Workshop has always been staffed by professionals, so staffers have almost always been self-educated and worse-educated than you. Forget your lack of credentials. The University is perfectly used to barbarians in the Workshop, thinks nothing of it. I have no degree. Yates has no degree. Algren had one, but tried to hush it up (Journalism B.A., U. of Illinois). And so on. You will be as glorious as any full professor because you know REAL WRITERS and REAL EDITORS in BOSTON and NEW YORK.
There are plenty of quite pleasant bars with pool tables in back. I was fond of Donnelly’s. Restaurants are poor generally. You go to Cedar Rapids for seafood. Go to the Lark for steak. There are four movie houses which change their bills about every three days, and Iowa City is a college town and nothing else, so the bills are good. You’ll keep up easily with the movie thing.
Every so often you will go nuts. All of a sudden the cornfields get you. Fly to Chicago or New York. Cancel classes whenever you damn please. Nobody will be checking up on you. And use the Cedar Rapids Airport instead of the Iowa City Airport. Fly United instead of Ozarks.
The new head of the Workshop, George Starbuck, is a close friend and a great man. Trust him entirely. The former head, Paul Engle, is still around, is a hayseed clown, a foxy grandpa, a terrific promoter who, if you listen closely, talks like a man with a paper asshole. He has a Taiwanese mistress, Leslie Nieh, who will have an office near yours. He is mad for gooks. Forget him. Graduate assistants write his books for him. Burn this letter.
Vance is a poor teacher, spends most of his time on his farm, wants to be a full professor. He is very powerful politically, and, as we know, a fine friend and writer—but, like I say, he is lazy as hell around the Workshop. My feeling about this is mainly—so what? He will want you to hunt with him. Do it. He’s a master. Like you, he’s a great cook.
Don’t ball undergraduates. Their parents are still watching.
Run with the painters. I did. The best guy in Iowa City is painter Byron Burford. There isn’t anybody to watch out for. Nobody pays any attention to anybody else, so there isn’t any jealousy or competition or any of that crap. Lecture as Gehman, not as a college professor. Gehman is who they hired. Be very commercial.
Go to all the football games. They are great. Iowa should be a .500 club this year.
Cheers,
Kurt
West Barnstable, MA
TO ROBERT SCHOLES
Robert Scholes was a literary critic on the faculty at the School of Letters at the University of Iowa, where he met Vonnegut. This letter is in response to Scholes sending Vonnegut a copy of his book The Fabulators, which discussed the work of John Barth, John Hawkes, Iris Murdoch, and Lawrence Durrell as well as Vonnegut. It was the first recognition and praise that Kurt had received from a recognized literary critic.
Scholes wrote that “Vonnegut, in his fiction, is doing what the most serious writers always do. He is helping, in Joyce’s phrase, ‘to create the conscience of the race.’ What race? Human certainly, not American or German or any other abstraction from humanity. Just as pure romance provides us with necessary psychic exercise, intellectual comedy like Vonnegut’s offers us moral stimulation—not fixed ethical positions which we can complacently assume, but such thoughts as exercise our consciences and help us keep our humanity in shape, ready to respond to the humanity of others.”
When Kurt jokingly said he was “burned up that Barth won,” he was not referring to an award but to Scholes ranking Barth “at the top of the fabulators in the book,” Scholes told me.
The critic whom Kurt referred to as “David” was David Hayman, one of Scholes’s colleagues at Iowa at the time and a Joyce scholar.
Dear Bob:
I am groping now for the word that means a person who has traveled widely and speaks several languages. I think the word I want is cunnilinguist. How does it feel to be one?
I assume you guys are home and cataloguing the lantern slides. Your perfectly neat book about me and the others arrived yesterday. If you hadn’t supplied an index which pinpointed every mention of me, I wouldn’t have been able to put it down until I’d read it all. I’m a little burned up that Barth won, but tomorrow is another day. My first book was more promising than his first book, which is something a careful critic wouldn’t forget.
Seriously: I have read the whole book, and you’ve amused me, and you’ve taught me many things that are comforting or stimulating, or which can be turned into money in the bank. You write handsomely. At several points you wrote so well that I was moved to protest: Let’s leave the writing to the writers, Scholes. If you don’t know how a critic is supposed to write, I commend to your attention The Tragic Vision.
Where you really get racking along like a happy Dixieland band is on page 97. You had to call it a pretty feeble fable, I suppose, but I give you my word of honor that it’s totally marvelous. It’s even true.
You may or may not have noticed that I said some unkind things about academic critics in the Times Book Review a few weeks ago. It wasn’t an attack. It was kind of a kidding thing. But I didn’t mean you and I didn’t mean David. What you guys write is too open and amiable to be academic criticism. It’s just writing. There’s a difference, believe me. Some real dumb bastard could read you guys and understand a good deal of it and be glad.
All goes well here. One of my sons is going to be a Unitarian minister. I’m pleased. What does that indicate—that that should please me? I haven’t been to Dresden yet—mainly because the writing has been going fairly well and I hate to interrupt it. Jane and I will get our passports renewed today, and then maybe we’ll hop over real quick.
Love to the little woman, and cheers.
Kurt
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Vonnegut was going to “get to work” on the short-story collection that became Welcome to the Monkey House.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was part of the avant garde movement of French nouvelle roman writers and a leading French intellectual.
Dear Sam:
Please send me all the short stories you have. Max is sending me some stuff from his archives. And I’ll go to work.
Sure—I’ll write an introduction, a position paper that will put me right up there with Robbe-Grillet.
Harper & Row is having a lot of writers write prefaces to books which have been around for a while. I’m going to do one on The Sirens of Titan. The prefaces will be brought out in one volume. Saul Bellow has argued that the writer should not think of himself as a shaman. I’m arguing that that’s what a writer should be. Isn’t that exciting? […]
Cheers,
Kurt
P.S. Oxford has just brought out a book by Robert Scholes, The Fabulators, which has a very friendly section about me in it.
September 18, 1967
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Kurt’s first application for a Guggenheim Fellowship had been turned down in 1959. He was awarded a Guggenheim in 1967 to go to Dresden and do research on the novel he had been working on that would become Slaughterhouse-Five.
[…] I am going to Europe to research the war book with Guggenheim money for about a month—starting October 16.
I hope to get everything you need for the collection [Welcome to the Monkey House] to you within the next five days. I’ve written to Playboy for proofs of the title story, since I somehow lost my copy between Iowa and here.
Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
October 7, 1967
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
John Ciardi was director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as poetry editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. Ciardi wrote an angry response to Vonnegut’s satire of a writers’ conference where Ciardi had taught the past summer (the West-Central Writers’ Conference, sponsored by Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois). Vonnegut’s piece, called “Teaching the Unteachable,” appeared in The New York Times Magazine and is collected in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons.
The “war buddy” is Bernard V. O’Hare, who was a P.O.W. with Kurt during the firebombing of Dresden, and became a lifelong friend.
Kitty Sprague is the second wife of Knox Burger.
Dear Knox:
A while back you urged me to do something with German and Germany and all that, so I have been brushing up on my fifty-word vocabulary, and I am off to Berlin next Tuesday. I’ll have an old war buddy with me. He is now a D.A. in Pennsylvania. We must want the syph pretty bad. Anyway—we’re going to East Berlin and Dresden and Prague and Vienna and Budapest and Warsaw and Leningrad, and it’ll take maybe a month. Playboy is going to pick up part of the tab. I’m going to do a piece on post-war architecture behind the Iron Curtain. Seriously. Jane and Edith are meanwhile going to Madrid to visit Jose Donoso, my Chilean pal. And we will all meet after I am sprung from the Lublinka. Edith, incidentally, went to two life-drawing classes in art school, and was promoted from Freshman to Senior. She draws better than the teachers do.
My boy Steve, a junior at Dartmouth, was all set to be a first-string offensive end this year, but then two sophomore super-stars got ahead of him, so he’s mainly on the bench. He ran all summer and lifted weights, but so did they. Part of the trouble, I think, is his having been a super-star as a kid. He topped out last year. In about a year he’ll be boozing and smoking with his Uncle, and getting fat.
A student of mine has a story in this month’s Atlantic—and there’s a sweet little credit line which tells whose student she was.
Ciardi certainly shit all over me in the Saturday Review. What a nasty old poet he must be. My only response has been to cancel my subscription by telegraph. I don’t subscribe. If I can remember to do it, I will send him roses for the opening festivities at Bread Loaf next summer.
A guy told me Kitty fell off a bike this summer. She is so beautiful. I hope she is not scarred.
Cheers,
Kurt
October 7, 1967
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Dear Sam:
I’m flying to Berlin with an old war buddy on Tuesday next. We’re going to do East Berlin and Dresden and Prague and Vienna and Budapest and Warsaw and Leningrad. Playboy is picking up part of the tab. They’ve commissioned me to do a piece about post-war architecture behind the Iron Curtain. How’s that for raw sex? We’ll be gone about a month.
I think I’m leaving you in good shape with respect to the short story collection. All that’s missing is the “Dictionary” piece. I don’t have a copy, but the Times is sending me one. Put “EPICAC” [a short story used in Welcome to the Monkey House] wherever you like. The name of the machine is all in caps.
Peace,
Kurt
October 29, 1967
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Dear Sam:
I am home again, and I will tell you about Berlin and Dresden and Vienna and Salzburg and Hamburg and Helsinki and Leningrad, if you really want to hear about them. But you would be out of your head to ask. Anyway, I saw a lot of stuff I can use.
The main point of this letter is to extort another favor from you. As you know, I have a very fancy agent who easily gets sore or hurt. He has recommended, pointlessly, I am persuaded, that I switch publishers yet again in England. I am now with Tom Maschler at Cape, and that is where I want to stay very much. Would you please tell Max gravely that you think I should stay with Cape, too?
I sent you the dictionary piece yesterday. That makes us square. Right? The trip has simplified the war book for me. Slaughterhouse-5, since I have now seen with my own eyes what I was trying to remember. Dresden, “The Florence of the Elbe,” is now like Cedar Rapids in 1936—the music, the clothes, the buildings, everything.
As I understand our contract, I can start drawing monthly money any time after September 1. Could I have my first check December 1?
Cheers,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 25, 1967
West Barnstable, MA
TO GAIL GODWIN
Godwin was a student of Kurt’s at Iowa and went on to become a distinguished novelist.
Dear Gail:
I miss all you guys—but my work is going a whole lot better.
You were smart to quit the Workshop. I don’t think it is a very useful enterprise. Vance appears to have handled you foolishly, boorishly, maybe, but he has a point. Are you willing to pander to popular tastes in order to be published? If so, write about a love affair. It isn’t so terrible to write for the women’s magazines. That is how I supported myself more or less for about twelve years. I do not feel dishonored. What the hell. You’d be surprised what you can say in a woman’s magazine these days.
And I’ve taken jobs a damned sight worse than writing for Hallmark. Most people have. But you really want to make it as big as Muhammad Ali, don’t you—to be that popular and wise in a magically simple way? I’d like to help. And you want to be a satirist, too—or to write really strong stuff, anyway. Women don’t customarily handle oil paints well, you know—or black and white. I don’t know if you have it in you to be crude. I write with a big black crayon, you know, grasped in a grubby, kindergarten fist. You’re more of an impressionist. If you want to kind of try what I do, take life seriously but none of the people in it. The people are fools, and I say so the instant they’re onstage. I don’t let them prove it slowly. The author is very much around, and he is opinionated. Women are usually much too subtle and polite to intrude like that.
Again: write a love story, and it will be a good love story, and it will sell. That’s life. […]
Cheers,
Kurt
November 28, 1967
TO DRAFT BOARD #I, SELECTIVE SERVICE,
HYANNIS, MASS.
Gentlemen:
My son Mark Vonnegut is registered with you. He is now in the process of requesting classification as a conscientious objector. I thoroughly approve of what he is doing. It is in keeping with the way I have raised him. All his life he has learned hatred for killing from me.
I was a volunteer in the Second World War. I was an infantry scout, saw plenty of action, was finally captured and served about six months as a prisoner of war in Germany. I have a Purple Heart. I was honorably discharged. I am entitled, it seems to me, to pass on to my son my opinion of killing. I don’t even hunt or fish any more. I have some guns which I inherited, but they are covered with rust.
This attitude toward killing is a matter between my God and me. I do not participate much in organized religion. I have read the Bible a lot. I preach, after a fashion. I write books which express my disgust for people who find it easy and reasonable to kill.
We say grace at meals, taking turns. Every member of my large family has been called upon often to thank God for blessings which have been ours. What Mark is doing now is in the service of God, Whose Son was exceedingly un-warlike.
There isn’t a grain of cowardice in this. Mark is a strong, courageous young man. What he is doing requires more guts than I ever had—and more decency.
My family has been in this country for five generations now. My ancestors came here to escape the militaristic madness and tyranny of Europe, and to gain the freedom to answer the dictates of their own consciences. They and their descendents have been good citizens and proud to be Americans. Mark is proud to be an American, and, in his father’s opinion, he is being an absolutely first-rate citizen now.
He will not hate.
He will not kill.
There’s hope in that. There’s no hope in war.
Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
March 26, 1968
West Barnstable, MA
TO JOSÉ DONOSO
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught Transcendental Meditation and popularized his “TM” in the 1960s, when he gained fame as the guru of the Beatles, actress Mia Farrow, and many other movie stars and celebrities. Kurt was not a fan and wrote an article about him for Esquire (“Yes, We Have No Nirvanas”) that is collected in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons.
Dear Pepe:
I think about you and your lovely wife and your nice new baby all the time. And we miss you like crazy. I don’t write because the letters never seem any good. That’s silly.
I recommended you highly for a Guggenheim today. I think you’re sure to get it. You certainly deserve it, and your credentials are brilliant these days. Your money will start about the time mine stops. Enjoy it in good health.
Jane is at loose-ends these days—but sweet and cheerful, as always. Our neighbors are awfully dumb, and the nights are awfully still. She has a guru—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He has taught her to do a thing called transcendental meditation, which is sort of skin-diving in one’s own mind. It means a lot to her. There is obviously rapture in the depths.
I work on my barn in the afternoons, turning part of it into a comfortable, very private apartment for you. Please come soon. Scrabble?
Peace,
Kurt
April 22, 1968
West Barnstable, MA
TO ROBERT SCHOLES
Matthew J. Bruccoli was a scholar who wrote or edited more than fifty books on writers of the 1920s and 1930s, including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and Thomas Wolfe.
Dear Bob:
I keep meeting guys who knew you at Virginia. Matt Bruccoli, for instance. He likes you fairly much, and is really bughouse about your wife. I guess I can understand that. I met him when I spoke at Ohio State on the occasion of their adding the two-millionth volume to their library. The book was Don Quixote. I told them that should have been one of the first books they got.
Bruccoli was obviously highly regarded at Ohio, but the place so enrages him that he has submitted his resignation. He’s looking for work. Could Iowa use him?
Bruccoli incidentally offered me mountains of money for all my manuscripts. Since I don’t need money right now, I’ll just leave the stuff to my kids. At which time the stuff will probably be worthless. What the hell.
I am about a week from finishing the new novel. It sure has been hard. It isn’t very long. From now on I am going to follow familiar models and make a lot of dough.
My warm greetings to David [Hayman].
Gehman was here a couple of weekends ago, cooked all the meals.
Cheers,
Kurt
May 28, 1968
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO MARK VONNEGUT
Dear Mark:
I ask a favor for your mother’s sake: please look awfully nice at your graduation. She is a dear, romantic girl, and I want her to be as happy as she can possibly be at the graduation of her only son.
I am talking about hair, of course. The beard is fine, and characteristic and, hence, beloved by one and all. What I am suggesting is that the hair on top of your head be styled somewhat—that you look like nobody else on this earth, perhaps, but, in a movie star way, look handsome as hell all the same. So she’ll nearly swoon. You have achieved this before. You can achieve it again.
Edith promises to be home in time for your graduation. Promises, promises.
Love,
K
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Granville Hicks was a book critic and author.
Dear Sam:
How was the trip? The manuscript of Slaughterhouse-Five should be waiting for you there. I mailed it off to you yesterday. Max has a copy, too.
About the promotional tour of colleges which the publicity lady at Dell has proposed:
The economics of such a tour would be confusing, Sam, since I am not only in the writing business but the speaking business, too. Without any manager or promotion, I now get $500 and all expenses for speaking, and am offered more engagements than I care to fill. Over the years, I have worked up a quite funny act that seems to be worth that much. Granville Hicks saw it, wrote about it in the SRL a few weeks back.
Dell now suggest that I do this for nothing, in order to sell books. It seems to me that this would be unbuilding my speaking business, and that the number of books my appearances would sell would be small. If there is a dollars and cents argument to the contrary, I would like to hear it. I want to be cooperative.
I will be the keynote speaker, incidentally, at a convention of about 400 college and university newspaper editors, members of the United States Student Press Association, at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana, on August 17. I will also be Writer in Residence at the University of Michigan during next January.
Yours truly,
Kurt
[West Barnstable, MA]
TO KNOX BURGER
Kurt had dedicated Welcome to the Monkey House:
“For
Knox Burger
Ten days older than I am.
He has been a very good
father to me.”
The “war book” was Slaughterhouse-Five.
VISTA is the national service program designed to fight poverty, founded in 1965 as the Volunteers in Service to America.
The late Senator Eugene J. McCarthy was the first candidate to challenge incumbent president Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination in 1968.
Dear Knox:
I am glad that my dedication tickled you. I thought you would be jaded by now. How many books have been dedicated to you so far? Twenty, I’ll bet. […]
I have turned my old barn into a studio, as I may have told you. Your father’s splendid bat is up on the wall. My son Mark, incidentally, is having a one-man show of oils in a place called Newfoundland in the Poconos. I am amazed. Last Christmas Jane and I gave Mark and Edith huge canvases—nine feet long and six feet high. Mark filled his up in two hours flat. Edith is into her third month with hers. The trouble with Edie is that she can draw like Albrecht Dürer. She wastes hour after hour getting everything exactly right. Too bad.
I guess I told you that I finally finished my war book. And that turned me off. I sure don’t want to write any more. I try to think up new things to do—like Vista, maybe. Really. I sit around here with my thumb up my ass while my wife works her guts out at McCarthy headquarters.
Love to Kitty. Come up in the fall, and we can watch the ducks and geese come through. There’ll be no need to shoot. I’ve got a little house up in the marsh, by the way, and a little blue rowboat named “Bob” comes with it. I am the only guy who ever goes out on the marsh. Really: I never see another soul. Maybe I should learn the names of the plants and birds.
About smoking: it takes two weeks to quit. Unless you have two free weeks, forget it. Expect to act crazy. I sure did.
Cheers,
Kurt
September 14, 1968
West Barnstable, MA
TO BERNARD V. O’HARE
Slaughterhouse-Five is dedicated to Mary O’Hare, the wife of Bernard. The other dedicatee is Gerhard Müller, the taxi driver who took Vonnegut and O’Hare to the real-life slaughterhouse where, as fellow prisoners of war, they survived the firebombing of Dresden.
Dear Bernard:
Would you please look over the enclosed pages and let me know if they would offend you or Mary in any way. God knows I wish you no harm.
It’s a crazy book. Ramparts is talking of running the whole thing in installments.
Cheers,
Kurt
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Calder Willingham’s novel published that year was Providence Island.
Dear Sam:
Well—we’re off practically. We’re leaving on February 11 for three days in San Francisco, which we’ve never seen. And then a week or more in Hawaii after that. It’s a tough life.
I’m speaking at the University of Washington on February 25, in case your salesmen want to try to get Seattle to overstock me. Then home.
I guess it was Calder Willingham who beat me out of being a Literary Guild Selection, eh? So it goes. Experimenters lose every time. I’ll bet you this, though: I’ll bet I stay in print longer than he does.
What are the chances of The Sirens coming out in an attractive edition? My mail continues to indicate that people like that book best of all—and they all make jokes about the ghastly cover.
IBM’s magazine is going to print my speech to the physicists. I hope the New Yorker and Newsweek see fit to say something nice about it.
Peace,
Kurt
April 4, 1969
Hyannis, MA
TO ROBERT SCHOLES, BY WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM
Kurt was responding to Robert Scholes’s front page review of Slaughterhouse-Five in The New York Times. He proclaimed Vonnegut “a true artist” who was “among the best writers of his generation.”
SPY IN NEW YORK READ TIMES REVIEW TO ME ON TELEPHONE.
WOW. NEXT TIME YOUR KID COMES FOR HANDOUT HE GETS CAVIAR AND HUMMINGBIRD’S TONGUES. LOVE
CROESUS
May 7, 1969
West Barnstable, MA
TO MARK VONNEGUT
Dear Mark, old chess and ping-pong pal:
I’m glad we never hunted together. Happy birthday.
We have a saying here: “Mark knows what he’s doing.” We believe it. We love you. We respect you. We think you will have a wonderful life. Your close friend Bob Boles suggests that you are perhaps the kindest person he ever knew.
You also paint like nobody’s business.
I suppose you are heading into a shit storm with Draft Board One, but maybe not. There is a good chance that they will accept your C.O. plea peacefully. I hope so. With a little luck, your two years of alternate service could be almost lovely.
The New York Times Magazine has asked me to do a piece about the coming landing on the moon. What should I say?
Advice my father gave me: Never take liquor into the bedroom. Don’t stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect.
Your good mother is putting a present in the mail for you.
Cheers,
K
May 9, 1969
West Barnstable, MA
TO DAN WAKEFIELD
Slaughterhouse-Five was a national bestseller, and eager fans lined up for Kurt’s autograph at bookstores throughout the country—except in his hometown of Indianapolis, which he found ironic. (The city later canonized him by proclaiming 2007 “The Year of Vonnegut”—which, again ironically, would prove to be the year he died.) L. S. Ayres was a leading department store in Indianapolis and had its own book section.
Dear Dan:
[…] At the request of Ayres, I went to Indianapolis last week, appeared on a TV show and a radio show, then signed books in the bookstore. I sold thirteen books in two hours, every one of them to a relative. Word of honor.
The next book is about Indianapolis. Yours, too, I bet. I stopped by Shortridge, which is still unbelievably great. […]
Peace,
Kurt
June 16, 1969
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Herman Wouk was the bestselling author of The Caine Mutiny, which became a movie starring Humphrey Bogart. He wrote many other successful novels.
Dear Sam:
[…] Was pleased and startled to receive a letter from Herman Wouk, a stranger. He said this among other things: “Your book came through singing clear, a tragic tale masked in ferocious grotesque humor, to me flawlessly achieved.” How do you like them apples?
Peace,
Kurt
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
“The Swede” referred to was a Swedish publisher.
Dear Sam:
Thanks for the salt water taffy. The box was only one-third full when it got here. I suppose the stuff shrivels if it is taken away from the salubrious air of the Boardwalk.
The Swede and his wife will be here tomorrow. We will put them up in our barn. We expect to have an awfully nice time—really. I used to have a dealership for SAAB automobiles, you know. The same company made Messerschmitts during WWII.
I enclose my letters from Herman Wouk. He is a very commercial guy, of course, so I don’t see how he can fault us for bad taste if you ask permission to quote him.
Jane and I are planning to spend three months in Greece next winter, starting right after Christmas. You know any colonels over there?
Cheers,
Kurt
July 11, 1969
West Barnstable, MA
TO KNOX BURGER
Knox’s “future plans” were to start his own literary agency.
Dear Knox:
[…] I have kept my mouth shut about your future plans. For my own sake, I hope with all my heart that they work out. One sort of interesting thing to think about: Elkins’ option on Cat’s Cradle finally dies on August 29th, with no chance for renewal. The cult continues to grow, if my mail is any indication.
We had dinner last night at the home of Charles Dickens’ great granddaughter, Monica Dickens Stratton. Her husband, a retired U.S. Navy man, does all her typing for her—on mimeo stencils. Then he runs them off. They live near Otis Air Force Base because he has PX and Commissary privileges. They have stables and a jumping paddock and a training paddock and all that, and the main house and guest house are being greatly expanded. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure all the money is coming from Oliver! They are the sweetest, happiest people I know. They have a wonderful breed of dog all their own—poodles crossed with golden retrievers.
Cheers,
Kurt
October 17, 1969
West Barnstable, MA
TO SAM LAWRENCE
Breakfast of Champions, the novel that followed Slaughterhouse-Five, would be published in 1973.
Dear Sam:
This is to tell you that you had better cancel all plans for the new book, Breakfast of Champions. I’ve stopped work on it for reasons of health.
I’ve got to quit smoking. When I do that, I quit writing. So there we are. I know. I’ve been through it before.
Sorry—but I don’t want to suffocate.
Cheers,
Kurt