Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, we have an
Speaker 1: episode that you're not in.
Speaker 2: I know it was you asked me about whether it
Speaker 2: would be okay to do this, and I was like absolutely,
Speaker 2: even before you told me that the subject was Kurt Vonnegut,
Speaker 2: And when you said that, I was like, I already
Speaker 2: was on board with the idea of, you know, a
Speaker 2: live episode with a guest host, because I will not
Speaker 2: be at the event. But now that you've said Kurt
Speaker 2: Vonnegut and that Brian Young is going to be the
Speaker 2: co host, I am excited about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Both Brian and I were penniless and guests Indiana
Speaker 1: Comic Con, and we talked a lot about Star Wars
Speaker 1: things while we were there, but it occurred to us.
Speaker 1: I think it was actually Brian's idea that kirv Vonneguet
Speaker 1: is from Indianapolis and this kind of makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense, and so I was like, great, let's do that,
Speaker 1: and we did. We also went to the Kur Vonneguet
Speaker 1: Museum that morning before the show. Which was very moving
Speaker 1: and wonderful. We'll talk about all that on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Listen spoiler alert. I cried three times doing this episode.
Speaker 1: Now is one of those times in life when I
Speaker 1: really wish we had Kurt, and I'm also really glad
Speaker 1: he's gone because I don't think he would enjoy the
Speaker 1: world we're living in right now. But I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: to Brian Young, who has been on our show before.
Speaker 1: He was our first guest at a live show, so
Speaker 1: this kind of felt very natural. And thank you to
Speaker 1: Indian a Comic Con as well for having us. There's
Speaker 1: also a little heads up. There's what I didn't even
Speaker 1: think of as a swear because my family didn't growing up,
Speaker 1: but Tracy Flagg did as a swear because her family
Speaker 1: would have, which was one of those great moments of like, oh,
Speaker 1: how different worlds exist in the every day. It's pretty minor.
Speaker 2: If you are a Kurt Vonnegut van, you probably already
Speaker 2: know what the swear is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's from one of his famous quotes. It invokes
Speaker 1: a deity, that's all. It's not not anything not anything big.
Speaker 1: But if you are a parent or a teacher, you
Speaker 1: may want to preview and make sure you know you're
Speaker 1: cool with it or that you have a plan in
Speaker 1: place to address that language with your kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll also say that Kurt Vonnegut lived through
Speaker 2: some pretty tough stuff. There are some real difficult moments
Speaker 2: in this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he for all his wit, that was clearly part
Speaker 1: of how he coped with a lot of rough times
Speaker 1: in his life. And be aware there is discussion not
Speaker 1: only of some pretty horrific wartime events, but there are
Speaker 1: also multiple discussions of suicide in it as well as
Speaker 1: just incredible horrible loss. So just be aware of all
Speaker 1: of that going in worthwhile in my opinion, to talk
Speaker 1: about Kurt Vonnegut, who I will wax Rapsodic about on Friday. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 3: And I'm not Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson.
Speaker 3: I'm Brian Young.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Brian is a longtime friend of the show. He
Speaker 1: was on our first live show ever ever about talking
Speaker 1: about his book about Presidential Assassination for children, which is
Speaker 1: pretty spectacular and I recommend you check it out if
Speaker 1: it's still available.
Speaker 3: It is, you can still get a children's illustrated History
Speaker 3: of Presidential Assassination online or signed copies on my website
Speaker 3: at swankmotron dot com.
Speaker 1: Perfect, yeah, perfect, it is charming as I'll get out
Speaker 1: so today because we're here in Indiana and in Indianapolis specifically,
Speaker 1: Brian actually mentioned the idea of like, this is really
Speaker 1: the time to talk about Kurt Vonnegut, who is someone
Speaker 1: both he and I love and have bonded over over
Speaker 1: the years, and he is, of course, you know, the
Speaker 1: son of the city, as it were, we both grew
Speaker 1: up with him. I think often when you hear people
Speaker 1: talk about Vonnegutt and where they discovered him, it's usually
Speaker 1: in their teenage years when they encounter an author, either
Speaker 1: because it's recommended in school or because they just stumble
Speaker 1: on it and it's finally an adult in the literature
Speaker 1: space who is not feeding them bowl in any way.
Speaker 1: It's very straightforward, and it is in some ways very
Speaker 1: subversive in a way that's very appealing to teenagers. And
Speaker 1: then if you're like me, you never mature and you
Speaker 1: stick with it the whole time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Vonniguet was definitely someone I encountered as a teenager and
Speaker 3: really latched onto. I found him in a banned books
Speaker 3: club in high school, which seems so like you wouldn't
Speaker 3: be able to get away with that today the way
Speaker 3: you could, you know, twenty five more than twenty five
Speaker 3: years sort of quaint now. And I've just always been
Speaker 3: in love with his work, and for a long time
Speaker 3: I was reading his entire life I library like every year,
Speaker 3: and now revisiting it always feels like revisiting an old friend.
Speaker 3: And I come to a lot of conventions here in Indiana,
Speaker 3: Indianapolis specifically, and I always take that visit to the
Speaker 3: Vonnegut Museum, which is within walking distance, And in fact,
Speaker 3: Holly and I went this morning and took a visit
Speaker 3: there and spent way too much to the museum.
Speaker 1: Functionable amount of money in the museum shop chests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love. My favorite are the Kilgore Trout covers
Speaker 3: that they have on the postcards. They're so lurid and ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I love them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, without further ado, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about this amazing writer who we all love and his
Speaker 1: life story. So, Brian, you want to kick it off,
Speaker 1: I would love to so.
Speaker 3: Vonnagut was born on November eleventh, nineteen twenty two, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Speaker 3: His father Kurt Senior was an architect, and the German
Speaker 3: American Vonnegut family had been prosperous. Their fortunes shift though
Speaker 3: when Kurt Junior was a teenager, as the Great Depression
Speaker 3: played out, architecture projects were few and far between, and
Speaker 3: the other family businesses faltered. The Vonneguts had sent Kurt
Speaker 3: Junior's older brother and sister to private schools, but for him,
Speaker 3: public school was the only option. His mother, Edith, who'd
Speaker 3: been a high society debutante from a very wealthy family,
Speaker 3: was deeply dismayed by their loss of financial stability, so
Speaker 3: she tried to supplement the family's income by writing short stories,
Speaker 3: mostly romances. Sadly that effort was for not as no
Speaker 3: one was willing to buy them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kurt, Kurt Junior, that is, wrote for the high
Speaker 1: school newspaper, and he actually credited that time as really
Speaker 1: teaching him the basics of journalism and how to convey
Speaker 1: stories and ideas very quickly and succinctly and incredibly clearly.
Speaker 1: Ironically thinks that he would be kind of dinged for
Speaker 1: later in life as not being florid enough as a writer.
Speaker 1: But that's why I think young audiences really gravitate to him.
Speaker 1: After high school, Vonneguet enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca,
Speaker 1: New York. In what may seem like a bit of
Speaker 1: a surprising move, he majored in biochemistry. That was a
Speaker 1: bad choice for him. He did not excel.
Speaker 3: In nineteen forty three, Vonnegutt left school to enlist in
Speaker 3: the Army. He'd been struggling at school. His journalism efforts
Speaker 3: at the Cornell Sun were good, though they often caused controversy.
Speaker 3: He ran criticism of the ROTC, of which he was
Speaker 3: a member, which got him kicked out. He also wrote
Speaker 3: articles suggesting that the school paper, in publishing patriotic writing,
Speaker 3: was sharing propaganda. Then when he started school in his
Speaker 3: junior year, as the editor of the Sun, he ran
Speaker 3: a headline welcoming the classes of forty four and two thirds,
Speaker 3: forty five and a fourth or whatever. The US had
Speaker 3: joined the war in December nineteen forty one, following the
Speaker 3: bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Vonnigut was making a nod
Speaker 3: to the fact that many of his classmates were likely
Speaker 3: to be called into service and die before finishing their
Speaker 3: college careers. He got pneumonia in late nineteen forty two,
Speaker 3: and that gave him a good excuse to leave school,
Speaker 3: and so he did, and then he enlisted.
Speaker 1: And he went to Fort Bragg for training. He brought
Speaker 1: his typewriter with him to basic training, but it was stolen.
Speaker 1: He was really good with weapons, so he got some
Speaker 1: artillery training. But his aptitude tests got him more attention
Speaker 1: because he was clearly very smart, and he was selected
Speaker 1: to enter a mechanical engineering program that was supposed to
Speaker 1: end up with him getting a degree and an officer's commission.
Speaker 1: His grades in this program were kind of mixed, but
Speaker 1: ultimately that did not matter because the program was shut
Speaker 1: down before he could finish.
Speaker 3: Kurt Junior decided to visit his parents in their new
Speaker 3: place for Mother's Day nineteen forty four, and it was
Speaker 3: a trip that would really change the family forever. Kurt Senior,
Speaker 3: thanks to the war, had a steady income again working
Speaker 3: in materials at various bases and facilities, and he designed
Speaker 3: a new home from So and Edith and this home
Speaker 3: in a quaint development in Marion County, Indiana. It was
Speaker 3: contemporary and smaller than their previous home, but Edith did
Speaker 3: not love it. It felt small and not just in size.
Speaker 3: She was keenly aware of how her fortunes in life
Speaker 3: had changed, going from an aristocratic it girl in Europe
Speaker 3: to an unknown Midwestern housewife, and she was also very
Speaker 3: unhappy about her son's choice to join the service.
Speaker 1: On Mother's Day morning, during that visit, Edith was found
Speaker 1: dead by Kurt's sister, Alice, who then went and got Kurt.
Speaker 1: Edith had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. This was
Speaker 1: not recorded officially as an intentional act. The coroner wrote
Speaker 1: it up as an accident to avoid the stigma that
Speaker 1: naturally goes along with death by suicide, but the family knew,
Speaker 1: although there have over the years been some debates over
Speaker 1: whether or not they were going to acknowledge this or not,
Speaker 1: and Kurt Sr. Actually asked the paper to run his
Speaker 1: wife's obituary.
Speaker 3: This death really became a focal point for Vonnegut in
Speaker 3: his writing and in his personal interactions. Biographer Charles J.
Speaker 3: Shields noted of the writer, for the rest of his life,
Speaker 3: he directed people's attention to the manner of his mother's death,
Speaker 3: as if it were something they should know about him.
Speaker 3: In Vonnegut's books, it's fairly easy to trace a line
Speaker 3: from his own family tragedy to the way he writes
Speaker 3: about mother's mothers occupy a strange narrative space for him
Speaker 3: and tend to always be grappling with mental health issues.
Speaker 3: He makes what certainly seems to be a reference to
Speaker 3: his own mother's death in his nineteen seventy three book
Speaker 3: Breakfast of Champions. This book, which we'll talk more about
Speaker 3: in a moment, is told from the point of view
Speaker 3: kil Or Trout, who's often described as being Vonnegut's fictional
Speaker 3: alter ego, and in chapter seventeen, Kilbort Trout notes of
Speaker 3: another character. Listen, Bunny's mother and mother were different sorts
Speaker 3: of human beings, but they were both beautiful in exotic ways,
Speaker 3: and they both boiled over with chaotic talk about love
Speaker 3: and peace and wars and evil and desperation of better
Speaker 3: days coming by and by, of worse days coming by
Speaker 3: and by. And both our mothers committed suicide. Bunny's mother
Speaker 3: ate Durino and my mother ate sleeping pills, which wasn't
Speaker 3: nearly as horrible.
Speaker 1: Vonnegut actually had very little time to mourn his mother.
Speaker 1: The beaches of Normandy were stormed just a few weeks
Speaker 1: after her death, and Kurt was called to active duty
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter. Before he left, he proposed to his high
Speaker 1: school sweetheart, who did not really give him any kind
Speaker 1: of reply. That was Jane, and then that autumn he
Speaker 1: was on a ship headed to Belgium. After two weeks
Speaker 1: in Cheltenham, England, he and his Division one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixth traveled across the English Channel by boat to La
Speaker 1: Havre and then by truck into Belgium, where they were
Speaker 1: brought to replace the second division that had been holding
Speaker 1: the line against Germany's push.
Speaker 3: Almost immediately, Vonnegut's division was subjected to the opening of
Speaker 3: Hitler's Operation herbs Nabel or Operation Autumn Mist, which targeted
Speaker 3: the Allies in Luxembourg and eastern Belgium. There was a
Speaker 3: near constant mirage of fire. It was during this time
Speaker 3: that Vonnegut realized, to his disillusionment, that the scouting reconnaissance
Speaker 3: squad he was a part of was really just being
Speaker 3: thrown into areas that might contain mines or hidden Nazi strongholds,
Speaker 3: so they were totally expendable. During one of these scouting missions,
Speaker 3: on December nineteenth, he was taken as a prisoner of
Speaker 3: war He and his fellow prisoners walked for two days
Speaker 3: under German guards until they were loaded into a box car,
Speaker 3: which then traveled for another two days. It was one
Speaker 3: of several box cars carrying POWs.
Speaker 1: As they moved deeper and deeper into German territory. The
Speaker 1: box car and the others that it was connected to
Speaker 1: were caught up in Allied bombing. The first instance of
Speaker 1: this was at Limburg, which was heavily bombed by the
Speaker 1: Allies right after the box car that Vonnegut and his
Speaker 1: fellow soldiers were in was disco conted from its engine
Speaker 1: and left behind. There were scores of fatalities among the
Speaker 1: POWs as some fled the cars, only to run right
Speaker 1: into the Allies line of fire. Over the next several days,
Speaker 1: Vonnegut's group was moved along until finally reaching Muhlberg, where
Speaker 1: they were processed.
Speaker 3: The entire experience was horror after horror. Many of the
Speaker 3: men were ill by this time, suffering from dysentery, malnourishment,
Speaker 3: and frostbite. They don't witnessed more death in just a
Speaker 3: few days than they can really even fathom, and many
Speaker 3: were near death when they arrived at Muhlberg. But when
Speaker 3: Vonnegut was given a postcard to send home, he told
Speaker 3: his family his life is not bad at all and
Speaker 3: asked them to send cigarettes. Meanwhile, his family had been
Speaker 3: told Kurt Junior was Mia, and they presumed the worst.
Speaker 1: Vonnegut was selected to be part of a work that
Speaker 1: was going to be sent to Dresden to clear the
Speaker 1: streets of rubble and do various factory work. Vonnegut was
Speaker 1: also given the job of translator and foreman in this group,
Speaker 1: as he spoke enough German to do so. These men
Speaker 1: were housed in a converted slaughterhouse, and at one point
Speaker 1: Vonnegut was actually court martialed by the Germans for insulting
Speaker 1: a Nazi officer after he had abused a six pow.
Speaker 1: Vonnegut was beaten and his foreman role was immediately taken away.
Speaker 3: If you read his letter home that he wrote, he
Speaker 3: talked about he was overheard telling the foreman what he'd
Speaker 3: like to do to him in German.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was not pleasant.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: So on the night of February thirteenth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: the Allies began their bombing of Dresden. The POWs housed
Speaker 3: in the slaughterhouse were moved into a basement as the
Speaker 3: bombing destroyed the city in the morning. The one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty men one was a part of We're in
Speaker 3: an odd situation. They'd survived, but much of Dresden had not,
Speaker 3: and tens of thousands of casualties littered the streets of
Speaker 3: the destroyed city. Vonnegut's work crew was tasked with clearing
Speaker 3: the dead and cleaning up the city, salvaging what they could.
Speaker 3: It was made clear that if anyone took anything for themselves,
Speaker 3: they would be shot, so Vonnegut and his fellow POW's
Speaker 3: had to dig graves and in some cases stack bodies
Speaker 3: and set them ablaze.
Speaker 1: As the war came to a close in the spring,
Speaker 1: Vonnegut and his fellow POWs were eventually abandoned by their
Speaker 1: German captors and left to sort of fend for themselves.
Speaker 1: Kurt and several others were eventually traded for Soviet prisoners
Speaker 1: that the Allies had captured, and Vonnegut, at this point,
Speaker 1: like all of the men who had been captured, was
Speaker 1: in really rough shape, not just mentally, but also he
Speaker 1: was physically a mess. He was malnourished, and he was sickly,
Speaker 1: but he did make it home. He got through the
Speaker 1: forms that established him as no longer missing an action,
Speaker 1: which was apparently a little bit of an ordeal, and
Speaker 1: he was promoted to corporal. He also received a purple heart,
Speaker 1: which sort of funnily enough, was for frostbite. And it's
Speaker 1: just funny, given all of the things that he lived through,
Speaker 1: that that's what he got his purple heart for.
Speaker 3: You can go see it at the museum. They have
Speaker 3: it on display at the museum.
Speaker 1: He had started writing to his high school sweetheart Jane
Speaker 1: again as soon as he was back in the US.
Speaker 1: Jane had dated other people when the two of them
Speaker 1: went to different colleges, and she was still sort of
Speaker 1: playing the field. In his letters, Kurt was so cautious
Speaker 1: to not assume that Jane was unmarried or single or
Speaker 1: available to him, but she was, and they met up
Speaker 1: in Washington, where Jane was living, and then they both
Speaker 1: just by happenstance of scheduling, traveled to Indianapolis at the
Speaker 1: same time, and once they were back home, Kurt proposed again,
Speaker 1: and at that point the two were engaged.
Speaker 3: Kurt always claimed that his war experience hadn't been that bad.
Speaker 3: He was fine that family and friends shouldn't get emotional
Speaker 3: over it, but it did eventually come out as writing.
Speaker 3: Of course. In the interviews, his daughter said that they
Speaker 3: never knew what he'd been through until they read Slaughterhouse Five.
Speaker 3: He was only twenty two when he returned home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot to process if you think about it, right.
Speaker 1: Your prefrontal cortex is not finished forming when you're in
Speaker 1: your early twenties, and he had gone through an extraordinary
Speaker 1: amount of trauma. But then in the post war nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: Vonnegut tried to move on. He focused on his future
Speaker 1: with Jane. They were married on September fourteenth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and from the moment they became a married couple, Jane
Speaker 1: really became the driving force of his writing career. She
Speaker 1: was older than he was by a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and she had finished college and she had a job
Speaker 1: in the Office of Strategic Services before she accepted Kurt's proposal,
Speaker 1: because women generally resigned from their work once they were
Speaker 1: getting married, and that's what she did. Kurt was not
Speaker 1: always the warmest spouse, but Jane supported him, and she
Speaker 1: encouraged him to read more, starting with the Brothers Karamazov,
Speaker 1: which she presented him during their honeymoon. The two of
Speaker 1: them discussed literature and that was a big part of
Speaker 1: their relationship, and while Kurt finished out his time in
Speaker 1: the service, she also urged him to write, and he
Speaker 1: would send all of the work that he did back
Speaker 1: home and let her edit it. And he was very,
Speaker 1: very deferential to her. He was like, do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with it. You know better than I do.
Speaker 3: The two of them also applied to the University of
Speaker 3: Chicago and both were accepted. Kurt's school was paid for
Speaker 3: by the GI bill and he was already writing short
Speaker 3: stories with Jane's encouragement, but he also signed on for
Speaker 3: an anthropology program that would take him right through to
Speaker 3: a master's degree. The following year, Jane got pregnant dropped
Speaker 3: out of her fellowship program. Vonnie get dropped out of
Speaker 3: his anthropology program that summer after his thesis proposal was rejected,
Speaker 3: and their son Mark arrived on May eleventh, nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3: His thesis proposal was really fascinating and I'm still mad
Speaker 3: that they rejected it. His thesis for anthropology was that
Speaker 3: he thought that the shapes of stories were as equally
Speaker 3: interesting as the shards of pottery of any civilization. And
Speaker 3: he created a method where you could chart the shape
Speaker 3: of culture's stories. And I teach a lot of writing
Speaker 3: classes and I use that a lot to help people
Speaker 3: visualize how stories work. But he didn't end up getting
Speaker 3: his degree until they accepted Cat's Cradle as his thesis
Speaker 3: years years and years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. After he left his program, he wrote for the
Speaker 1: Chicago City News Bureau, which is something that he had
Speaker 1: actually started while he was still in school, and he
Speaker 1: started to think finally about getting his fiction published and
Speaker 1: really focus on it. Money was really tight, though, and
Speaker 1: soon it became very apparent that he was going to
Speaker 1: need something dependable to bring in money to support Jane
Speaker 1: and they're soon to be born son. So he turned
Speaker 1: to his brother, Bernard, who was extremely famous in science circles.
Speaker 1: He was an accomplished atmospheric and environmental scientist and he
Speaker 1: worked with General Electric. Bernard was able to get Kurt
Speaker 1: a job as a publicist with the company. There's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting story here where during the interview, the
Speaker 1: person that Kurt was interviewing with read on his application
Speaker 1: in his resume that he had been in Dresden during
Speaker 1: the bombing, and the man just looked up and said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I was one of those bombers, and he
Speaker 1: got the job on the spot. I'm a little choked
Speaker 1: up that job. Though he did not like it. He
Speaker 1: had a moral issue with PR work, which I love,
Speaker 1: because he just thought it was inherently deceitful and that
Speaker 1: was not something he really liked. He also thought that
Speaker 1: the field of science, which he had been excited to
Speaker 1: write about the things that people were doing a ge
Speaker 1: because a lot of scientists got to just kind of experiment,
Speaker 1: was not being handled in a responsible way and it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily for the betterment of mankind.
Speaker 3: And its that discomfort with PR with GE that really
Speaker 3: led him to pursue fiction writing as his full time job.
Speaker 3: He started producing short stories and submitting them to publishers,
Speaker 3: but there were a lot of rejections. Still, Jane was
Speaker 3: his champion the whole time, and even wrote to publishers
Speaker 3: herself to promote his work. The late nineteen forties were
Speaker 3: very lean times, and then finally, not long after the
Speaker 3: birth of their daughter Edith, in nineteen fifty, Collier's Weekly
Speaker 3: published his short story report on the Barnhouse effect, but
Speaker 3: a college professor who develops a sort of telekinesis and
Speaker 3: is used by the government as a weapon. The story
Speaker 3: is told by one of Professor Barnhouse's former students. Colliers
Speaker 3: and other magazines needed short stories. They were very popular
Speaker 3: with readers in the era before television became ubiquitous, so
Speaker 3: he soon had a lot more work and started to
Speaker 3: make good money. He'd promised himself that after he sold
Speaker 3: five stories, he'd quit his GE job, which he did.
Speaker 3: He and Jane then moved to Cape Cod in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had this moment where he marveled that in
Speaker 1: the course of just a couple months he had made
Speaker 1: more money as a writer than he would make in
Speaker 1: an entire year at GE. So he felt really bolstered
Speaker 1: by his decision.
Speaker 3: There was this interesting moment too, where he also felt
Speaker 3: some shame because some of those were like he was
Speaker 3: writing stuff for like Ladies home Journal, like I know
Speaker 3: the one story that sort of based in his life,
Speaker 3: Long Walk to Forever, Yeah, which was terrific. It's a
Speaker 3: great story, and it's about that time he went back
Speaker 3: home to sort of talk to Jane before he shipped
Speaker 3: off to the war. He felt a lot shame about
Speaker 3: that story and it being like that he'd lived a
Speaker 3: moment in his life that would be in a lady's
Speaker 3: glossy magazine. But it paid him well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Vonnegutt continued to turn out fiction and make
Speaker 1: really good money for the first time in his life.
Speaker 1: He published his first novel, Player Piano, in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: and this was a book that was informed by his
Speaker 1: time at GE. It was something he could not have
Speaker 1: written and published while he was there, or he would
Speaker 1: have gotten fired. The plot is set in a mechanized
Speaker 1: society where most human labor has been replaced by machines,
Speaker 1: and society has split into the out of work laboring
Speaker 1: class and the overseeing engineers, and it examines, among other things,
Speaker 1: what happens to people when they have no immediate use
Speaker 1: and no contribution of value to society. He got labeled
Speaker 1: because of this as a science fiction writer, but that
Speaker 1: was not a pigeonhole he especially liked, just because while
Speaker 1: he had nothing against science fiction, he knew that other
Speaker 1: people did not take it seriously as literature.
Speaker 3: So there was a seven year gap between Claire Piano
Speaker 3: and Vonnagut's second novel, The Sirens of Titan, which came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen fifty nine, and during those seven years
Speaker 3: there were a lot of changes in Vonnagautt's life. First,
Speaker 3: his daughter, Nanette, was born in nineteen fifty four, than
Speaker 3: his father, Kurt's died in the autumn of nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 3: And then in nineteen fifty eight, Kurt's sister, Alice, to
Speaker 3: whom he was extremely close, was diagnosed with late stage
Speaker 3: breast cancer. While she was in the hospital, her husband
Speaker 3: Jim died suddenly in a train accident. Then, while the
Speaker 3: family tried to shield Alice from this news, she found out.
Speaker 3: Though there's a couple of different accounts about how she
Speaker 3: found out. One is that a nurse gave her a
Speaker 3: newspaper which mentioned the accident, and then the other is
Speaker 3: that the family friend accidentally blurted it out. But regardless,
Speaker 3: Alice was heartbroken, and she died two days after learning
Speaker 3: about her husband's death. Kurt later said of his sister, quote,
Speaker 3: she was the person I'd always written for. She was
Speaker 3: the secret of whatever artistic unity I'd ever achieved. He'd
Speaker 3: promised Alice that he would keep her four sons together,
Speaker 3: and he moved all of them into the house with him,
Speaker 3: Jane and their three kids. It became a wild and
Speaker 3: boisterous home and the kids, as adults would note, the
Speaker 3: Kurt was often grouchy with them and a little scary
Speaker 3: at times, but he could be fun, but he was moody.
Speaker 3: Jane was the one who kept it all together and
Speaker 3: served as a primary caretaker for their huge crew.
Speaker 1: Seven Kids is a lot of kids. Sirens of Titan,
Speaker 1: which examines space and time travel, free will, and what
Speaker 1: it means to try to outrun your destiny, was really
Speaker 1: pretty well received by critics. It was a Hugo Award
Speaker 1: finalist for nineteen sixty His follow up in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one was his book Mother Night. And this is a
Speaker 1: step away from science fiction, which he was becoming known for,
Speaker 1: so it's a little risky. This is a fictional memoir
Speaker 1: written by a Nazi propagandist while he awaits his trial
Speaker 1: for war crimes. There's a spy twist in the work.
Speaker 1: I almost don't want to say more because it's a
Speaker 1: really fun narrative as it unfolds. And this story would
Speaker 1: eventually be adapted into stage and screen, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of Vonaget's subsequent work, including the nineteen ninety six films
Speaker 1: starring Nick Nolty, which vonni Gett has a really beautiful
Speaker 1: cameo in Is.
Speaker 3: Really Good To See It. Nineteen sixty three saw the
Speaker 3: release of Cat's Cradle, and this was inspired by the
Speaker 3: Lab at ge where scientists had been allowed to experiment
Speaker 3: for the sake of pure science. There's a frequently told
Speaker 3: story that one of the scientists there suggested the idea
Speaker 3: of water that solidified at room temperature to author H. G.
Speaker 3: Wells when he visited the lab, but Wells never used
Speaker 3: the idea. Vonnie get decided it was okay to use
Speaker 3: it himself. He uses it as the concept of ice
Speaker 3: nine to examine the ways that science can be weaponized.
Speaker 3: He also introduced a fictional religion in the book called Bocanonism,
Speaker 3: which involved a number of absurd practices. Some of the
Speaker 3: vocabulary of this faux religion would also be used a
Speaker 3: decade later to name a collection of short story writings
Speaker 3: by Vonnegut called Wampeters, Foma, and Grand Falloons.
Speaker 1: The novel God Bless You, Mister Rosewater was released in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, and it's in this book that Vonnegutt
Speaker 1: introduces what has become known as his fictional alter ego,
Speaker 1: Kilgore Trout. The name was a play on the name
Speaker 1: of the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon. Trout appeared in
Speaker 1: numerous books after this time. While he changed personality a
Speaker 1: little bit and details give from book to book, he
Speaker 1: was always a writer. And in Rosewater, Vonnegut wrote one
Speaker 1: of his oftend quotes, which has spoken, this also gets
Speaker 1: me choked up. I'm very weepy about kir Vonnagut this week,
Speaker 1: you guys. This also gets me choked up. And it's
Speaker 1: spoken in the book to a pair of infants by
Speaker 1: the titular character, mister Rosewater, and he says, hello, babies,
Speaker 1: welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold
Speaker 1: in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded on
Speaker 1: the outside. Babies, you've got one hundred years here. There's
Speaker 1: only one rule that I know of babies, God damn it,
Speaker 1: you gotta be kind.
Speaker 3: After Rosewater, Vonneguant, who needed more money than his books
Speaker 3: were making, he took a job teaching at the Iowa
Speaker 3: Writers Workshop. This turned out to be a pivotal move
Speaker 3: in his life. For the first time. He wasn't a
Speaker 3: solitary writer typing out his books at home. He was
Speaker 3: in the middle of a community of fellow writers, many
Speaker 3: of whom would become lifelong friends. He published a collection
Speaker 3: of short fiction titled Welcome to the Monkey House in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight, but the project he'd been working on
Speaker 3: since his return from the war, finally after many, many,
Speaker 3: many many drafts, was published as a result of the
Speaker 3: work he did on it while in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the outcome of Iowa is also one of those
Speaker 1: kind of funny things in his life. Because he didn't
Speaker 1: want to take a teaching job. He thought that was
Speaker 1: like admitting defeat as a writer. But it turned out
Speaker 1: to be really, really good for him, and that's why.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine he published slaughter House Five, or
Speaker 1: The Children Crusade, which took his already impressive status in
Speaker 1: contemporary fiction to an absolutely new level. It was a
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller, it won a National Book Award
Speaker 1: for Fiction, and it also made Kurt Vonneguet very famous,
Speaker 1: very quickly.
Speaker 3: Slaughterhouse Five was incredibly popular, but it was also incredibly
Speaker 3: personal for Vonnegut. It's very clearly Vonnegult working through his
Speaker 3: experiences in World War II. The narrative jumps around through
Speaker 3: time and involves an alien race from the planet Charles Falmador,
Speaker 3: but in its heart, it's Vonnaguet sharing his experiences in Dresden.
Speaker 3: Even his main character, Billy Pilgrim, who he describes as
Speaker 3: unstuck in time, is born the same year as Vonnegut
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two. He's also captured by the Germans in
Speaker 3: World War two and survives the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut's
Speaker 3: nonlinear storytelling, which has Billy Pilgrim jumping from moment to
Speaker 3: moment in his life, gives away all the details that
Speaker 3: would normally be in a novel's final chapters. In the
Speaker 3: early pages of the book. The narratives message is anti war,
Speaker 3: and many of the characters are inspired by people he
Speaker 3: knew during his time in service. All of the things
Speaker 3: he could never talk about with family and friends, including
Speaker 3: the trauma he felt, came out in the book. He
Speaker 3: even has an appearance in the book. He's in the
Speaker 3: box cars and is watching some of these horrors play out,
Speaker 3: and it's interesting reading the book and seeing him watch
Speaker 3: all of these horrors play out in third person, almost
Speaker 3: like he's disassociating out of it. Well, Vonaguein always insisted
Speaker 3: he was fine as these events were playing out in
Speaker 3: his actual life. Billy's story shows how deeply they haunted
Speaker 3: him decades later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. There's a moment in a documentary about
Speaker 1: him where he talks about trying to share some of it,
Speaker 1: like he had written some of it in his letter home,
Speaker 1: but he tries to tell his family about one of
Speaker 1: the things that happened, and he couldn't finish, and he
Speaker 1: was like, I never talked about it again. Slaughterhouse five,
Speaker 1: of course, made Vonneguet a critical and media darling and
Speaker 1: a household name. There's a Great Life magazine feature on
Speaker 1: him and his family. It's this full spread with pictures,
Speaker 1: and it includes photos of his family and their home
Speaker 1: and their beautiful pictures. Some of them are really really fun.
Speaker 1: But all of that fame, ultimately, as fame often does,
Speaker 1: led to his life blowing up. He moved from Cape
Speaker 1: Cod to New York. The family stayed in Cape Cod,
Speaker 1: and he and Jane split up. They had some fundamental differences,
Speaker 1: including religion, that had come into sharp focus once their
Speaker 1: kids were grown. And moved out, but he had also
Speaker 1: met someone else. On the heels of his critically acclaimed novel,
Speaker 1: Vonnaguet wrote a play titled Happy Birthday One to June,
Speaker 1: and it was released in nineteen seventy one, and while
Speaker 1: that play was in production, photographer Jill Krementz was assigned
Speaker 1: to take pictures of him.
Speaker 3: The end of Jane and Kurt's marriage was somewhat unusual.
Speaker 3: They stayed in touch. Jane remained, according to her children,
Speaker 3: very proud of Kurt's accomplishments and accolades. While she could
Speaker 3: have easily become bitter over how played out, she seemed
Speaker 3: to accept it move on, eventually remarrying.
Speaker 1: Slaughterhouse five was optioned for film rights very soon after
Speaker 1: its release because of its popularity, and the movie version
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen seventy two, starring Michael Sachs as
Speaker 1: Billy Pilgrim. The follow up to Slaughterhouse Five was greeted
Speaker 1: with less enthusiasm. His nineteen seventy three book Breakfast of
Speaker 1: Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday also has roots in Vonnaget's
Speaker 1: real life, as he examined what it is to be
Speaker 1: famous as a writer. In a world where cultural norms
Speaker 1: and values are rapidly shifting. Kil Gore Trout is a
Speaker 1: main character in this book, and it also echoes some
Speaker 1: of his earlier themes of free will and social inequity.
Speaker 1: Vonnegut also refers to himself in this book as a
Speaker 1: writer narrator, sharing with the reader why he's doing some
Speaker 1: of the things he's doing with the story. This was,
Speaker 1: despite its critical reception, actually a bestseller because at this
Speaker 1: point the public adore Vonna Guet, but some of the
Speaker 1: critics were really really harsh in the way they received it.
Speaker 3: Slapstick or Lonesome No More was released in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: He dedicated the book to Laurel and Hardy, two men
Speaker 3: that he felt had taught him that laughter was okay
Speaker 3: even when things were tough those Slaughterhouse five is very
Speaker 3: much considered to be as loose biography. He states in
Speaker 3: the opening of Slapstick quote, this is the closest I'll
Speaker 3: ever come to writing an autobiography. It's an autobiography of
Speaker 3: his main character, doctor Wilbert Daffodil eleven Swain. Swain has
Speaker 3: a sister, Eliza, and the siblings have been cut off
Speaker 3: from the world because they are, according to Swain's account,
Speaker 3: hideously ugly, but they're also uniquely powerful as a duo,
Speaker 3: and they wish to help people form extended families to
Speaker 3: eradicate loneliness. Critics didn't like it, and to be honest,
Speaker 3: Vonnegaue did neither. In his book Palm Sunday, he sort
Speaker 3: of gives as signs letter grades to all of his books,
Speaker 3: and this is the only one he gave an F two.
Speaker 3: And the movie adaptation that Jerry Lewis made is probably
Speaker 3: one of the worst movies. I've ever seen it.
Speaker 1: My entire life.
Speaker 3: If you can find it, I had to buy a
Speaker 3: bootleg from Australia and then and then make my computer
Speaker 3: think it was Australian to watch it. It was a
Speaker 3: big rigamarole because I couldn't find it in the US
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: That's the universe telling you not to watch that film.
Speaker 3: That's actually you are not the first person who told
Speaker 3: me that. But if you can find it, watch it
Speaker 3: because it is it is a horror show.
Speaker 1: Watch it because it's so bad. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: Kurt married Jill and they adopted an infant daughter named
Speaker 1: Lily together and That pair stayed together for the rest
Speaker 1: of Kirk Vonaget's life, although like any long term marriage,
Speaker 1: it was not always smooth. That same year, Kurt published
Speaker 1: the book Jail Bird, a memoir of a man recently
Speaker 1: released from prison. It did better than Slapstick did with critics,
Speaker 1: but it also marked the start of a run of
Speaker 1: books that were seen as kind of okay rather than
Speaker 1: brilliant in most critics eyes. So this includes that group
Speaker 1: of books that are have Dead Eye Dick in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, Galapagos in nineteen eighty five, and another fictional
Speaker 1: autobiography in nineteen eighty seven titled Bluebeard.
Speaker 3: In his nineteen ninety book hocus Pocus, it offered up
Speaker 3: the idea of a book crafted from scraps of paper
Speaker 3: that had been found assembled according to the numbers written
Speaker 3: on them by their author. Vonnegut said that he wanted
Speaker 3: to prove that books could be written by anyone, and
Speaker 3: so he alleged, and I've always wondered if this is
Speaker 3: actually true, and he was handing like receipts and things
Speaker 3: to his editor or not, but that anybody could write something,
Speaker 3: and he was writing it on the backs of you know,
Speaker 3: grocery bags and things like that, but who knows. It
Speaker 3: features a recurrence of the trel Fammadorians. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: Vonaget published a collection of essays titled Fates Worse Than Death,
Speaker 3: and in it he confessed that he'd tried to die
Speaker 3: by suicide in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Vonnegut's nineteen ninety seven book Timequake invokes the trouble that
Speaker 1: he often had when grappling with a narrative and makes
Speaker 1: it essential to the plot of the book. The conceit
Speaker 1: of the story is that in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: everybody gets thrust backwards ten years to nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: and they have to repeat those years all over again,
Speaker 1: but exactly as they played out the first time.
Speaker 3: The medicine to fix that book is great is just
Speaker 3: Kilgore Trout running around yelling at people. You were sick,
Speaker 3: but now you're well again. There's work to do. Vonnegut's
Speaker 3: fiction offered political commentary often, but in two thousand and
Speaker 3: five he produced a very overtly political book titled A
Speaker 3: Man Without a Country, a Memoir of life in George W.
Speaker 3: Bush's America. And this book was a surprise hit. I
Speaker 3: don't know why. I was a surprise. I bought a copy,
Speaker 3: and Vonnegut made the rounds of TV talk shows talking
Speaker 3: about his disdain for the war in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: He noted that when he saw images of young Iraqi
Speaker 3: soldiers being marched with their hands on their heads as
Speaker 3: prisoners of war or he recognized the exact thing he'd
Speaker 3: lived through in Germany, and he felt a brotherhood with them.
Speaker 1: Even into his eighties, Bonneget retained his wonderful dark humor
Speaker 1: In a lecture he gave it Case Western Reserve. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, he made an announcement, here's the
Speaker 1: big news. I am suing Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company
Speaker 1: of Louisville, Kentucky for billions. I hope and you lawyers
Speaker 1: here those in law school will be interested in this case.
Speaker 1: I think I have never smoked anything but Paul Mall
Speaker 1: since I was eleven years old. This is a Brown
Speaker 1: and Williamson product on their package. For several years now.
Speaker 1: They've promised to kill me, but I'm still alive eighty
Speaker 1: one years old. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. He
Speaker 1: told this story on numerous occasions, including in an interview
Speaker 1: with Rolling Stone a couple years later. I think that
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and six, and in that
Speaker 1: version he claimed that he started smoking as a teenager
Speaker 1: rather than at eleven. I don't know why he changed
Speaker 1: that detail. He probably thought it was funnier that he
Speaker 1: started working his later. I don't know, Like it's.
Speaker 3: Interesting when you see his genesis of how he tells
Speaker 3: stories in person. Yeah, it's always because he thinks he's
Speaker 3: getting a funnier punch line out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Something. It wasn't cigarettes that caused Vonnegut's death. It was
Speaker 3: simply a fall. He'd fallen in his home in two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, sustained brain injuries, and he died on
Speaker 3: April eleventh, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: After his death, a renewed demand for his work led
Speaker 1: to several new releases. In two thousand and eight, Armageddon
Speaker 1: in Retrospect was released by his son Mark, and this
Speaker 1: brings together both fiction and non fiction short form pieces
Speaker 1: that examined the human propensity for war.
Speaker 3: Two more books of previously unpublished short fiction came out
Speaker 3: in the next several years. The first was Look at
Speaker 3: the Birdie in two thousand and nine, and the second
Speaker 3: was while Mortal's Sleep released two years later.
Speaker 1: His final writing, which was an unfinished novel and only
Speaker 1: a very small portion of one that he was working
Speaker 1: on when he died, was published in twenty twelve in
Speaker 1: a book that also included another novella that had never
Speaker 1: been published. These two works together were titled We Are
Speaker 1: What We Pretend to be.
Speaker 3: Pertinent to where we are today. Vonnegut often said he
Speaker 3: trusted his writing best when he sounded like a person
Speaker 3: from Indianapolis. He also said of his body of work quote,
Speaker 3: if you were to bother to read my books to
Speaker 3: behave as educated persons would, you'd learn that they're not
Speaker 3: sexy and do not argue in favor of wildness of
Speaker 3: any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more
Speaker 3: responsible than they often are.
Speaker 1: And that is Kurt Vonnegut, who we both clearly love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'd still get choked up over. Thank you once
Speaker 1: again to Brian Young for doing that episode with me.
Speaker 1: It was really really lovely to have him by my
Speaker 1: side for it. He loves Kurt Vonneguet in much the
Speaker 1: same way I do, and he is a wealth of
Speaker 1: knowledge about him, so it was a perfect fit.
Speaker 2: Do you have any listener mail before we wrap up.
Speaker 1: No, all right, I will even say, since that was
Speaker 1: kind of a juicy live show, I'm going to forego
Speaker 1: listener mail this time around, and we will have some
Speaker 1: next time around, I promise. Alrighty. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to the show though in the meantime so
Speaker 1: you could potentially be a future listener mail, you can
Speaker 1: do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 1: or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
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