The Core presents a review of Kurt Vonnegut’s Letters, by Keith Miller. Vonnegut is not a writer directly studied in Core classes, however, his influence on the literary world is worth examining. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n
Most of Vonnegut\u2019s early writing is \u2013 despite his protestations about \u201cgenre-ism\u201d \u2013 fairly easy to ghettoise as science fiction, though he is manifestly a \u201chard\u201d SF writer (space ships, tentacles) who would like to be a \u201csoft\u201d one, exploring the Philip K Dick stuff about memory and identity. One of his richest themes \u2013 very notably in\u00a0Slaughterhouse 5<\/i>, which contains elements of SF, as well as memoir, realism and several other notes \u2013 is the conceit that we\u2019re all somehow adrift, rogue cosmonauts in our own lives, an idea that is by no means confined to genre fiction (it is present in Proust, though clad there in white tie rather than a space suit).
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\nThe writ of this collection of letters runs from about 1950 until 2007, the year of Vonnegut\u2019s death. It is not exactly packed with revelations. We don\u2019t write to those we see every day; anthologies such as these are documents of absence, plaster casts of empty rooms \u2013 involuted autobiographies. It\u2019s only when Kurt, teaching in Iowa, steps up his correspondence with Jane, his first wife, that we sense their relationship is amiss \u2013 sure enough, he soon notifies a friend that \u201csomething telepathic has busted between us\u201d.<\/p>\n…
\nIt is for their literary rather than their documentary value that these letters commend themselves, in the end. They have a directness and a consistency, a scruffy but ensnaring humanity, that I\u2019ve never quite been able to find in Vonnegut\u2019s fiction, either two decades ago as a refusenaut and psychonik, or over the past fortnight, researching this piece. Kurt seems by turns kind, engaged, imaginative, witty, self-deprecating (\u201cI write with a big black crayon\u2026 grasped in a grubby, kindergarten fist,\u201d) and \u2013 on various fronts \u2013 courageous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n