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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} and So It Goes Kurt Vonnegut a Life by Charles J Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} And So it Goes Kurt Vonnegut A Life by Charles J. Shields And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 65fe92e1ea65c303 • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 65fe92e2cd4c178a • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut A Life by Charles J Shields: review. Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five, does not come out well as a person in a new biography by Charles J Shields. Kurt Vonnegut , the satirical writer and humanist who died five years ago today in New York, still stirs up strong emotions. Only last autumn, his anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five , previously outlawed and burned in some American towns, was banned by a Missouri High School. Yet the appeal of the Indianapolis-born writer, who would have been 90 this year, blazes on. Basic Training , a previously unpublished novella by Vonnegut written while the author was working for General Electric in the 1940s, shot to the top of eBook charts in America last month. His books twinkle with humour - black, mordant humour, it has to be said - but what was the man behind such engaging novels as Cat's Cradle and Breakfast Of Champions really like? And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut A Life by Charles J Shields, shows, alas, that he was a bit of a pig. Shields, who has previously written a biography of Harper Lee, has compiled a well-written, comprehensive and revealing biography of a man described as "one of the best American writers" by Graham Greene. But if, like me, you have enjoyed Vonnegut the novelist, essayist and public speaker, then Shields's book is something you read with a sinking feeling. The warning signs are there from the start. In his introduction, Shields recalls meeting Vonnegut (shortly before the writer's death on 11 April 2007) and finding a "lonely, disenchanted man" all too happy to talk angrily about his family. "He mowed down his father, his mother and particularly his elder brother," says Shields. There's little doubt that Vonnegut's mother Edith was cold, aloof and materialistic. His gentle father was also distant and somewhat uninvolved. Edith killed herself on Mother's Day and instilled a lifelong obsession with suicide in the would-be writer. Vonnegut certainly saw more than his share of misery. His beloved sister, Alice, died in a mental institution a day after her husband had been killed in a train accident. Vonnegut and his long-suffering first wife, Jane, brought up Alice's three orphaned children (along with three of their own) and, despite this act of charity, Vonnegut emerges as a depressingly poor father and husband. His treatment of Jane always had a "sharp edge" and the revelations by the children who grew up under his care are routinely damning. One child, Tiger, said: "Kurt had a cruel side to him," detailing how he could be "scary and intimidating" and capable of "blistering anger". He would flip over the board if his son beat him at chess. Another child, Edie, refers to his "King Leary" habit of playing children off against each other. Vonnegut was beset by insecurities and a feeling of inferiority. He was concerned enough by his student shortcomings to consistently embellish his education, claiming academic honours he never earned. He was upset about being ignored or criticised by reviewers and nothing riled him more than suggestions that he was a success simply because he appealed to juvenile readers. Shield marshals his evidence. Vonnegut broke his word to friends within the publishing industry. He was an unfaithful husband and capable of slyness. After seeing the film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , he wrote to his wife Jane about how the movie had "touched him". He wrote an identical letter to a young woman he was trying to seduce. Mark Vonnegut, a writer and son of the author, has taken issue with Shield's portrait, saying: "Kurt Vonnegut did not die a bitter man, who kept thinking he was a failure. Charles Shields spent very little time with a much diminished 84-year-old." Certainly there are not enough accounts of the Good Vonnegut (there are occasional references in the notes about acts of kindness towards struggling writers and former pupils) and the Fun Vonnegut is underplayed - seen in glimpses of the man who blew royalties and advances on parties and jelly beans. Vonnegut worked in PR for a long time, and spent years waiting for his breakthrough as a successful writer, and there is no doubt that he shrewdly manipulated his own public image. "We are what we pretend to be," he said. Vonnegut also once admitted: "I myself am a work of fiction." I suspect the problem for some readers of what is a fine and interesting biography is that they will be disappointed that the guy they had imagined from his writing is not the one you find in this biography. He certainly didn't always follow his own golden rule: "God damn it, you've got to be kind." Maybe looking for Jolly Old Kurt is the wrong starting point in any case. His books and essays are bleak and world weary. It's part of their appeal. Nevertheless, it is surprising to read that he once admitted: "I've realised the only thing I hate more than listening to people is talking to people." The sections dealing with the final years of his life make for dismal reading. He called himself an anchorite in the wilderness. His drinking buddies had started to die off and he was unhappy being a lecturer. He traipsed round the Northampton College library trying to donate copies of novels he feared were being overlooked. "I'm Kurt Vonnegut and this is a book by Kurt Vonnegut" he told the librarian. His rotten second marriage to photo-journalist Jill Krementz drove him to drink heavily and even to a half-hearted suicide attempt. Unhappiness was hardwired into the Vonnegut DNA and he was damaged by the cruelty he'd seen during the Second World War ("the whole damn fool bloody mess") and the senselessness of human behaviour he had experienced in the firebombing of Dresden, a subject he wrote about so wonderfully in Slaughterhouse-Five . The cover image shows Vonnegut casting a cold and wary look at the world. My eight-year-old son, looking at the photograph as I was reading, said it looked "like a man who had seen things he'd rather not have seen". He did and he was forever damaged. So, another fine and captivating writer was a flawed man. Hi ho. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut A Life by Charles J Shields (Henry Holt And Company) Overnights. Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. The life and writing of Kurt Vonnegut with Charles J Shields. On Overnights with Trevor Chappell. Facebook Twitter Mail. Captured by the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge, American writer Kurt Vonngut survived the firebombing of Dresden as a POW before setting out to establish the writing career he had aspired to before the war. After years of selling short stories to pulp publications, many in the science fiction genre, it was his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), that provide the breakthrough. Heavily informed by his experience in Dresden, it combined the humour, irony, and melancholic tone that were to become his trademarks. Who was Vonnegut and how is his literary legacy regarded 13 years on from his death? Trev speaks with Charles J Shields author of And So It Goes Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. 'And So It Goes,' by Charles J. Shields: review. In the introduction to "Mother Night," his early novel about a supposed Nazi sympathizer, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." According to "And So It Goes - Kurt Vonnegut: A Life," by Charles J. Shields, this is a maxim the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five" might have been wise to follow more closely in his own life and career.
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