I recall reading somehwere that Kurt Vonnegut had co-written a screenplay with the odd comedian Steven Wright. The script was unproduced, and I imagine Wright still has it. Anyhow, there’s a new biography of Vonnegut, by Charles J. Shields, which examines the many contradictions of the novelist’s life and his bitter later years. From Janet Maslin’s New York Times piece about the book:

“Mr. Shields is not shy about using the words ‘a definitive biography of an extraordinary man’ to describe his book. And So It Goes is quick to trumpet its biggest selling points. Mr. Shields means to separate image from perception: He depicts Vonnegut as an essentially conservative Midwesterner, proud of his German heritage and capitalist instincts, who developed an aura of radical chic. He also describes a World War II isolationist who aligned himself with Charles A. Lindbergh yet became an antiwar literary hero. And he finds a life-affirming humanist sensibility in a writer celebrated for black humor. How this man would eventually be recruited to brainstorm with the Jefferson Airplane and be hipper than his own children are among the mysteries on which Mr. Shields casts light.

And So It Goes also traces the paradoxes in Vonnegut’s personal life. He was widely regarded as a lovable patriarch, for instance, at a time when he had left his large family behind. He also sustained a populist reputation even when he developed a high social profile in New York with the photographer Jill Krementz, his second wife. Ms. Krementz, who is called ‘hard-wired to the bowels of hell’ by Vonnegut’s son, Mark, clearly did not cooperate with Mr. Shields. The book takes frequent whacks at her, holding her accountable for much of the unhappiness in Vonnegut’s last years.

Mr. Shields provides a good assessment of misconceptions about Vonnegut’s writing. Those impressions persisted throughout his later life, perhaps because the books that followed Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five became increasingly unreadable.

‘On the strength of Vonnegut’s reputation, Breakfast of Champions spent a year on the best-seller lists,’ Mr. Shields writes of that 1973 disappointment, ‘proving that he could indeed publish anything and make money.'”

••••••••••

“Hey, Kurt, you read lips?”: