[Matt Holcomb]

Darkness visible

Cont'd:

WHEW, big start. And so it went on. Any hopes I had that Vonnegut might rise above the gloom of his book and provide me with an unforgettably entertaining lunch were quickly snuffed out.

And as it continued, it became quite sad. Vonnegut has clearly reached a stage in his life where he just can't be bothered any more.

His conversation reflects this. Often he just repeats his book. It's almost as if he has deliberately memorised his best one-liners so he can weave them into whatever conversation he's forced to endure.

"Life is no way to treat an animal."

"If God were alive today he would be an atheist."

"The difference between Hitler and George Bush is that Hitler was elected."

"The United States needs another novel like it needs another symphony."

"There's been a wild party going on for about 150years now on fossil fuels and nobody wants to spoil it."

His oil industry spiel is at least an opportunity to break the pattern and probe the little-known fact that, when he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut was also running a car yard.

"I thought I would be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life writing for magazines, but then television came along," he explains.

"Magazines that had enough advertising to support five stories a week suddenly went down to two stories a week.

"My plan was shattered. So I got a car yard. I was a Saab dealer at Cape Cod. I never felt it was my destiny to be a writer, that I had any great talent that had to be used.

"I was simply trying to support a family. As head of a family, I had to support everybody. I would do anything to make money."

Vonnegut certainly had imposing family responsibilities. The first of his three children was born when he was 24; and when his sister died of cancer three days after her husband was killed in a train crash, he and his wife adopted three of their four young sons.

It meant that money was always tight, at least until Slaughterhouse-Five became the international success every writer dreams of.

Vonnegut tells me he always intended to write of his wartime experience and it was just a matter of waiting for the right time. It seems a good moment to begin my exploration of Vonnegut the soldier.

* * *

"WERE you a brave man in war?" I ask him.

Vonnegut's old back stiffens noticeably. "I didn't disappoint myself, no," he says firmly. "I didn't do anything that I was ashamed of afterwards."

For some reason the steely resolve that seems to accompany the answer strikes me as unusual. But there's no reason it should. Men who hate war are often proud of their military service.

It's quite legitimate for Vonnegut, a decorated soldier, to feel the same, whatever anti-war positions he may have adopted later in life. But there are genuine surprises ahead.

"Do you or did you bear any ill will towards your captors?" I ask.

Not at all," Vonnegut says. "And I regard anybody who is a soldier in any army that is at war as a brother of mine. I've been back to Dresden three times now and when I go there, I'm treated as a hometown boy."

Next I ask him about terrorism. It's not for any particular reason. It just seems a relevant thing to ask a writer who has seen war, who has written of war and who lives in New York City, where terrorism's horror is understood so well.

"What about terrorists? Do you understand where they're coming from? Do you regard them as soldiers too?" I ask.

Vonnegut's reply is startling. "I regard them as very brave people, yes," he says without a moment's hesitation.

"You don't think that they're mad, that, you know, anyone who would strap a bomb to himself must be mad?"

"Well, we had a guy [president Harry Truman] who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, didn't we?" he says.

"What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back. Peace wasn't restored in Vietnam until we got kicked out. Everything's quiet there now."

There's a long pause before Vonnegut speaks again: "It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."

This borders on the outrageous. Is the author of one of the great anti-war books of the 20th century seriously saying that terrorists who kill civilians are "sweet and honourable"?

I ask one more question: "But terrorists believe in twisted religious things, don't they? So surely that can't be right?"

"Well, they're dying for their own self-respect," Vonnegut fires back. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

There's another long pause and Vonnegut's eyes suggest his mind has wandered off somewhere. Then, suddenly, he turns back to me and says: "It must be an amazing high."

"What?" I ask. "Strapping a bomb to yourself," he says. "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation ... must be an amazing high."

At this point, I give up. I can't be bothered asking him about any of the things I'd thought about: his mother's suicide, how he raised his sister's kids, the great writers he knew and partied with, how he looks back on Dresden.

Vonnegut has been many things: a grandmaster of American literature; a man who worked hard to support his family; a soldier who fought for his country.

But now he's old and he doesn't want to live any more. You only have to read his book to understand that. And because he can't find anything worthwhile to keep him alive, he finds defending terrorists somehow amusing.

* * *

EARLIER in the conversation Vonnegut talked about French writer Albert Camus. "He got a Nobel Prize for saying essentially - among other things - that life is absurd, so the only philosophical question is whether to commit suicide or continue to participate in absurdity.

"But I feel absurd is too weak a word. I think life is preposterous."

That's a matter of opinion, but if Vonnegut in his old age persists in defending terrorists, preposterous may be precisely how people remember him, and that would be unfortunate.

David Nason is The Australian's New York correspondent.