Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut

by William Rodney Allen (Editor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Book by William Rodney Allen

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Essays, Writing, Philosophy, Literature, Art

305 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

American author and former Professor of English at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. He received his PhD from Duke University, and was a faculty member at LSMSA from the time the school first opened in 1983 until his retirement in 2011. He is married to Cindy Allen, a counselor at the school, and has two daughters, Emily and Claire, with her. He has many interests, which include and are not limited to playing guitar, reading, and cutting down Magnolia trees. He is also a Kurt Vonnegut fan and owns what is believed to be the last thing that Vonnegut wrote before his death in 2007, a postcard addressed to Allen.

Reviews

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for Kurt Vonnegut, hell yeah, but seriously much of this is rather dull and there's a whole lotta repetition in these conversations which stretch from 1969 through 1987. I blame the interviewers more than the interviewee, though; Kurt's cagey, and he rarely gives out more than he is asked, and much of what he does say is ironic or cryptic or ironically cryptic, even. Unfortunately most of these mopes keep asking him the same damn questions over this 18-year period and then failing to follow up when he doesn't give them much to work with in response. "Oh, well, what the hell," as the author told Playboy magazine in what is probably the best conversation in the book.

I can't tell you, for example, how many times the question about being a "black humorist," the term applied to the author by Bruce Jay Friedman in his 1965 collection of stories, is asked of Vonnegut over the course of these 20-some interviews...maybe in every single interview...and by the book's final conversation among William Rodney Allen, Paul Smith, and Vonnegut, the term has become somewhat of a joke as to whether it can even be uttered. (Allen tells Vonnegut, "We swore those two words would not come from our lips during this interview, so you can say them but we can't.") Vonnegut never really offers much in response to the question about how the term refers to his art, although clearly he finds the label constricting; the best thing he says is comparing his inclusion in Friedman's collection to having a bell jar placed over him and bunch of fellow crickets and all of them being given the same name...he said that to Robert Scholes in 1973 but then fielded the question again and again over the next 15 years.

Ten years after that, Vonnegut no doubt would have enjoyed the pained look on the face of one of my students in the library who brought a book to me with a picture of the author on it--it was either Allen's Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut or Stanley Schatt's Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--and asked with some confusion whether the publisher hadn't made some kind of awful mistake because wasn't Kurt Vonnegut black...?

Anyway, the best of the bunch here is that 1973 Playboy interview; in it the author talks about Vietnam and McGovern and what the Democrats needed to do to win against Nixon. Interestingly, what they needed to do 45 years ago is what they still need to do today: "I would have set the poor against the rich. I would have made the poor admit they they're poor. Archie Bunker has no sense of being poor, but he obviously is a frightened, poor man. I would convince Archie Bunker that he was poor and getting poorer, that the ruling class was robbing him and lying to him." Sadly, Archie Bunker (or Roseanne Connor, for that matter) still doesn't understand what the hell Vonnegut is talking about.

The worst piece in this collection just might be this goofy thing from Crawdaddy published a year later where the writer decided he'd be Kilgore Trout and interview his creator. Vonnegut was rather kind to him (much more kind than he was later to Philip Jose Farmer who tried writing an entire novel as Trout), and in a later interview Vonnegut acknowledged the effort the writer had put into the piece despite expressing some shortcomings with how it was written.

I miss Vonnegut, but I'm glad he's dead now and doesn't have to suffer through these sad years under Trump. If he wasn't dead, Trump's ignorance and avarice and cruelty surely would have killed him anyway.

Read these conversations if you're a fan, but a better book to read first would be Vonnegut's collection Palm Sunday or, even better, his recent Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield.

[Steve Lopinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

What could be more interesting than a collection of interviews of Vonnegut over several decades? I laughed out loud uncontrollably like a fool throughout it (thankful that I read it at home and not at a coffee house - they would’ve locked me up!), was glad that he talked so freely, but yet, he did say things that surprised me. Brilliant mind and a kind soul that was in one of the more brutal battles in WW 2 and he proudly states that in the midst of all that, he never killed anyone - but was taken as a prisoner of war and lived through the most viscious fire bombing by the allies in the war. Basically, he was in peril by both fronts. In the end, I’m a big fan of his novels, and feel he’s one of the best.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vonnegut is a schoolboy with an old man's melancholy.

Went through this twice. A collection of interviews with a wide variety of publications. Some repetition, but a few of the interviewers managed to coax Vonnegut into deep dives into his thinking, his history, and his work and life. Well worth the time for any fan of Vonnegut's catalogue of work.

pp. 58: [Vonnegut's eyes] appear to be teetering on the precipice of hilarity or despair. Like his books.

pp. 82: Nucleation - how big something has to be to grow rather than die out. There are very big clumps of hatred. It's easy to make either one of them grow, especially in a society as lonesome as this one is. All kinds of clumps.

pp. 94: ...the sci-fi passages in Slaughterhouse-five are just like the clowns in Shakespeare. When Shakespeare figured the audience had had enough of the heavy stuff, he'd let up a little, bring on a clown or a foolish innkeeper or something like that, before he'd become serious again.

pp. 100: Vietnam broke our hearts - something we started to do to ourselves at Hiroshima - a continuation. Showing us / making us aware of our own ruthlessness, and took away the illusion that we have some control of our government.

Nixon taught us to resent the poor for not solving their own problems. He taught us to like prosperous people better than unprosperous people.

pp. 102: How's that for science fiction? There was this modern country with a wonderful constitution, and it kidnapped human beings and used them as machines. It stopped after a while, but by then it had millions of descendants of those kidnapped people all over the country. What if they turned out to be so human that they wanted revenge of some kind?

pp. 188: If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke?

pp. 189: Make the characters want something right away.

pp. 222: Take a deep breath and treat yourself to a coincidence [to make the story work].

[Eowyn Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was cute!! i liked learning more abt him and his thoughts on his books and fav authors!! i esp like the last line

while watching howls moving castle i kept being reminded of Kurts line that says that any story with a love interest often overpowers the other themes, cuz when I first watched it I only focused on their love story and not the very clear and overarching themes of war and destruction #sorrykurtmyb

thanks steve for letting me borrow it!!

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing with my Vonnegut kick, I checked this out from the library. A collection of interviews that spans nearly 30 years of his career (1969 - 1987), this book provides a level of insight into his personality and inspirations, as well as his current projects.

Naturally, there's a good deal of repetition - he is asked about being a "black humorist" many times & uses several of the same anecdotes over and over. One of the later interviews was repeated verbatim in Palm Sunday, another recent read for me. He appears relatively open in the interviews, replying with good humor to even potentially painful questions. He seems slightly baffled as to his college-age fandom, even as one generation was supplanted by the next.

Perhaps I should have taken more time with this book - thrown a novel or two of his in-between - as I felt the same material was being rehashed over and over. Nonetheless, I feel this book is a useful resource for those interested in knowing more about both the writer and the man.

Quotable Quotes

"He [KV] is the impatient humanitarian, the disappointed-but-constant optimist.... p 3 (1969)

On young people: "The most conceited generation in history. They're bright, but I'm not sure that they're competent." p 11 (1969)

"The President of the United States must dream the biggest dreams for all of us. I think he should be called dreamer-in-chief." p 27 (1970)

"We have entered a period when our government doesn't really seem to like us much. I find this oppressive and realize that the Constitution can't help much, cant help at all, really, if our leaders come to dislike us -- which they apparently do." p 73 (1973)[The more things change....]

"But laughter is a response to frustration, just as tears are, and it solves nothing, just as tears solve nothing." p 89 (1973)

"In spite of chainsmoking Pall Malls since I was fourteen, I think my wind is still good enough for me to go chasing after happiness, something I've never really tried." p 110 (1973)

"If someone has read me when he was 19, which is quite likely, when he ceases to be 19 he's going to leave me behind, too. " p 140 (1974) [ Not so!]

"The reason novels were so thick for so long was that people had so much time to kill." p 162 (1974)

[Unbridled · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut yesterday and this morning learned the unfortunate news that he died yesterday. Of the book, like every other in the "conversations with authors" series, the interviews do seem to become monotonous. This is good and bad – on the one hand, it's comforting and on the other, it's disappointing – both going to expectations and disappointments in what any writer is capable of. There are limits to wit and anecdote and spontaneity, after all. Of Kurt specifically I would say he is funny, smart, and kind – a mensch through and through. Importantly, he was also very wise about the technical foundations to good writing. On a lighter note, which Kurt might appreciate, this morning on the BART a man and woman (who was in a wheelchair) sitting directly across from Heather and me noted how funny it was that Heather was reading a book called The Invisible Man (Ellison) and I was reading a book called Women (Charles Bukowski). So it is. So it was. So it goes. Goodnight Kurt.

[Megan Kiekel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of interviews conducted with Kurt Vonnegut from various sources dating from 1969 to 1999. A very interesting read if you’re a big Vonnegut fan or an aspiring writer.

It’s funny: I’m pretty sure that this book, which weighs in at about 330 pages, is longer than any of the books that Vonnegut actually wrote. I really loved getting to know some of Vonnegut’s biographical history and his thought processes. I also thought it was interesting to see how his interests and goals changed. For a time, Vonnegut thought he would mainly be a playwright. I didn’t know that at all.

The first half of the book is really repetitive, because interviewers kept asking Vonnegut the same questions over and over (the main one was some variation of, “How do you feel about the label black humorist?”). It gets better as it goes, but this read is probably only worth it if you’re a hardcore fan.

I really want to find a Vonnegut biography now!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely suggest reading this only after you've read a good amount of his other works. "Meeting my Maker: a visit with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., by Kilgore Trout" is especially worth the read.

[ephyjeva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I stumbled upon this book having already read the better portion of Vonnegut's opus. Had I not been as familiar with his work, it wouldn't have been nearly as fascinating to hear about his writing process (he'd laugh in my face at this, if he could) and the ideas behind many of my personal favorites of his—Bluebeard, for instance, or Player Piano. It's hardly surprising that most of the interviews should concern Slaughterhouse-Five, it being his most notable (but far from the best) piece of fiction, but more often than not it only serves to underline the inescapable journalistic predictability. If I got tired of reading the same things over and over in some of the interviews, how boring it must have been for him to repeat them time and time again! Mr. Vonnegut, are you a black humorist? By God...

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I shouldn't have tried to read this book straight through but it was still worth it. At the least provocation and seemingly at random, Vonnegut comes out with incredible bits of wisdom. Not every interview is a hit and there's a fair amount of repetition, especially in the post- Slaughterhouse-Five/ early-70s ones, but I'm glad to have read the whole book.

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly entertaining & enlightening collection of interviews with Vonnegut from various magazines & periodicals. Mainly goes over ground that was better trod later in the And So It Goes biography and Vonnegut has a tendency to repeat himself almost word-for-word with similar questions, but there's enough in here for it to be worth a fanatic's time.

[Talia Naquin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Vonnegut. This is not a fun read. It’s more like a scholarly profile.

[Adrián Berhé · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit repetitive. I still recommend the book.

[Adrián Berhé · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this man! I wish I could discover him for the first time again!

#ToBeYoungAgain
#AreHashTagsLiterary¿?
#IndeedTheyAre¡!
#Duh!!!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of interviews, spanning 1969 through 1999 (in the later edition) will be of interest to hardcore Vonnegut fans, but it is less engaging than Vonnegut's own volumes of non-fiction. When first published, in 1988, this collection reprinted several items which had already appeared in "Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons" (1974) and "Palm Sunday" (1981), rendering this title partially redundant. More significantly, however, is the fact that Vonnegut, as an author who was frequently being interviewed both in print and on camera, as well as speaking publicly, cultivated a collection of stock answers, anecdotes, and snarky quips, any of which, in isolation, is golden. When repeated, however, as they inevitably are in this collection, their edge becomes quickly blunted. But we should probably cut Vonnegut some slack. Which of us, after all, is not guilty of the same minor offense? And at least we didn't have to live with Vonnegut. Imagine the patience required by those who live with each of us on a daily basis!

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to read, but I guess I don't need quite that much Vonnegut. A couple quotes:

On the autobiographical aspect of Slaughterhouse-Five:
"As a groggy war prisoner he witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, 'a terrible thing for the son of an architect to see.'"

"Ordinarily, living authors are not good friends with one another. It is, and I have talked this over withother authors, part of our stock in trade--not hating other authors, but pitying them. [laugh] There is nothing a living author has written that I wish I had written, and I am sure that is the case ofr ever living author. This is part of the professional stance. This is part of what keeps you going."

[Jay C · Rating 4 out of 5]

300+ pages of interviews of Vonnegut, sequenced chronologically. More great insight into a great author. Helps if you've read most of his works, but this isn't required to enjoy the book. Somewhat repetitive at times, as interviewers tend to ask the same or similar questions. I read it for the book club at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, which met today. That groups average rating - on a scale of 10 - was 7.2.

[Wolfy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take the repetition as a lesson that needs to be heard over and over to be learned. Vonnegut's voice, in both his writing and his interviews, comforts and stresses in tandem.
A few things to remember:
-Simple isn't an insult
-G**damnit, you've got to be kind.
-Some of the best things are harmless untruths and horsesh*t
There are two types of artists. Which are you?

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read part of this, while hanging out in the Charlotte public library in 1990.Interesting thoughts on the Vietnam war and why he would (if younger) want to go there (during the war) to find out what is really going on.

[Genevieve Dewey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has ever wanted to write (heck, anyone who has ever aspired to do anything) should read this book. It is a great collection of insightful shorts with one of the best American writers and humorists ever. Wonderful advice on not taking the process (or yourself) too seriously.

[Kealan O'ver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Merely a collection of interviews spanning 30 years but they are interviews with Kurt Vonnegut which makes them some of the best interviews you'll read. Although because the interviewers are different some of the topics do get repeated over again.

[Dan Tasse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh, it would have been great at 100 pages! At 300+, its a little long. There's only so much chatting with Kurt Vonnegut I'm interested in.
Still a fan of the guy. But I quit reading this about 3/4 through because I wasn't really getting much out of the interviews anymore.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coolbeans.

[Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

lots of ranting with some very funny bits every now and then.

[Brenda Wood]

Great read!

[Hermeenie Drossos · Rating 5 out of 5]

he is a GOD!!! what a pleasure reading his thoughts. Loved!

[Jill Brustad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is essential for all us Vonnegut fanatics who must red every word he says.