Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut by William Rodney Allen

Author:William Rodney Allen [Allen, William Rodney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Kurt Vonnegut:

The Art of Fiction LXIV

David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, and Richard Rhodes/1977

From Pans Review, No. 69 (Spring 1977), 55-103.

Reprinted in Writers at Work, Sixth Series, ed. by George Plimpton.

Copyright © 1984 by The Paris Review, Inc.

All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc.

This interview with Kurt Vonnegut was originally a composite of four interviews done with the author over the past decade. The composite has gone through an extensive working-over by the subject himself, who looks upon his own spoken words on the page with considerable misgivings. . . indeed, what follows can be considered an interview conducted with himself, by himself

The introduction to the first of the incorporated interviews (done in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, when Vonnegut was 44) reads: "he is a veteran and a family man, large-boned, loose-jointed, at ease. He camps in an armchair in a shaggy tweed jacket, Cambridge gray flannels, a blue Brooks Brothers shirt, slouched down, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He shells the interview with explosive coughs and sneezes, windages of an autumn cold and a lifetime of heavy cigarette smoking. His voice is a resonant baritone, Midwestern, wry in its inflections. From time to time he issues the open alert smile of a man who has seen and reserved within himself almost everything: depression, war, the possibility of violent death, the inanities of corporate public relations, six children, an irregular income, long-delayed recognition."

The last of the interviews which made up the composite was conducted during the summer of 1976, years after the first. The description of him at this time reads: ". . . he moves with the low-keyed amiability of an old family dog. In general, his appearance is tousled: the long curly hair, moustache and sympathetic smile suggest a man at once amused and saddened by the world around him. He has rented the Gerald Murphy house for the summer. He works in the little bedroom at the end of a hall where Murphy, artist, bon vivant, and friend to the artistic great, died in 1964. From his desk Vonnegut can look out into the front lawn through a small window; behind him is a large, white canopy bed. On the desk next to the typewriter is a copy of Andy Warhol's Interview, Clancy Sigal's Zone of the Interior, and several discarded cigarette packs.

"Vonnegut has chain-smoked Pall Malls since 1936 and during the course of the interview he smokes the better part of one pack. His voice is low and gravelly, and as he speaks, the incessant procedure of lighting the cigarettes and exhaling smoke is like punctuation in his conversation. Other distractions such as the jangle of the telephone, and the barking of a small, shaggy dog named 'Pumpkin,' do not detract from Vonnegut's good-natured disposition. Indeed, as Dan Wakefield once said of his fellow Shortridge High School alumnus: 'He laughed a lot and was kind to everyone.' "

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