Armageddon In Retrospect

Kurt Vonnegut

In his latter years, Vonnegut started to repeat himself. Not like an old man who can't quite remember that he's told you the story before, but like an old man who has worked out just what ideas are important, and has stop bothering with the rest.

Community, Marx and Jesus, humanism, semi-colons. All these reappear in Vonnegut's speech at Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, included here. But there's one repeated theme, more important in Vonnegut's writing than anything else, that holds Armageddon In Retrospect together.

War. Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden when it was fire-bombed by the allies. That bombing raid, on an 'open city,' had a higher deathcount than Hiroshima, but Vonnegut himself survived it. He was in the deep cellar of Schlachthauf Funf. Slaugherhouse Five, that is.

They say every writer has one book they are writing, all their life. Indeed, when anybody asked Vonnegut what he was writing, he would tell them: the Dresden book. The war book. Never mind the dozen other novels he must have spent a little time on.

Though Slaughterhouse Five is that book -- the one book that Kurt Vonnegut was a writer for -- the collected short stories in Armageddon In Retrospect study the same themes, albeit it on a lesser scale. And as is often the case, the smaller pictures side by side say as much as the full-size masterpiece on its own.

Every story is about war; more often, about the end of war; most often, about the individuals trapped in the immediate aftermath of war. There's as much cohesion here as in many of Vonnegut's novels. Far from being a cash-in collection of errata and pieces better left unpublished, as post-humous collections so often are, Armageddon In Retrospect can hold it's head up high in the top tier of Vonnegut's excellent canon.

Books on Film

I've watched three films in the last three nights, and each one of them was a book first. The typical reaction to good books becoming films is negative; fear mingled with contempt, turned up to panic levels by the tiniest glimmer of hope.

But I'm an optimist. Three bookfilms in a row, so at least one of them will be a success, I thought. But what do you call it when all three are awesome? Most book people hate bookfilms... am I too easily pleased? Please tell me.

Slaughterhouse 5

If I was asked which of my favourite authors was least filmable, I would say Vonnegut, every time. It's not that they couldn't be filmed, but that they would lose too much of what makes them special. None more so than S-5, my default answer to the favourite-book question.

But, despite the complete lack of SO IT GOES and the utter non-existence of the sounds of birds, this 1972 film captures the essense of the book, somehow. They ended it with fireworks on Tralfamadore, but I still loved it.

No Country For Old Men

This is a damn good film. I could watch it a dozen times, I think. It's harsh reality verses fiction, and harsh reality wins every time, and it still manages to be likable. It's sparse and beautiful and hardgoing and doesn't talk much and is hilarious and brutal ignores convention.

I've said all of those things about Cormac's books (apart from it's a damn good film), and so if I had to guess, I'd say this was a pretty accurate adaptation. I'll find out for sure when I get round to reading the damn thing.

Bright Young Things

Stephen Fry adapting Vile Bodies, using almost every great English actor who's young enough -- plus Peter O-flipping-Toole -- and it's still better than I expected. It's sadder than I remember the book being, just as funny, and far more beautiful than I managed to picture it.

The ending drags, or can't decide, or something. Nothing I read or see at the moment stops at the point I think it should stop, so maybe don't take this too seriously.


I honestly think I've covered all the bases: a book I know well, a book I've never read, and one I can't remember too well. Each film is great, in different ways. Seriously, am I too easily pleased? Or have I just got lucky with the adaptations I've picked recently?

What do you think about books on film?

Slapstick

Or Lonesome No More. by Kurt Vonnegut.

Mr Vonnegut is possibly my favourite ever author. I say 'possibly' because Terry Pratchett might--shut up, it could happen--be reading this blog, and I don't want to hurt his feelings.
But if Kurt is looking down from Heaven (or The Turkey Farm), he'll know what I mean.

The reasons:

He is wise. I don't use that word very much, without irony. But it applies here. Slapstick is not alone among his novels in being an undisguised manifesto on the basic human need for community, why we lack it and how to get it back.

He is compelling. He has a unique and distinctive voice that make all his novels, short stories and non-fiction blend into one in my memory--and I cannot get enough of it. It shouldn't work like that. He makes a point of telling the reader as much as possible, straight away. There is no suspense, no attempt to keep people reading by witholding the solution. He just tells you.
Yet somehow, at the end of each section--of which there are 3 or 4 per page--you need to read the next one. At the end of each chapter--sometimes only a page and a half--you need to read the next one.

He is funny and inventive. He interrupts his own narrative to tell you his favourite joke.. He covers whole novels in a chapter ot two. I genuinely lost count of how many times during Slapstick I thought 'that would make a great novel,' about something Vonnegut mentions in a throwaway line, or quick summary. This one story could have provided him with the plots for an entire literary career.

It's hard to know what I can learn from all this, though. Everything I admire in his approach is completely unique to him. It all comes down to his voice: his anecdotal, stop-start,matter-of-fact, sloganising, moral punchlining, voice.
It's impossible to imitate the voice, but hard not to, as well. When I'm reading a Vonnegut, I even start to think like him. So it goes.

So instead of trying to distill some writing tip from my own reading of his work, I will just remember the ones he mentions explicitly in the prologue. Cheating? No way. I make the rules, anyway. Rule #26, 'it's okay to take advice directly from the author of lots of great novels, rather than muck around trying to find your own advice in his analysis-defeating prose.'

Rule #26 is one of my favourites.

In the prologue, Vonnegut says:

1. Write for one person. "Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind."

Now the accidental shifting of tone, emphasis and intent is something I have a problem with, in my writing. And that is exactly what Vonnegut avoids, and he's telling me exactly how he does it. I really should adopt this. I'm not one of these people who can write 'for myself,' nor do I think 'if I like it, other people will.' I need to write to please other people.
I just don't know who to pick. I may start holding auditions.

2. Writing is hard work. Vonnegut quotes friends on the subject, who say the definition of a writer is someone who hates writing, and that you never hear of a blacksmith who loved his anvil.

This is something I'm learning all the time. I'm pretty good at making sure I sit down and write a lot. But then when I get stuck, or spend time away from whatever I'm writing, I am too weak. I never get back to the anvil.
One thing I do is get disheartened by my bad writing. That's like Mr Blacksmith looking at his unfinished sword (that's what they make, right?) and stopping, because it wouldn't yet kill a man. Well, it's unfinished. It's not meant to be lethal. Get back to work.
But sometimes it's easier to stop and do a couple of horseshoes instead.

I should get back to work.