New Today: While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut

Late last year when the editors of January Magazine were musing about the ten most anticipated books of 2011, While Mortals Sleep (Delacorte) was high on the list. I would have gone further: I would have called it one of my must read books of the year. And why? For that stellar, questioning, much missed voice.

While I looked forward to reading this new collection, I did not have high hopes for it. While Mortals Sleep collects 16 early Vonnegut short stories, all unpublished. And when you hear a thing like that, you tend to wonder about the reason.

It was a pleasant surprise to find I really enjoyed most of what is collected here. Viewed in the context of the body of the author’s work, one wouldn’t need a date to place thse stories as proto-Vonnegut. They were written for publication at a time when the young writer was trying to make his living at his craft and selling stories to Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. These 16, however, never made the cut. As Dave Eggers points out in a foreword, “the way [Vonnegut] wrote at the time was influenced a certain amount by what he knew these publications wanted.” For whatever reasons, though, they didn’t want these. Again from the foreword:

These are what might be called mousetrap stories. This was once a popular ... form. But you don’t see it much anymore. We’re now in an age of what might be called photorealistic stories. What we have with most contemporary short stories is a realism, a naturalism, that gives us roughly what a photographer gives us.

But that’s not what Vonnegut was after at the time:

A mousetrap story exists to trick or trap the reader. It moves the reader along, through the complex (but not too complex) machinery of the story, until the end, when the cage is sprung and the reader is trapped.

This is a lighter, gentler Vonnegut than fans of novels like Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle will expect. While Mortals Sleep lacks the gritty darkness of the novels but, as Eggers points out, the stories in this collection have the “bright-eyed clarity of a young man just beginning to understand the workings of the world.”

The Chemistry of Books

Some of you may know that I studied chemistry academically and still practice that science as an industrial chemist, coupled with my literary life.

I am therefore always interested when my love of chemistry collides with my love of books. Last week a black cloud hung over me when I learned of the passing of Kurt Vonnegut -- who incidentally also studied chemistry at Cornell in 1942. I know that Vonnegut’s work will live on and be remarked upon by each passing generation.

But what about the paper that his words are printed upon?

The Guardian reports today that the application of chemistry is also important in the preservation of books reports:

Chemists will analyse the complex mix of gases released by books at Cambridge University's library, helping them to gauge which titles are most at risk of decaying. The research is designed to help conservators at libraries to spot which books are most in need of preservation.

Primo Levi is another great writer who was also a chemist. Levi passed away 20 years ago, but a collection of some of his short stories not previously published has just been released by Penguin UK this week.

As a treat, The Guardian has published one the works today, “The Death of Marinese”:

No one was killed. Sante and Marinese were the only ones captured by the Germans. It made no sense, it was almost incredible, that, of us all, the two of them had been taken. But the older men in the group knew that it is always those who are captured of whom it is later said “Who would have guessed!” And they also knew why.

When the two were taken away, the sky was grey and the road was covered with snow that had hardened into ice. The truck barrelled downhill with the engine off: the chains on the wheels rattled around the bends and clanked rhythmically along the straight stretches. About thirty Germans were standing in the back of the truck, packed shoulder to shoulder, some of them hanging on to the frame of the canvas roof. The tarp had come loose, so that a thin sleet struck their faces and came to rest on the fabric of their uniforms.

That short story is published here in its entirety.

If you’ve not experienced the work of Primo Levi, may I suggest grabbing a copy of The Periodic Table, a work that helps explain how his love of chemistry helped keep him alive during the hell that was Auschwitz.

The Night I Shared a Beer with Vonnegut

There’s a bar in Bloomington, Indiana, about three blocks west of the Indiana University campus. It’s called Nick’s English Hut, but all the students know it simply as Nick’s.

When you walk into Nick’s you see a wide aisle with booths along either side. Back when I attended IU, the booths were wooden and hard. There’s a small gold plaque screwed into one booth on the left side of the aisle. It commemorates a night in 1983 when the writer Kurt Vonnegut walked in with three IU students, sat down, and had a couple of beers.

The plaque is actually in the wrong booth; the correct booth is one over.

I should know. I was one of the three IU students who accompanied Vonnegut to Nick’s.

Vonnegut was the first subversive writer I ever read (unless you count Maurice Sendak). I discovered him on my parents’ bookshelf, a paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. I was 15 years old. I was transfixed from the opening line: “All this happened, more or less.” I had never read anything like this novel, the story of Billy Pilgrim, his “bad chemicals” and the firebombing of Dresden. It was sparse, it was cynical, it was compact, yet it yearned for hope.

I dove into Vonnegut’s work with the zeal of a convert, which I largely was. From there I went to Breakfast of Champions, followed by God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, to Slapstick, which was a Christmas gift from my mother. Vonnegut was the first writer I ever consumed so passionately that was still alive and working. The news of a new book being published was cause for great celebration and anticipation.

Fast forward to 1983. I was a junior at IU, and I worked on the student programming committee that brought lectures, films, and concerts to the campus. I was on the lecture subcommittee and after years of attempts, we finally got Vonnegut to come to IU for a lecture. Even though I was 21 and saw myself as way too cool for words, I couldn’t wait to shake the hand of my literary idol.

The lecture Vonnegut gave that night to a sold out crowd was How to Get a Job Like Mine, a stump speech he had been delivering on college campuses for years. He carried the text of the speech with him to the podium, even though he probably had it memorized. He diagrammed Shakespeare with the aid of an overhead projector. He told the audience that every story needed a character like Iago. He railed against what was then called a “word processor” proclaiming that inventions that put people (like his typist) out of a job were unworthy (his idea of a perfect invention was the paper clip). He held the audience in the palm of his hand and the applause was nothing short of rapturous.

Back at an informal reception at the student union, Vonnegut fielded questions. Yes, he said, Kilgore Trout would reappear someday. Yes, he liked the film adaptation of Slaughterhouse—Five. No, he had nothing to do with the film.

During the reception, I was standing next to the chairman of the lecture subcommittee, a frat rat whose name I don’t recall, but whom I’ll call Doug. Vonnegut leaned into Doug as he was signing autographs and asked if there was somewhere nearby where he could get a beer. We piled into a university vehicle (how we had one at our disposal escapes my memory) and drove off to Nick’s.

I was sitting on the outside of one side of the booth at Nick’s. Doug was to my left and Vonnegut was directly across from me. Baskets of popcorn appeared and Vonnegut reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, which he lit one after another (this was 1983, remember).

I was utterly stupefied, unable to fully comprehend the fact I was seated at a booth in a bar, sharing popcorn, beer and second hand smoke with Kurt Vonnegut. My self-consciousness shifted into overdrive. I could barely stammer anything remotely intelligent or articulate. I remember asking him what he read for pleasure. He sighed and confessed that he read a lot but rarely for pleasure. He felt obliged to read new books so he could stay on top of what was discussed at the cocktail parties and dinners he attended. He felt burdened to read the books of his many friends, just so he could remain social and polite.

I’ve thought a lot about my brief encounter with Vonnegut since I heard of his death. I wasn’t terribly surprised at his passing. There had been rumors of declining health and of injuries sustained in a house fire. Truthfully, even 24 years ago he looked like he already had one foot in the grave. His face was haggard and drawn, he appeared too thin, and he smoked like a blast furnace.

And yet, even though it’s been at least 15 years since I read any of his work, I always thought of him as being there. To me, he was the Old Faithful of literature, occasionally blasting a hot plume of words, then settling down beneath the surface until another eruption seemed appropriate.

I get nervous about returning to the work of my idols after too many years have gone by. I have a suspicion that Vonnegut, like Ayn Rand and J.D. Salinger, is a writer best experienced in the bloom of one’s youth. I am middle-aged now, about to turn 45, and I’d hate to revisit his books and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Yet, two of my favorite Vonneguts are staring at me from the bookshelf: Jailbird, his fictional explanation of the Nixon White House, and Palm Sunday, a marvelous anthology of non-fiction pieces. Plus, there is that copy of Deadeye Dick that he signed for me after our beers at Nick’s.

But maybe all you need is to be young at heart, and Vonnegut will speak to you again. I hope so. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

Vonnegut Passes

Kurt Vonnegut, considered by many to be one of America's finest authors, died in New York City on April 11, of complications after a fall. He was 84 years old.

Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and about 17 others, was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922. The Los Angeles Times’ Elaine Woo has put together an affectionate and in-depth look at the literary giant:

An obscure science fiction writer for two decades before earning mainstream acclaim in 1969 with Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut was an American original, often compared to Mark Twain for a vision that combined social criticism, wildly black humor and a call to basic human decency. He was, novelist Jay MacInerny [sic] once said, “a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion.”

Although he was disdained by some critics who thought his work was too popular and accessible, his fiction inspired volumes of scholarly comment as well as websites maintained by young fans who have helped keep all 14 of his novels in print over a 50-year career. Five of his novels have made the leap into films.

His last novel was 1997’s Timequake, a book that critics said was murky and odd and confusing, but mostly loved anyway. Valerie Sayers called it both of those things in The New York Times, then gave it some serious love:

Nearly 30 years later, Vonnegut is still making the pompous look silly and the decent and lovely look decent and lovely. His new so-called novel, “Timequake,” is, as Vonnegut describes it, a “stew.” He has taken the best pickings from a novel that wasn’t working and interspersed them with a running commentary on his own life and the state of the universe. The mix is thick and rich: a political novel that's not a novel, a memoir that is not inclined to reveal the most private details of the writer’s life.

The NYT review of Timequake is here. Elaine Woo’s LAT remembrance is here.