[Matt Holcomb]

Darkness visible

By David Nason

19 November 2005

I AM trawling the meat section of a Gristedes supermarket on Manhattan's Upper West Side, wondering if there's such a thing in New York City as a beef sausage, when the writer some regard as a 20th-century Mark Twain rings on my mobile phone.

"I'm calling to make sure you're going to be at lunch on Monday," Kurt Vonnegut Jr says. He's referring to the rendezvous his publisher has organised for us.

Now it's not every day a giant of American letters unexpectedly interrupts the shopping and, momentarily, I'm taken aback. Then the embarrassment sets in.

The lunch we're having is to discuss Vonnegut's new book, A Man Without a Country. It's a collection of essays, speeches, articles and poems exploring his premise that American society is in terminal decay. Full of Vonnegut's trademark black humour, it has vat-loads of vitriol for Big Oil and George W. Bush.

It's also Vonnegut's first book since 1997 and given his age - he turned 83 a week ago - it might be his last. But right now, three days before we're due to meet at a French restaurant, I haven't read a single word.

So I mumble something apologetic and promise to devote the coming weekend to this task, before blurting out: "I should be right, mate, it's only a short book." This is a very dumb and potentially interview-crushing thing to say to an author, but thankfully Vonnegut doesn't seem to mind.

"Everything I write is short these days," he says. "It actually gets shorter and shorter all the time. In fact, I think it might all finally boil down to one word."

Vonnegut laughs at his little joke and seems in no hurry to go, so we talk some more.

I tell him I'm worried about meeting him in a restaurant because I'd read he smokes three packs of Pall Mall non-filters a day. Indeed, he has a standing joke about wanting to sue the cigarette maker for misleading advertising, given the product has not killed him as it promises to do on the packet.

He assures me it won't be a problem, but I'm not convinced. A talent distracted by a nicotine craving can kill an interview. It's why I wanted to talk with Vonnegut at his home. That, and the chance to see the sort of stuff he keeps around his house.

But the publisher would have none of it. Vonnegut, she said, was a writer who didn't want strangers in his house. Nor did he want any questions about his family. This is a pity because one of Vonnegut's daughters was once married to colourful Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera, a man as far to the Right as Vonnegut is to the Left.

I'm about to raise the issue of these prohibitions when Vonnegut suddenly declares that the last time he ate with "Ossies" was in Dresden in World War II. Once again I'm taken aback.

Vonnegut is referring to his capture by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and subsequent internment at a prisoner-of-war camp in Dresden, the city destroyed soon after by the horrific, unjustifiable Allied fire-bombing assault of February 1945. This was the twist of fate that ultimately came to define Vonnegut as a writer.

The Dresden atrocity inspired his 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse-Five. A bestseller, it catapulted him to the heights of literary stardom.

Before S-5 Vonnegut was a run-of-the-mill sci-fi writer; after it he was a genius worthy of comparison with Twain.

At one level I'm excited that Vonnegut has so easily raised Dresden because however good his new book might be, what I really want to explore with him is his personal experience of war and soldiering.

I'm intrigued by the fact that as an infantryman serving in the US 106th Division in World War II, Vonnegut was a forward scout, a dangerous role always reserved for the most competent soldiers.

I also want to ask him about the impact of his mother's suicide in 1944, an act that took place while he was home on leave.

How heavily had this weighed on the young soldier's mind, especially after he was captured?

In his experimental 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut has this internal conversation:

"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself.

"I know," I said.

"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.

"I know," I said.

* * *

YET I can't help feeling a sense of contrivance at how Dresden was introduced into our conversation. It's almost as if Vonnegut is telling me, "Hey man, don't forget that I once wrote a great book." No sooner has this thought entered my head than Vonnegut is bidding farewell.

"You Anzacs were pretty good soldiers," he tells me in parting. "But in the [North African] desert you were just cannon fodder."

We meet three days later outside La Mediterrane restaurant, a writers' hang-out on Manhattan's East Side. Vonnegut lives just around the corner, close to the UN. Coincidentally, it's United Nations Day, a good enough reason, I think, to seek his opinion of the world body.

A Man Without a Country - a book I have now read - provides no insight on this. The only reference to the UN is a passing one as Vonnegut declares his secret love for a woman who works in a post office used by New York's diplomatic community.

But meeting Vonnegut face to face on this beautiful autumn day in New York, I am taken aback yet again. Before me is not the debonair, gentleman writer I had expected but an unshaven, dishevelled man with wild, curly grey hair and frayed clothing.

He looks as if he has just crawled out from under a bush in Central Park.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind how people look and I often give money to beggars on the subway. It's just that in researching Vonnegut on the web I came across several still shots from recent television interviews. These introduced him to me as a scrubbed, clean-shaven, elegantly dressed man old man with carefully groomed hair. The Vonnegut in front of me couldn't have looked more different if he'd tried. But straight away I can sense that this Vonnegut, not the one on TV, is the real McCoy.

We shake hands and I get another surprise. Vonnegut is an average-sized man but he has massive hands. They hang from the sleeves of his ragged coat like the entrails of a freshly slaughtered animal. The veins that crisscross the backs of these monsters are as thick as knitting needles.

After I recover my hand, we go inside. Vonnegut wants to order straight away. He asks for the soup of the day, the fish of the day and a black coffee. He's not going to drink because he has another interview later in the afternoon.

As we talk, Vonnegut sits hunched forward and speaks softly and carefully. He has rested one of his huge paws on top of the other on the table in front of him and his goggle eyes, which must give him fantastic peripheral vision, dart around the room as we speak.

After pleasantries the conversation turns to his new book. To me it's mildly amusing, but structurally it doesn't work. A loose collection of random thoughts doesn't carry the argument that the US has become a lousy place.

And it's way too glum. Depressing, in fact. The humour is suffocated.

Occasionally there's a belly laugh, such as Vonnegut's complaint that he never wanted to live long enough to see a world where the three most powerful people in it were named Bush, Dick and Colon.

There are also wild bursts of life-affirming passion at odds with the overall negativity.

One is a Vonnegut plea for everyone to practise an art, because no matter how good or bad it is, the exercise will enhance the soul.

"Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories," Vonnegut commands.

"Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

And, for me at least, there's at least one important clarification. I was always under the impression that Slaughterhouse-Five earned a cult following in the 1960s and early '70s partly because Vonnegut had written it while on LSD.

But as A Man Without a Country reveals, nothing could be farther from the truth. Apart from a few joints with the Grateful Dead one night, Vonnegut has steered well clear of drugs. His poisons are the grog and those unfiltered Pall Malls.

Vonnegut allows me to tape the interview, which begins like this:

Review: Let me say at the outset that I enjoyed reading the book.

KV: Well, that's friendly. Thank you.

Review: It's depressing reading, though. It's very black.

KV: Well, I'm depressed.

Review: Yes, obviously you are.

KV: Oh yes, I'm really depressed. I think we have wrecked the planet and I think the damage is quite permanent. I think it's too late now. And I never expected to live this long. My feeling now is that I'm completely incensed with this country. I feel what I felt after the Second World War: please can I go home now, I've done everything I was supposed to do.

* * *

(Cont'd)