The Love Letters of Kurt Vonnegut

A different way of following the famous Anne Lamott adage

I don’t begrudge Kurt’s daughter Edith Vonnegut for asserting in her Introduction that the adolescent letters of her father, which she’s assembled in the beautiful new book Love, Kurt, show that “my father was well formed as a writer at a strikingly young age.”

I read the letters quite differently, which is why I highly recommend them-and recommend writing a few love letters afterward, if so inspired. The letters, to me, show a young man often prattling on about this and that, trying out different voices and styles, writing with the freedom of someone who knows he’s written a letter the day before and will write another one the next day.

What I see is a fascinating variation on the Anne Lamott advice to write “Shitty First Drafts,” meaning not so much to write badly, or insufferably, or drearily, but to open the spigot wide and let it all come out. Love letters, or really, love-letter campaigns, which is what this book captures, are all about letting the spigot open wide.

From early on Vonnegut shows rare charm and personality in his letters and flights of eloquence. “I love you; not more than life itself, because you are life,” he writes his future wife, Jane, soon after they meet in the summer of 1941 when he was eighteen.

Many of the letters were written when Kurt was at Cornell, more interested in working at the student paper and writing these letters than in his studies, and Jane was at Swarthmore, a model student. He repeatedly declares his love and talks of marriage, and writes ten letters to every one reply, at least at times.

Kurt enlists in the Army in January 1943, a little over a year after the U.S. entered World War II, and this is when his writing, for me, starts to open up. I felt almost an audible click sounding in my ears as he arrives at the other side of the transition from interesting fledgling talent to clear-as-a-bell sentry.

Young Kurt writes Jane on August 30, 1943, about discovering “the finest, and oldest, part” of Charleston, South Carolina. “Not a church in the neighborhood is under 200 years old,” he writes. “The entrance is an inconspicuous little arch, guarded by an antique wrought-iron gate, between a fine wine store and a musty book store. Both are tiny and neither bothers to advertise beyond a small, neat shingle. Both sell the fine, the very old, and the deliciously delicate.”

Vonnegut with those lines was on his way somewhere, as it turns out on his way to becoming an authentic American original. It was his searing experiences as a P.O.W. in Dresden, not only during the fire bombing itself but the grisly aftermath, weeks of carrying corpses (men, women and children), that functioned as a kiln to give his talent a harder edge. But I believe the love letters prepared him to find his voice after the war.

Working with writers of all levels here at the small writers retreat center my wife and I run in California, I hear much talk of advice on writing and good practices. The Internet is good for that. I wish I heard more about people alone with a letter, taking an idea in places they could never anticipate ahead of time. That was what Vonnegut did again and again. Sometimes the results probably baffle his audience of one, Jane. Other times she clearly reveled in knowing a talented writer was focusing that talent on her.

I’m going to take inspiration from the book and write more letters - starting with a love letter to my wife, who gave me the book as a Christmas book. I urge you to write more as well.