Starred review from June 22, 2020
Kurt Vonnegut toiled in obscurity before 1969’s Slaughterhouse-Five made him a household name, but the artist he would become is already present in this revelatory collection of letters to his first wife, Jane Cox, from 1941 through the end of WWII. Edith Vonnegut, their daughter, discovered the letters, presented here as facsimiles, in her childhood home’s attic. In them, her father writes vividly of love (“I saw the Northern Lights for the first time tonight. It was pretty much like kissing you, and just as rare”), the army (“My new job is to cover my face and hands with soot and crawl into enemy lines to see what in hell they’ve got”), existential despair (“This is a destitute, hating, bleeding world”), and worries about a nuclear future (“Ten years from now, how many men will know how to turn Earth into a blazing lesser Sun?”). Near the collection’s end, Kurt writes Jane that “you scare me when you say that I would have been Shakespeare had I lived then... Angel, will you stick by me if it goes backwards and downwards?”—a poignant question given that he was the one who left their marriage in 1971. Literary buffs will relish this fascinating, intimate glimpse of a renowned writer’s formative years.
September 1, 2020
Kurt Vonnegut's letters to his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, written in the crucibles of war and young literary ambition. Vonnegut's eldest daughter, Edith, discovered this cache of letters, written between 1941 and 1945, in the attic of her childhood home. Smartly photographed rather than transcribed, the letters offer an engrossing portrait of the artist as a young man. Many of the future novelist's hallmarks can be seen in embryotic form: the plainspoken wit and candor ("Sex is peachy. Why bury it with things low and vulgar"), the clever doodles (one letter includes a credible stegosaurus), and, in wartime, a heartsickness over humanity in turmoil. In 1941, Vonnegut and Cox were high school sweethearts at separate colleges: Cox at Swarthmore, studying English, Vonnegut at Cornell, ill-advisedly studying chemistry and spending most of his time writing for the student paper. His early letters to "Woofy" are giddy and flirty ("the interior of a tan sedan / cannot be part of nature's plan," goes one bit of doggerel) and not a little pleading, hinting at marriage and a touch passive-aggressive about her dating others. World War II distanced them further and inevitably changed him: His mother died, he was captured as a POW and witnessed the bombing of Dresden (which famously inspired Slaughterhouse-Five), and grew more desperate for her attention. After they married in 1945, his letters (as he awaited official release from the Army) become more practical, as he plots a literary career. But his sense of humor and ingeniousness never waver. Two examples of Cox's letters show that she was deeply supportive, even gushing about his literary potential, and one senses Vonnegut needed every encouragement. The two split in 1971; here, though, Vonnegut's ardor is undiluted and a pleasure to snoop in on. A charming set of Vonnegutiana that will appeal to fans of his writing--and love letters in general.
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