Kurt Vonnegut was summarily unimpressed with the protracted presidential election imbroglio. For nearly six weeks, much of the nation was mesmerized by stop-and-go go-and-stop vote counts, hanging and dimpled chads. But not the prolific author famous for his irreverent wit and dark satire.
“It’s all an electronic tantrum, just like O.J. was. That’s what this whole mess is,” Vonnegut said with a dismissive wave of his left hand, smoke wafting in front of his craggy face from an unfiltered Pall Mall cigarette cradled in his fingers.
“Of course it’s more than that,” he added, “but just once I’d like to turn on the TV or radio and find out what’s going on in the rest of the world. Hell, I’d like to know what’s going on in my life.”
A writer who also bears the mantle of celebrity — Discover Card recruited him for an advertising campaign; a Massachusetts brew pub named one of its beers after him — Vonnegut will for the next two years also be known as the State Author for New York, an honor that Gov. George Pataki will officially bestow upon him next month at a ceremony in Albany. He succeeds the novelist James Salter.
For most of this year, though, the 78-year-old writer best known for the 1969 anti-war book “Slaughterhouse Five” (ranked 18th of the Modern Library’s top 100 English-language novels of the 20th Century) has been living in a spacious studio apartment in Northampton, Mass., where he is teaching advanced writing at Smith College.
He came to this thriving, picturesque New England town to heal as much as to inspire young students. Vonnegut was not in a good way when he arrived in Northampton in the spring. He was weak and out of sorts, the after effects of a Jan. 31 fire in his East Side Manhattan brownstone.
The structural damage from the fire — caused by a spilled ashtray — was limited to the top floor of the building, but most of Vonnegut’s clothes were lost and his archives were destroyed. The one-time volunteer firefighter suffered smoke inhalation trying to extinguish the blaze and was initially listed in critical condition. He was hospitalized for four days.
“I was a wreck after the fire. It seemed the best thing to do was come up here, where my daughter and nephews could take care of me.
“Now I’m thinking about suing the makers of Pall Mall,” he added, a devilish gleam in his eyes. “On the package they promise to kill me and they still haven’t done it.”
His raspy laugh follows the oft-told line.
A fourth-generation German-American from Indianapolis, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. stepped outside the family mold when he decided to make a living with words instead of blueprints. Both his father and his father’s father were prominent architects. His mother was the daughter of millionaire and Indianapolis brewer Albert Lieber.
Vonnegut’s high school did something almost unheard of today: It published a daily newspaper, The Echo. It was where he got hooked telling stories. “We weren’t writing for the teachers, we were writing for our peers,” he recalled. “We found out right away if our stories were any good or not.”
When he arrived at Cornell University in 1940, writing for the college’s weekly paper seemed almost too easy compared to the excitement of his daily experience at Shortridge High School.
Soon, a bigger adventure beckoned: World War II. Even though he considered himself a pacifist, Vonnegut left college in January 1943 to enlist in the Army. “The First World War was about absolutely nothing, but then a just war came along,” he said. “I was young and in good health and I was ready for it. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
His infantry division was stationed on the German border, assigned to deplete Hitler’s forces. There were countless casualties when the Germans attacked in December 1944. Vonnegut was captured and taken prisoner. He spent the next five months in Dresden and was there during the heaviest Allied bombing raids.
“I was born hating war, I think. I never thought war was a good idea,” Vonnegut said. “But the Second World War had to be fought, and I was proud to have fought in it. Civilization was in terrible danger and blood had to be shed to save it.”
The experience gave Vonnegut material for “Slaughterhouse Five” and other books, but he did not immediately start writing fiction when the war ended and he was freed. He married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox, and returned to newspapers, covering police and crime in Chicago.
After the war, he worked as a public relations writer for the General Electric Co. in upstate New York.
After Vonnegut realized he could make a living writing stories, he and his family moved to Cape Cod. They had three children and adopted his sister’s three children after she and her husband died within days of each other.
The next two decades were the most prolific period of Vonnegut’s life. During that time he published a half-dozen novels that are among his most acclaimed: “Player Piano,” 1952; “The Sirens of Titan,” 1959; “Mother Night,” 1961; “Cat’s Cradle,” 1963; “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” 1965; and “Slaughterhouse Five,” 1969.
He was, he says now, striking while the iron was hot. Most writers produce their best work before they are 40, Vonnegut says, adding there are virtually no “old men” writing good books of fiction. His most recent novel was “Timequake,” published in 1997. He wonders if it will be his last.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t expect to live this long. What’s interesting is Saroyan, Hemingway, Steinbeck, during their 20s and 30s, they wrote better than they had any right to. That stops.
“I look back now and wonder, `How in the hell did I do that?’ That’s all over now.”
Asked if he considers himself a great writer, Vonnegut shakes his head right away, his unruly thatch of gray-brown hair bobbing.
“I consider myself remarkably successful, because most people fail,” he said. Vonnegut and Cox were officially divorced in 1979, and he married photographer Jill Krementz. Three years later they adopted a girl, Lilly, who is a high school senior living in Manhattan with her mother while Vonnegut spends the year in Northampton. He said he was looking forward to spending Christmas with them.
Vonnegut struggles with writing today. On the wooden end table that he has placed in front of himself as he sits on the couch is a tattered blue paper folder. Written on the cover is one word: Novel. “Everybody should write to find out who they are and where they are,” he said. “Right now, though, I’m thinking I want to turn the typewriter into a musical instrument because I can really play it. I do finger exercises in the morning and hope something else will come out.”
