And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields

And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields

Started: 12.30.2011 (I cheated by starting before the New Year, but I didn’t have anything else to read)
Finished: 1.7.2012 (approximately)
Format: Hardcover
Source: Borrowed from my housemate
Price: Free!

I went through a major Kurt Vonnegut phase in high school (doesn’t everyone?). I reveled in the dark humor, the strange characters, the bizarre names. These were signs, I thought, of a truly gifted writer.

That assessment wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete, and this biography of Vonnegut explains why in great detail. Vonnegut was haunted by his experiences in World War II. In 1944, Vonnegut visited his family once last time before being shipped to Europe. While he was there, his mother committed suicide. On Mother’s Day.

Once in Europe, Vonnegut was captured by the Nazis almost immediately and sent to Dresden where he and the other prisoners were kept in a former slaughterhouse – Slaughterhouse Five. And then Dresden was firebombed. Who else to carry out the thousands of corpses and clear the debris but the POWs?

Many Dresden residents had taken shelter in their basements during the firebombing. In these cellars, the POWs found not only dead bodies, but also canned goods. One of the POWs took a can of green beans and stuffed it under his jacket. He was caught and executed. Vonnegut was among those detailed to dig the man’s grave in advance of the execution, then bury him once his body had dropped into the gaping hole.

How does a man readjust to peacetime when he has seen that level of carnage and cruelty? That really is the story of rest of Vonnegut’s life.

The author also critiques Vonnegut works at appropriate times throughout the book. He does a marvelous job of this. For that reason alone, the book is worth reading.

As I read this book, I thought of how Vonnegut kept that anger and horror over his wartime experiences bottled up, not sharing them with many people. His writing was the only real outlet he had, or at least allowed himself. I couldn’t help wondering about those other men who, like Vonnegut, dug bodies out of Dresden cellars, endured horrific abuse at the hands of their guards, then came back to a land of peace and plenty. What ways did all those other men deal with the horrors they had seen, the nightmares that may have plagued them? Did Vonnegut's writing make him one of the lucky ones?

Vonnegut made a great contribution to 20th century American literature. But I wish he had never had to, not that he would have addressed those demons in a different way, but that he wouldn’t’ have had demons to address.