And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life [Hardcover]

Charles J. Shields (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 8, 2011

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011

The first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who changed the conversation of American literature.

In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter, asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a passion for his subject, and already deep into his research, Shields wrote again and this time, to his delight, the answer came back: "O.K." For the next year—a year that ended up being Vonnegut's last—Shields had access to Vonnegut and his letters.

And So It Goes is the culmination of five years of research and writing—the first-ever biography of the life of Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut resonates with readers of all generations from the baby boomers who grew up with him to high-school and college students who are discovering his work for the first time. Vonnegut's concise collection of personal essays, Man Without a Country, published in 2006, spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 300,000 copies to date. The twenty-first century has seen interest in and scholarship about Vonnegut's works grow even stronger, and this is the first book to examine in full the life of one of the most influential iconoclasts of his time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Interview with Amazon

Charles Shields is a writer who writes about writers. He previously penned a bestselling biography of Harper Lee, and now he's written the definitive portrait of Kurt Vonnegut, chronicling Vonnegut's slow and often difficult path to the upper ranks of American literature.

It's not always a pretty portrait. "Kurt wanted to be a writer from the time he was a teenager," Shields told me. But after serving in the military, getting married and having kids, he faced a dreary life behind a desk "which is not the kind of artistic one that he thought he'd have."

Yet the truth about writers is just that: they don't often live the exciting, public lifestyles of a Hemmingway or a Mailer. Most toil in solitary exclusion. It's a desk job in an office of one. It's sedentary, quiet, and often dull. Still, Shields is fascinated by the process of writing, and by the power and reach of the written word, which he discovered at age 15 upon earning a byline for his first high school newspaper story. "That was a magical moment for me," he said.

Shields has worked since to grow and change, to learn from others. That desire led him to study other writers and eventually to become a biographer, joining a group he admiringly refers to as "snoops" and "gossips." (Shields is co-founder of Biographers International Organization.)

When he learned Vonnegut was miffed that no one had tried to write his biography, Shields reached out. He was rebuffed, persisted, and finally received a postcard on which Vonnegut had sketched a self-portrait, smoking a cigarette. The card contained two letters: "OK."

Shields began working with Vonnegut in 2006. A year later, after a two-hour interview session at Vonnegut's Manhattan brownstone, Shields left, returning the next day to learn from the housekeeper that Vonnegut was in a coma. He had gotten tangled in his dog's leash and fell off his front steps, hitting his head. He died a month later at age 84.

"It's too trite to say that it was a shock," Shields said. "I felt a kind of… I felt sort of separate from myself for a little bit. Because I had invested a lot in this, and I had come to like him. And now suddenly, after dubbing me his biographer, he was gone."

Shields’s biography was saved by the discovery of 1,500 letters to or from Vonnegut, which had been presumed lost. "So, going on my interviews with him, and all of these long, intimate letters that he wrote, I was able to construct what I felt was a very authentic, personal portrait of this man as writer, father, struggling freelancer, suddenly famous man, divorced parent, divorced husband, over the course of more than fifty years," Shields said.

Review

"An incisive, gossipy page-turner of a biography." –Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"An engaging, surprising and empathetic page-turner"— Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

"The first truly exacting look into the life of a man who has fascinated so many."—Esquire Magazine

"Engaging and well paced, the book fills in the reality behind Vonnegut’s work"—Christen Aragoni, The American Prospect

"This first authorized biography probes both Vonnegut’s creative struggles and family life, detailing his transition from ‘the bowery of the book world’ to counterculture icon. Shields delivers a vivid recreation of Vonnegut’s ghastly WWII experiences as a POW during the Dresden firebombing that became the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five. . . . Tragedies and triumphs are contrasted throughout, along with an adroit literary analysis that highlights obscure or overlooked influences on Vonnegut. . . . With access to more than 1,500 letters, Shields conducted hundreds of interviews to produce this engrossing, definitive biography."—PW, Starred Review

"This book fills a much-needed gap, since very little seems to be known about the late Kurt Vonnegut, despite his immense popularity over almost five decades. Shields did a thorough job, interviewing Vonnegut and his friends and family, and examining many letters. Vonnegut was one of the most influential authors of the late twentieth century, and this biography is essential reading."—Anis Shivani, Huffington Post

"Provide[s] a definitive and disturbing account of the late author, whose ambition and talent transformed him from an obscure science fiction writer to a countercultural icon."—Steve Almond, The Boston Globe

"[A] thorough and excellent new biography." – Tim Gebhart, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"The richest portrait of Vonnegut to date."—Craig Fehrman, Indianapolis Monthly

"[A] balanced, well-researched study of a flawed yet powerfully imaginative artist."—Ariel Gonzalez, Miami Herald Tribune

"A triumphant biography: scrupulously researched and powerfully written, compassionate, clear-eyed and compelling. Charles J. Shields manages a rare feat: offering a lucid assessment of Kurt Vonnegut's literary life alongside the moving tale of an American original and a misunderstood hero. From his harrowing survival of the Dresden firebombing through forty years of culture clashes and domestic battles, here is the Vonnegut we all thought we knew and the man we never got to see, a writer of searing wit and wisdom, of driving ambition, and perhaps most of all, of aching loneliness."—Jess Walker, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets and Citizen Vince

"Vonnegut's life was a fascinating tragicomedy worthy of his best novels, and I can hardly imagine a better teller of that tale than Shields. A superbly researched and above all very entertaining biography."—Blake Bailey, author of Cheever: A Life

"And So It Goes will entrance lovers of Kurt Vonnegut's fiction. With the blessing of Vonnegut himself and help from scores of Vonnegut's friends, relations, and acquaintances, Charles J. Shields gives us a distinguished, fearless, page-turner of a biography.—Carol Sklenicka, author of Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life

"Vonnegut once said that he kept losing and regaining his equilibrium, and Shields dexterously captures the ups and downs of Vonnegut’s life and work in this definitive biography."—Henry L. Carrigan, Bookpage

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (November 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805086935
• ISBN-13: 978-0805086935
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles J. Shields was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on the Delaware River but raised in Park Forest, Illinois, a community for veterans and their families, an experiment in post-war planning described and critiqued in William H. Whyte's The Organization Man. Shields later attended the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where he received degrees in English and American history.

Shields published his first biography for adults in 2006, and Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee went on to became a New York Times bestseller. "This biography will not disappoint those who loved the novel and the feisty, independent, fiercely loyal Scout, in whom Harper Lee put so much of herself," wrote Garrison Keillor in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. "As readable, convincing, and engrossing as Lee's literary wonder," said the Orlando Sentinel.

Two years later, Shields followed-up his biography of Lee with a young adult version: I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee, which received awards from American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year; Arizona Grand Canyon Young Readers Master List.

In 2009, with fellow biographers Nigel Hamilton, James McGrath Morris, and Debby Applegate, Shields co-founded Biographers International Organization (BIO), a non-profit organization founded to promote the art and craft of biography, and to further the professional interests of its practitioners. As of July 2011, BIO has members in 43 American states and 10 nations, including Australia, India, Kenya, and the Netherlands.

Shields is also associate director of the Great Lives Lecture Series at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia which brings prominent biographers and historians to campus. In November 2011, Shields published the first biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pilgrim's Progress November 8, 2011

By Robert Taylor Brewer

Format:Hardcover

Dresden, Germany. The night of February 13, 1945. Remnants of the Army's 423rd Regiment, 106th Division, captured almost as soon as they began fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, are roused from their bunks in a POW camp by an airraid siren. They are hustled into a meat locker, 60 feet below ground. German prison guards enter the bunker with them, and shut the steel door behind them. Above ground, the night time firebombing of Dresden begins. In the one thousand degree heat, "super heated tornadoes had sucked out the oxygen and turned hiding places into tombs." The bombing continued into the night. At dawn the next day, the POW's emerged from the meat locker to see what had happened, Private Kurt Vonnegut among them. What he saw that day colored his entire career and formed the basis for his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse 5.

The new Charles J. Shields biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes, doesn't adhere to the love-hate mentality that was in vogue between biographers and their subjects a generation ago. In the current book, biographer and author seemed genuinely to like each other in the brief period they worked together. One could go so far as to say that before Vonnegut's death, they were well on their way to becoming, well, pals. Ah, I thought to myself. This biographer will suck up in person, then skewer the old man after he dies. It never happens.

This is not to say Vonnegut gets a free pass. Infidelities and indiscretions are on full view, and never more so than in the Fall of 1965 when the author begins an affair at the famous University of Iowa creative writing workshop. As his fame grows, so do the number of extra marital liaisons, most spectacularly with Jill Krementz, a photographer who comes off in the book as having the charm and graciousness of Lady Macbeth. During their tryst, wife Jane Vonnegut is rewarded by being left home in the role of family matriarch to supervise the upbringing of their children. In the saddest episode of the book, Vonnegut's brother-in-law Jim Adams is killed in a train wreck and Kurt's sister Alice, terminally ill and grief stricken over the tragedy befallen her husband, also dies and the Vonnegut household is newly infused with four additional children to care for.

Even as Jill finds Kurt an apartment in Manhattan where he feasts in regal fashion, Jane is as determined as ever to hold the family together. On page 290, out of the pain of knowing her husband is living with another woman, Jane issues her own prophecy: "Jill will find ways to cut you off from your home", an eerie forecast that comes true not once but twice - most flamboyantly on Page 404 when Vonnegut, smoking during Super Bowl pre-game ceremonies, goes down stairs for a snack, and watches portions of his Manhattan townhouse go up in flames. In a fit of anger, Jill changes the locks on the door for the second time, refusing him entry. If there is any justice in the game of musical beds, surely it came when Vonnegut learns that just as he and Jill deceived Jane, so Jill and investment banker Stephen DuBrul ultimately deceive Kurt. Even that isn't the end of things as DuBrul abruptly terminates the relationship with Jill and she hightails it back to Vonnegut, who has finally had enough of his sugar daddy role and files the first of three petitions to divorce Jill.

Even with contretemps like these, it is never the intention of Shields to intentionally debunk or puncture Vonnegut's reputation. If anybody gets skewered, it is literary critics as a group, who ignored him when he was starting out then jumped on his bandwagon as he became a moneymaker. Shields places his subject's actions in the context of success American style. Impoverished most of his life, when the trappings of reward were offered, Vonnegut took full advantage. The writing in this biography is straight forward and devoid of moralizing so that readers don't mind "looking under the hood" to discover that, as his father had done, Vonnegut not only became a stock market investor, but a shareholder in Dow Chemical which, Shields points out, was the sole manufacturer of napalm in the Vietnam War.

It is part of Shields' research effort to illuminate his subject's private persona, then compare and contrast that to his public image - if only to show that most of the time, public expectations are at odds with a subject's private behavior. In that, Kurt Vonnegut was no exception.

There are two major wonders in this book: 1. How did Vonnegut, not only a heavy smoker, but a smoker of Pall Mall, an unfiltered cigarette, live to the ripe old age of 85? 2. How is it that at page 350 in a 400 page book, we are only up to 1982 with the publication of Vonnegut's novel Dead Eye Dick? That is to say, how can the remaining 25 years of Vonnegut's life warrant a tad more than 50 pages? This second question is answered by Vonnegut himself. "We all see our lives as stories...if a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended, and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is."

Unless you are Kurt Vonnegut. Many would be satisfied to have their entire life distilled down to the career he had after age 60. He produced the best seller Hocus Pocus in 1990 at the age of 68. Showtime adapted three of his short stories for network TV in 1991. Nick Nolte starred in a 1996 film adaptation of Mother Night. A collection of his speeches and essays appeared in 2005 as A Man Without A Country, which spent several weeks on the New York Times nonfiction best seller list.

Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive first biography of a great American writer November 9, 2011

By L Goodman-Malamuth VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Though I was one of the young folks enthralled by Slaughterhouse-Five, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and much more of Vonnegut's work, I really didn't know much about the man, his family, and his life--except for his youthful Army service and horrifying experiences as a POW after the Allied firebombing of Dresden. Charles Shields, who wrote the first substantive biography of Harper Lee, corresponded with Vonnegut, proposing a biography. Once he had convinced his subject--rightly--of his top-notch research skills, Vonnegut finally sent Shields a last illustrated postcard, this time captioned, "OK." Work had not progressed very far before Vonnegut tripped over his Lhasa Apso's leash, fell, and never regained consciousness, dying three weeks later in 2007.

Perhaps what finally pushed Vonnegut to trust Shields was the fact that really had been no previous biography of this literary icon of the second half of the twentieth century, which rankled Vonnegut. If America had a one-man Grub Street, Vonnegut grubbed away there in West Barnstable on Cape Cod for some twenty years churning out dozens of short stories and a few novels, amid clouds of Pall Mall smoke, before Slaughterhouse-Five made him a bestselling author. It also conferred financial security where previously there had been none. In this freelance writer's life existed a neat division of labor: Kurt wrote, while his then-devoted first wife Jane did everything else, including taking in three young, orphaned nephews when his adored sister Alice died of cancer just a day after her husband perished in a railroad accident.

In the mid-1960s, Vonnegut eagerly accepted a last-minute offer to teach at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. There, for the first time, he was a widely admired instructor and author in a community of fellow writers. When Vonnegut became besotted with a student, the other faculty members remained discreet; it was a while before Jane, joining him in Iowa City, found out about that indiscretion and those that followed. After twenty years, the marriage became severely strained--although Vonnegut saw no reason not to ask his estranged wife to continue handling the details of everyday life. She wisely refused.

Although Jane and Kurt's children Mark, Edie, and Nannie, as well as the nephews who moved in with them, all appear to have been most forthcoming in multiple interviews, the book easily could have been doomed at the outset. Mark Vonnegut, his father's literary executor, refused to allow Shields to quote from Vonnegut's correspondence, insisting the letters "spoke for themselves." Shields demonstrated his great gift for paraphrasing the letters' contents in order to meet the burdensome legal requirements. In nearly two thousand references, the paraphrased letter content does not stick out from interview quotes in an obtrusive way. When Harper Lee declined to be interviewed for Mockingbird, Shields' biography, he acquired a whole new skill set--fortunately for us.

One source who refused to speak to the author was Vonnegut's second wife, photographer/author Jill Krementz. Judging from the impressions of just about everyone in Vonnegut's circle of friends, family, and colleague, Krementz appears to be an opportunistic scalp-collector rather than a wife. Vonnegut was introduced into the higher echelons of New York litr'y circles before Krementz decided that her husband had outlived his usefulness. Though Vonnegut pursued divorce three times, he never followed through, and Krementz retaliated through infidelity and by doing virtually nothing to sweeten her husband's last years.

This book engrossed me from the time I slipped it from its wrapping until I read the final pages. Bravo, Shields--again!

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disservice to Vonnegut's Legacy December 27, 2011

By Robert Zverina

Format:Hardcover

Fans of Vonnegut tend to be idealists. They resonate to his continual calls for empathy and kindness in a world which is harsh and chaotic.

He became such a popular author and personality because people embraced his message, delivered with art, wit, and humility, whether in his writings or in the many speeches he gave. Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five continue to sell tens of thousands of copies annually because the human truths he expresses through his fiction are perennially rediscovered by new generations.

This biography FAILS because its sole intent seems to be to draw contrasts between the message and the messenger. Its revelations about Vonnegut's personal struggles don't go much beyond petty tattle and do little to explicate the author's work--the work being what's really important about an artist, right? The rest is just gossip.

The first red flags are raised in the introduction where Shields admits to having met Vonnegut only twice in person, and that when Vonnegut was in poor health and despondent over America's downward spiral as well as his failing (second) marriage. So it's not surprising that the next 400+ pages seem intent on rooting out nothing but the dark and bitter aspects of Vonnegut's character. First impressions last.

There's very little biography here which Vonnegut himself did not address in his own writings and interviews, but the negative aspects seem to be amplified out of proportion for the sake of novelty--which in this case means emphasizing Vonnegut's character flaws, missteps and tribulations. Perhaps if Shields had known Vonnegut longer this biography would be more balanced, but the negative emphasis of it seems to be the result of Shields' need for an angle to give the book a hook: "So, you assume Vonnegut was a saint? Let me throw some mud on your icon!"

"And So It Goes" is at its best when it illuminates Vonnegut's writing by elaborating on the real life experiences which shaped his fiction, particularly the chapters on the backgrounds behind the novels Player Piano and Slaughterhouse-Five. More of that type of scholarship would have made sense--but most of the rest is just anecdotal irrelevance.

There is little in this book--aside from Vonnegut's implied drinking problem and questionable stock investments in the type of planet-wrecking corporations he often criticized--which is not revealed elsewhere, whether in his own writing or the much more sympathetic memoir "Love as Always, Kurt" by Loree Rackstraw. This latter book also benefits from being able to quote from Vonnegut's own hitherto unpublished correspondence, a feature absent from "And So It Goes" because Shields was denied permission by Mark Vonnegut, co-executor of his father's estate.

The bottom line is this book won't inform your reading of Vonnegut in a meaningful way, so why bother?

This is the first big biography of Vonnegut (he himself was desperate for one), but one hopes it's not the last because "And So It Goes" does nothing more than cast a shadow over an author who brought light into so many lives. Poo-tee-weet?