And So It Goes Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
July 27, 2022 | Author: Anonymous | Category: N/A
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Library o Congress CatalogingCata loging-inin-Publication Publication Data Shields, Charles J., – And so it goes : Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut, a lie / Charles J. Shields.— Shields.—st st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reeren reerences. ces. ISBN ---- . Vonnegut, Vonnegut, Kurt. . Novelists, Americ American— an—th th century—Biography. century—Biography. I. itle. PS.OZ '.—dc [B] Henry Holt books are available avai lable or special promotions promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Director, Special Markets. First Edition Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi Printed in the United States o America
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Kurt Vonnegut’s parents, Edith Sophia Lieber and Kurt Kur t Vonnegut Vonnegut Sr. on November November , , in Indianapolis, India napolis, IndiI ndiana, was spectacular. Edith’s ather, Albert, owner owner o a giant brewery who reveled in his reputation as one o the richest men in the city, threw a gargantuan reception at the Claypool Hotel at the northw nort hwest est corner o Washington and Illinois Illi nois streets, reputed to be the finest hotel in the Midwest. Tere were six hundred guests, and those not chauffeured in automobiles arrived in horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages with jingling brass harnesses—an harnesses— an entire generation Edwardians, silk- hatted silk-hatted or covered mansions demurely by parasols, manyo o rich whom had been raised in Indianapolis’s mansio ns on Meridian Street.1 Albert Lieber knew what his guests expected and he did not disappoint. Tere was a sixty-oot sixty- oot bar, choice meats, champagne, and dancing to an orchestra in the ballroom lasting until six in the morning. And to the satisaction sati saction o some guests, there t here was plenty plenty o gossip to go around, too. Te bride had graduated rom Miss Shipley’s finishing school in Bryn Mawr outside Philadelphia in time to come out or the season in London. Her first serious suitor s uitor,, Kenneth Doulton, Dou lton, whose amily owned the world amous Royal Doulton Porcelain Works, had proposed. He said his ather would buy them a house in Mayair, Maya ir, hinting
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that they could live very well i her ather would settle a good-sized good- sized dowryy on her. dowr her. But she suspected he was an upper-class upper-class idler who wanted a sinecure and not the responsibility o inheriting a giant brewery in Indianapolis. She broke off the t he engagement. engagement. Ten she had crossed the English En glish Channel to live in her grandather g randather Peter Lieber’s Lieber’s castle cast le in Düsseldor. Tere she caught the t he eyes o two German cavalr cava lryy officers who competed or her affections. affec tions. She had become engaged to the higher-ranking higher-ranking one, a captain—a captain—a Prussian, Prussian, Otto Voigt, whose saber, boots, and brass buttons looked dashing. Unortunately, like the English English gentleman who had preceded him, he had no interest in the Lieber amily brewery either. She ended that engagement too. So she had retreated home to her ather’s estate, Vellamada, outside Indianapolis, where he built or her a cottage on a bluff overlooking the White River and urnished it according to her tastes, with a fireplace and a grand gra nd piano in the living liv ing room. Many days she spent hours hours stroll2
ing around the grounds alone. a lone. No one recalled exactly how the groom, Kurt Vonnegut Sr., came on the scene romantically, but but he and Edith, Ed ith, our years his h is junior, junior, had known each other since childhood. Both amilies belonged to Indianapolis’s coterie o wealthy German Americans who gravitated to Das Deutsche Haus, the city’s German cultural cu ltural center. Money Money and the suitability o the young couple couple were on the minds o both bot h amilies, ami lies, naturally natura lly.. Kurt Sr., a promising, second-generation second-generation Indianapolis architect, already had the imprimatur i mprimatur o older successul men in the city who had invited him hi m to join the t he exclusive exclusive University University Club. He was a graduate g raduate o Massachusetts Institute echnologywork echnology (MI) wit h a degree in architecture and a nd had completed compl eted o postgraduate at with Hannover Polytechnic in Germany,, just like Germany li ke his ather ather,, Bernard. wo years afer a fer his ather’ ather’ss death in , Kurt Sr. had returned rom abroad and joined his ather’s architecturall firm, Vonnegut architectura Vonnegut & Bohn, as a partner. pa rtner. He was short, blueeyed, and air with blond curly hair and long, thin fingers. His bride was a lovely woman with auburn hair, a air compl complexion, exion, and blue-green blue-green eyes. Tey had made a handsome couple couple at the altar a ltar o the t he First Unitarian Church, according to amily members, the only ones invited to attend the actual ceremony. Apparently, the Unitarian Church had been chosen because the Vonneguts had been reethinkers or generations and the t he Liebers were Protestants—it Protestants—it was common ground.
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Te reception at the Claypool Hotel was the finishing touch to the combining o two elite amilies. Under the weight o millionaire Albert Lieber’ss inexhaustible largesse in the Lieber’ t he way o ood and drink, all a ll the propriety o Indianapolis’s upper crust crumbled. “Never beore or since have so many otherwise respectable and thoroughly conservative citizens o the dull community passed out in so short a time, ti me,”” said a amily ami ly historian. 3 Dozens o guests were still recuperating in reserved rooms two days later. Soon afer their marriage, mar riage, Kurt and his bride drove to the IndianapIndianapolis Speedway in a brand-new brand-new Oldsmobile and sped around and around the track in a delirium o happiness. 4 It was the beginning beginni ng o their lives together. Con ve veniently, niently, everything in Edith’s trousseau was already monogrammed LL-V V rom rom her engagement to the Prussian Prussian captain, Otto Voigt.5 recep reception tion was was fitting or wealthy wealthy young young socialites socialites starting out. While Kurt Sr. had been a bachelor, he had taught artistic lettering at the John Herron Art Institute Inst itute and become become riends with amateur a mateur artists. Edith had been a member o the Indianapolis Propylaeum, a selective literary literar y and social club or women. But afer their marriage the Vonneguts were catapulted into realms generally open only to leading couples. Te biggest coup was an invitation to join the t he Portolio Club ounded by the Hoosier Group Group artist ar tist Teodore Clement Steele and his late wie, Mary Elizabeth. Te membership roster consisted exclusively o Midwestern artists, writers, or painters paint ers who supported Crafs Tere were monthly discussions,the andArts the and group, said movement. one onlooker, “considered itsel todinner be the custodian o the aesthetic aest hetic conscience o the community.” community.”6 As the newest emale member attending the club dinner in January , Edith was chivalrously (and (and humorously) humorously) awarded the tail o the roast pig.7 Te Vonneguts reciprocated by entertaining in their home at Central Avenue, Avenue, located in one o the better neighborhoods. Tey sometimes had the t he director o the t he Indianapolis Symphony Symphony Orchestra Orchestra to supper, or writers and painters, painters, or architects who were colleagues o Kurt Sr.’s.8 Edith’s dinner parties were memorable just or their settings, three generations o inherited Lieber treasure treasure on display: china, silver, linen, and crystal.
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With such a heavy social socia l calendar, the only way to keep the house in order was with a live-in live-in servant, especially afer the Vonnegut children began coming along a long..9 B V, named or his paternal grandather, was born August , . He was a serious-looking serious-looking little boy, even in inormal photographs. Te earliest anecdote about him predicted a ascination with science and technology. technology. One afernoon afer noon when he was a toddler todd ler,, his parents lef him in the t he care o a babysitter. Tey didn’t didn’t return retur n until late that evening, evening, long afer he was asleep. Te next morning, they noticed he was “al “alll excited and making unusual unusua l noises.” noises.” Te myster mysteryy was cleared up a ew days later when a amily riend mentioned seeing Bernard at Union Unio n Station in the arms a rms o the babysitter. She had taken him hi m down to the station—a station—a hal-hour hal-hour walk—to walk—to meet her boyriend on the platorm. His “unusual noises” were the sounds o locomotives.10 Many small children love trains, o course, but as soon as he was old enough, Bernard set up a laboratory in the t he basement to find out more more about steam, power, and electricity. Te Vonneguts’ Vonneguts’ only daughter came next, Alice, A lice, born Nov November ember , . In babyhood, babyhood , she developed a serious se rious case cas e o pneumonia and nearly died rom a high ever.11 Kurt Jr. later believed it addled her a little.12 She reused to tolerate anything that might upset her. She shunned books and preerred make-believe make-believe instead. Te sight o a truck tr uck on the highway carrying carry ing chickens on their way to market sent her into hysterics, and only her parents’ assurances that those t hose chickens were on their way to a 13
new arm could calmwhen her down. having been lavished with her parents’ concern she was Perhaps ill, she discovered a dependable way to keep their attention on her. And since Bernard was laying claim to being the brainy one, why shouldn’t she be the one with overwrought eelings? Every child must carve out a niche or him- or hersel in a amily. V V ’ ’ youn youngest gest child, Kurt Kur t Jr. Jr. (“a beauti beautiul ul boy with curly hair—an hair— an exceptionally beautiul child, really,” said his ather’s sister, Aunt Irma), was born in Indianapolis on November , , or Armistice Day as it was called beore World War II.14 As an adult, he was quite proud proud o being born on a day associated with w ith peace.15
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His parents were living by then t hen in a new, new, larger house at North Illinois Street, located in a neighborhood o large brick and limestone residences on the city’s north side near Butler University. It had been built with Edith Edith’’s money, money, even though t hough Prohibition in had caused a catastrophic downturn in her ather’s ather’s brewery ortune. But there was a building boom going on afer World War I, and Kurt Sr. anticipated regular commissions comm issions to provide provide a comortable financial bumper or his amily. Set back deep on a hal-acre hal-acre wooded lot, the house, which is still standing, is turned t urned sideways, giving it a slightly slig htly unwelcoming unwelcoming look. Te long ank o the three-story, three-story, six-bedroom six-bedroom house aces the street; the ront door is toward the narrow side yard. Te style is Arts and Crafs, and ramed in a leaded, stained-glass stained-glass window wi ndow on on the ront door are the letters K, E, and E, and V or or Kurt and Edith Vonnegut. Underneath the window is an unusual door knocker k nocker,, a woman with a Roman ace, her head crowned with leaves, and two estoons o palm ronds beneath her ears, looping down to where they meet at a brooch, creating the handhold or rapping on the strike plate. Troughout his lie, Kurt Jr. insisted his ather designed the house. Actually, it was done by the Indianapolis-born Indianapolis-born architect William Osler, some o whose whose other residences are still standing st anding in Indianapolis India napolis and are similar in style to the Vonneguts’ Vonneguts’.. Tere was very little inpu i nputt in the t he house rom Kurt’s ather, and the act that he engaged someone else to design his home is revealing about his talent or interests, or that matter.16 In his colleagues’ estimation, Kurt Sr. was an architect with modest 17
abilities. His bread-andbreadand-butter butter income Bell came rom commercial projects such as Hook’s Drugstores and Indiana elephone buildings. As his clients’ buildings grew higher, wider, multipurposed, and blander, he relied on technical knowledge to bring in the ees, not style or character. His ather, Bernard, on the other hand, had enhanced the t he built environment o Indianapolis with dozens o distinctive structures, including the John Herron Art Institute, the Hotel Severin, and the enormous Das Deutsche Haus designed in German Renais Renaissance sance Revival style with a beer garden and theater.18 Bernard Bernard’’s design or the Pembroke Arcade in downtown Indianapolis, inspired by the architecture o the World’ orld’ss Columbian Exposition in Chicago, was a orerunner o the modern shopping mall. An Indianapolis historian and contemporary said
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o Bernard, “All “All o his work was careully careu lly detailed detai led and bore evidence o his scholarly tastes as an architect as well as o his superior technical ability.”19 But no major major projects rom the hand ha nd o Kurt Sr. still stil l exist, no “mon“monuments to his genius,” as his ather’s work was once described. 20 Te apprentice lacked confidence in his artistic skills to exceed the master. He enjoyed enjoyed experimenting in a dilett dilettantish antish way with calligraphy ca lligraphy,, painting, and pottery, especially as he got older. And as an architect, he had a trained tra ined sense o style. sty le. Yet Yet his youn youngest gest son, Kurt Jr Jr.,., was never sure his h is “ather wanted to be an architect, he was just the oldest son and he was told to become an architect.”21 He never heard his ather mention anything about grandather Bernard. He suspected it was because his ather knew he was mediocre by comparison.22 Nevertheless, income rom Kurt Sr.’s commissions and his wie’s investments provided expensive garnishes to their lives. When they were ush with cash, they traveled and entertained. ypical was a trip aboard a ship rom New York to Hamburg, Germany, in July , to attend the wedding o Kurt Sr.’s sister, Irma, to a German, Kurt Lindener, who owned plantations in Honduras. Alice was seven years old by then and Bernard ten. Nineteen-monthNineteen-month-old old Kurt Jr. was lef behind in the care ca re o his paternal uncle Alex and his wie, wi e, Raye, who who were childless. (Much later, when he was old enough to understand, he decided his mother had done it because he was an a n incon ve venience.) nience.)23 Te amily also took annual an nual summer vacations to the seaside town o Chatham on the southeastern tip o Cape Cod, where the children could play tag 24
with the waves. or borrowed it.25 I the Vonneguts needed money, they sold securities A private education or the children went without saying. As soon as Kurt Jr. was o school age, his parents enrolled him in the Orchard School, a private progressive school with grades kindergarten through eighth eight h on West West FortyFort y-second second Street in Indianapolis, recently redesigned by Kurt Sr. and a colleague. Bernard Berna rd had graduated rom there t here and continued on to the Park School, a small smal l private high school or boys. Alice was already an a n Orchard student in the middle grades g rades when Kurt Jr. was enrolled as a kindergarten ki ndergarten student in the all al l o . . Te Orchard School operated on the educational theorist t heorist John Dewey’s belie that the students should be a little community o doers. Tere
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were w ere gardens, pottery making, music lessons, pretend bank accounts, shop class, pageants, outdoor outdoor biology, biology, art, ar t, and olk dancing. da ncing. Each child had a responsibility. An important inuence on Vonnegut was a teacher who eventually became headmaster, Hillis Hil lis Howie. Later in lie, li e, VonneVonnegut said, “Te value system under which I try to operate relative to animals and plants and the earth and persons with cultures different rom mine is one I learned rom him. Tere are thousands o us who were lucky lucky enough to come under his h is inuence, and my guess is that we are more at home home on this planet, and more respectul o it, than most o our neighbors are.”26 Tis hothouse hothouse educational environment encouraged Kurt Kur t Jr.’ Jr.’s precociousness. One o his teachers commended him on how well he could read.27 At home, he secretly pored over an unabridged dictionary rom his parents’ large library because he “suspected that there were dirty words hidden in there” and puzzled over illustrations o the “trammel “trammel 28
wheel , the arbalest , and the dugong .” Later, when he was old enough, he dipped into his parents’ pa rents’ complete complete works o Robert Louis L ouis Stevenson, BerLysistrata,, nard Shaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, and a beautiul edition o Lysistrata which he claimed to have read when he was eleven. 29 Getting his teachers’ attention was easy, he ound, but his parents were another matter. matter. His ather, ather, dignified digni fied and reserved, was said to take t ake afer his own ather. 30 oward his children, Kurt Sr. acted coolly. His conversations with his younger son tended to be “arch and distant.” 31 Nor did he seem interested i nterested in teaching him how to become proficient at things, again agai n according to Kurt Jr., who remained quite resentu resentull about this; never orgot anything—how to skate, or 32 it. “Nobody taught me anything—how even he ride a bike.” His ather could be witty, but in such a wry way that it was hard to tell whether he was joking. Te sense o humor in the house was Schadenreude— very Germanic— Germanic—taking taking pleasure pleasure in the misortunes o others. Listening one afernoon to act o Aida o Aida,, Kurt Sr. remarked in a bemused voice that the lovers sealed in a temple would last a lot longer i they t hey didn’t sing so much.33 Te children’s taste or Schadenreude too expressed itsel in a love o pratalls. Alice, or instance, hearing a series o thuds, thought her younger brother had allen down the stairs, and rushed to make un o him. It was the gas meter man ma n who had tumbled into the basement. She
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laughed even harder. Another time she caught sight o a woman alling alli ng out a bus door horizontally like an ironing board and doubled over with giggles. 34 Likewise, Kurt Kur t Jr., Jr., or the rest o his lie, l ie, had an odd (and sometimes disconcerting) habit o laughing suddenly in the middle o describing something unpleasant. It was hard to tell whether he was upset or tickled by absurdity. One o his avorite anecdotes in adulthood was about a raternity raternit y brother who heard the news o Pearl Harbor while showershowering. When Vonnegut got to the punch line—the line—the guy was so shocked he ell in the tub and killed himsel!—he himsel!—he would try to suppress a wheezing, hal-ashamed hal-ashamed snigger snigger..35 Edith Vonnegut behaved like a guest in her children’s lives. o her way o thinking, parenting came under the general heading o household tasks, which, as a wealthy woman, she could pay others to do. “Mother,” said Kurt Jr., “did not cook.” 36 Nor did she sew on buttons, plant owers outdoors—the outdoors—the yardman did that—or, that—or, as her son remembered it, speak to him hi m very much.37 She did enjoy dressing the children chi ldren in fine clothes, however, which she selected rom the best department store in town, L. S. Ayres (which had also been designed by her atherin-law), inlaw), and lunching with her lady riends in the walnut-paneled walnut- paneled Victorian tearoom. tea room. In the Vonneguts’ home movies movies taken t aken in i n the s, s, she waves brightly to let us know she is present, but she never hugs the children to indicate that they t hey are a joy to her. Te only sign o amily affection—other affection—other than horseplay horseplay at the beach on Cape Cod, also seen in amily films—occurs films— occurs between Kurt Jr. and Alice, who guides beaming, wideeyedscene, little brother pastare theseated camera tenderly by theher hand. And inwide-eyed another when they beside each other in i n a toy wagon, he buries his ace in her shoulder. But a sister who is only five years yea rs older is not an adequate substitute or a mother. o find a “humane and wise” person to listen to his chatter,, answer his questions, and read to him, ter hi m, he looked elsewhere.38 F F ,, was such such a pers person on in the the house household, hold, the Vonneguts’ cook and housekeeper, housekeeper, Ida Young. Mrs. Young was a middle-aged middle-aged woman when she worked part-time part- time or the Vonneguts. An Arican American born in Kentucky in , she married her husband, Owen, a warehouse warehouse worker, at eighteen; eighteen; the
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couple owned a home at Yandes Street, a good twenty-minute twenty- minute ride by trolley rom the Vonneguts. She ound employment with white amilies in because her husband had passed away and she was on her own. A ew years later, later, one o her children moved in, bringing with w ith him hi m seven o her grandchildren. From then on, her lie consisted mainly o work and caring or children. She cooked and cleaned or the Vonneguts five days a week, with Tursdays and Sundays off.39 Ida did not have the authority to take the Vonnegut children in hand the way she did her own.40 Mostly, the Vonnegut parents disciplined passively “by showing discontent,” as Kurt Jr. put it.41 But he was very young, suggestible, suggestible, and, most important, important, lonely lonely. “She tal talked ked to me more than my mother ever did and spent more time with me than my mother ever did.” 42 Ida ofen mentioned mentioned him to her grandchildren grandchi ldren and was clearly very ond o him.43 By responding to his eagerness or adult affection, she won his heart, making it receptive to what she had to say about kindness, honesty, and proper behavior. She was a Methodist, and the Bible was her instruction manual or amily lie.44 She “knew “k new the Bible by heart and ound plenty plenty o comort and wisdom in there,” Kurt Jr. wrote later. 45 Te Vonneguts attended ser vices at the Unitarian Church only twice a year year,, on Christmas Ch ristmas Eve and Easter, and the amily said grace at meals, but in retrospect he termed it just a “theatrical “t heatrical event.”46 Searching or something to read aloud to Kurt Jr., Ida ound in the Vonneguts’ library a popu popular anthology o stories, poems, verses, and essays called More called More Heart Trobs, Trobs, the second volume in a series o books book s with inspiring Many oeasy-tothe to-read entries verses, but there werepassages. also rhythmic, easyread were piecesanonymous by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Whitcomb W hitcomb Riley.47 Te rontispiece shows a woman in a long white dress reading as she walks in the spring. Te caption says, “Te little cares that retted me, / I lost them yesterday / Out in the fields with God. God .” Years later, Vonnegut didn’t recall any religious instruction rom Ida, but said, “I’m sure she must have talked tal ked about God and a nd I was inter i nter-ested to hear about it.” 48 Tey pored over the book, and the effect o the experience, amplified by how a caring adult was taking an interest in him, affected him or the rest o his lie. “Tere is an almost a lmost intolerable intolerable
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sentimentality in everything I write. British critics complain about it. And Robert Scholes, the American critic, once said that I put bitter coatings coati ngs on sugar pills. pil ls. It’s too late to change now. now. At least I am aware o my origins—in origins—in a big, brick dream house designed by my architect ather, where nobody was home or long periods o time, except or me and Ida Young.”49 W K Jr. was still a child in primary school eeling the effects o benign neglect at home, as he remembered remembered it, Bernard, Berna rd, a high school student in the late s, was earning a reputatio reputation n in science that made his parents proud. His teachers at the prestigious Park School agreed with the assessment o Bernard’s great-uncle great- uncle Carl Barus, a ounder ounder o the American Physical Society, that he was “peculiarly gifed when honoring the scientific method with playul experiments involving ordinary materials close at hand.”50 Even when one o his experiments blew a bolt through the first oor o the Vonneguts’ home, or his telegraph key blanked out every radio station in Indianapolis or three miles around, his parents were dazzled. Kurt Jr. later begrudged him his unassailable status in the amily: “He was my parents’ darling, as the firstborn fir stborn should be, I suppose.” suppose.”51 o his teachers and parents, Bernard might be a young Edison, but how he lorded lorded it over his brother and sister annoyed them. Kurt Kur t Jr. tried to play his older brother’s assistant and helped when asked during experiments. But he began to eel resentul resentu l o the supposed superiority superiority o that “hilarious “h ilarious baboon.”52 Science was all that mattered in his h is worldworld view. pajust per,, opinion. slide rules, anemometers anemometers yielded real values; everything Litmus else waspaper Sometimes, in sheer childish rustration, Kurt Jr. ailed at his older brother while Bernard held him at arm’s length, chuckling.53 “He was a boring bully . Never hit me, but he would talk tal k and talk tal k about science science until my sister and a nd I were bored shitless.” shitless.”54
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