Book Review by Hank Nuwer
Charles J. Shields, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. Henry Holt and Company, 513 pages, $30 hardcover.
Fifteen years following the release of “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life,” I decided to review the biography by Charles J. Shields, aka Chip Shields.
I was shocked to see error after error jump off the pages of And So It Goes. One wonders how the biography’s embarrassing mistakes slipped past former Henry Holt and Co., editor Helen Atsma (now with ECCO) and Folio Literary Management agent Jeff Kleinman..
The biography falls short of what I hoped to read from Shields, the co-founder of Biographers International Organization.
Here follows a list of items from “And So It Goes” in need of correcting.
Macmillan can start by correcting the number of pages in the paperback. The hardcover intro was dropped. The 544 pages listed is now only 515 pages including a cobbled together appendix.
Biographer Charles J. Shields misidentifies Vonnegut’s Indianapolis birthplace address. Yes, even though 955 N. Pennsylvania St. is on Vonnegut’s birth certificate.
Also, Shields lists the Vonnegut longtime home as 4401 N. Illinois St. The correct address of the boyhood house is 4365 N. Illinois St. The address number ehanged to “4401” around 1940.
Shields said the architect who designed the N. Illinois home was William Osler. Nope, he is the “Father of Internal Medicine.” Shields meant Willard Osler.
Vonnegut household servant Carrie B. Hatterbaugh is misspelled “Cannie Hatterbaugh,” Charles McKinley Nice and his wife Clare should have been spelled Charles McKinney Nice and Sadie Claire Mapes Nice (Bingham).
He also misspells “Southampton” on Long Island, a second home for Vonnegut and wife Jill Krementz. Jill refused to give him an interview. Boy, did Shields make her pay. Reviewer Laura Wells wrote that Shields made her out to be a harridan. Or worse. Her unrequited love affair takes up too much room in the Vonnegut bio, as do Kurt’s own love affairs.
In Chapter One, Shields writes about young Kurt’s relationship with African-American cook Ida Young.
Shields portrayed Ida Young as a “widow.” when she worked for Edith and Kurt Vonnegut. Ida Young didn’t become a widow until Owen, 57, died on February 3, 1935, long after she left the Vonnegut family.
Shields writes that Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army in March of 1943. Vonnegut’s service record notes his enlistment as April 6, 1943.
Then, Shields wrote that Kurt married first wife Jane Cox on Sept. 14, 1945. Uh-uh. The wedding took place Sept. 1, 1945.
Shields claimed Vonnegut’s parents attended the wedding of Irma Vonnegut (sister of Kurt Sr.) in Germany in 1924, leaving young Kurt with relatives.
Nope. Irma Vonnegut married Kurt Lindener on August 18, 1922. The pregnant Edith Vonnegut and Kurt Sr. didn’t attend the wedding. The Vonnegut parents did sail to Europe in 1924 to visit the Lindeners and their son Arthur. THAT is when Kurt stayed with relatives, likely Uncle Alex, brother of Kurt Sr.
Also, Lindener’s wealth came from ownership of vast Guatemala coffee and sugar plantations. Shields incorrectly placed the plantations in Honduras.
Then there’s a “grave error” by Shields of enormous significance. In the climax of Vonnegut’s classic “Slaughterhouse-Five,” an older American foot soldier is put on trial and shot by a German firing squad for swiping a teapot from a ruined building in bombed-out Dresden.
Vonnegut took creative license here.
The unlucky POW is a composite character mainly drawn from POW named Michael Palaia who swiped a jar of string-beans. Taking plunder meant death upon conviction.
Shields writes that Palaia “was one of the older prisoners and unable to withstand the deprivations as well as the younger men.”
No, PFC Michael D. Palaia was a sturdy, strapping 6’2 youth of 19.
Shields fails to factcheck the date Palaia died. Vonnegut and a few other POWS with him in Dresden wrongly claimed the execution occurred on Palm Sunday, 1945.
Shields writes that a firing squad executed Palaia and a Polish soldier April 1, 1945, Palm Sunday.
An online calendar lists April 1 as Easter Sunday. Palm Sunday was March 25, 1945.
German records note the actual execution as Saturday, March 31, 1945.
Here’s the grave error, far more consequential. Shields writes that Vonnegut was one of four men in the vicinity of the execution who were made to dig a grave and bury Palaia.
No, Vonnegut was not near the execution and learned of it second hand. Nor did he wield a pick and shovel.
The actual grave diggers were Harry E. J. Kingston, Henry Edward Hall, Joseph Topicz and Floyd T. McLea. The truth was scattered in interviews and commentary by Dresden POWs in the 2008 book “Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five” by Ervin E Szpek, Jr. and Frank J. Idzikowski.
Shields names this book in his list of works cited.
In “Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five,” we learn the real names of the grave diggers from the post-war interviews of military war crime investigators Joseph Carpenter, William Busch and Joseph S. Smith.
The interviewers learned the second executed prisoner was a Russian, not a Pole as Shields writes.
It is likely Shields regrets not pressing Vonnegut about the Palaia matter during two interviews at Vonnegut’s New York home. Vonnegut upon his arrival home in Indiana from captivity told his Uncle Alex Vonnegut about Palaia’s demise. It is possible that Kurt claimed to be a grave digger, but it’s also possible notoriously ditzy Uncle Alex wrongly assumed his nephew was present for the execution.
Next up, Shields quotes Vonnegut’s wartime pal Bernard O’Hare describing their capture during the Battle of the Bulge and crying “Don’t s_ _ _” instead of “Don’t shoot!”
However, Vonnegut assured O’Hare’s widow the story was untrue nonsense.
Some other errors by Shields can be traced back to errors by Kurt Vonnegut in his autobiographical writings.
Shields repeats a misspelling by Vonnegut’s Uncle John Rauch of the last name of Charles Volmer, an Indianapolis merchant who persuaded boyhood friend Clemens Vonnegut Sr., Kurt’s great grandfather, to settle in Indianapolis and open a shop with him. Shields wrote about “Volmer” as “Vollmer,” ignoring several city directories.
Then there’s Kurt’s maternal grandmother, Alice Barus Lieber, who died of illness at 30 on Dec. 10, 1897.
Vonnegut thought she died during childbirth with Vonnegut uncle Rudolph Vonnegut. Nope, Uncle Rudy was born Jan. 5, 1896. Shields writes incorrectly that Rudy was five when Alice died.
Kurt Vonnegut Sr. died Sept. 30, 1956, of lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking. Shields claims ”no one came to check on him regularly” except a nurse. But sister Irma Lindener flew from Germany to Indianapolis in late July ’56 to comfort him.
We find several errors by Shields in Chapter Six. Kurt’s
sister Alice lay dying of cancer in a hospital, her husband James Adams dies when his commuter train sailed through an open bridge into Newark Bay.
Shields writes that the train engineer died of a heart attack while the fireman alongside him wasn’t able to halt the train.
No, a pathologist ruled out a heart attack, and experts could not say with certainty if the engineer was incapacitated at the fatal final moments.
Moreover, the fireman left his post, leaving the engineer alone.
After the deaths of Vonnegut’s sister and brother-in-law, Kurt and wife Jane took in their sons James Jr, Steven and Kurt. Shields introduces an older sister of the late James Adams. She helped with bills.
The aunt is Louise Adams Donner, or Mrs. Carl Donner.
Shields changes her name to the pseudonymous “Donna Lewis.” Carl Herman Donner becomes “Carl Lewis.”
Two footnotes cite an interview with “Donna Lewis” on July 27, 2008. Neither footnote explains why the biographer obscures her identity.
I consulted the Charles J. Shields papers at the Indianapolis Historical Society to examine this interview.
Shields discloses that he goofed and neglected to tape her side of the phone interview. Instead of conducting a second interview, Shields relied on his memory.
The Indiana Historical Society has a letter from Shields after Vonnegut’s death to author John Updike. Shields confessed he was no fan of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. He wanted to throw two of his subject’s novels across the room.
Also, Shields confides he promised Kurt Vonnegut he would share negative information that came out in interviews with various sources.
That’s hagiography, or ersatz biography, not literary biography.
Vonnegut died. That promise no longer held.
“I don’t mean to sound ghoulish, but isn’t that the ideal situation for a biographer, to have your subject cooperate happily with you, and then die, leaving you a free hand,” Shields told an interviewer.
Shields’ blistering biography certainly changed the world’s impression of Kurt Vonnegut.
“So It Goes” portrays Vonnegut as a skirt-chasing, grouchy, adulterous wreck of a man and something less than a genius as an author.
Here is another big fault in the biography. Shields pads the biography with paragraph after paragraph of literary criticism. Shields, lacks the true critic’s talents.
Shields had venom to spare. He refers to Kurt’s patient, elderly agents as “gasbags,” although they protected Vonnegut when magazine stories came back to them with rejection slips.
Shields credits Knox Burger, an early editor of Vonnegut, for giving him a treasure trove of Vonnegut correspondence and a tub of dirt to use.
Shields appears to speak for Burger. When Vonnegut reneges on a promise to Burger to dump his old agents and sign with Burger, Shields paints Vonnegut as a false friend.
Burger was a good editor but never shy about giving his brusque two cents after reading Vonnegut manuscripts.
Shields dedicated the hardcover to his benefactor, along with a pun, “Hang a Gold Medal on him.”
Shields deleted the obsequious dedication in the paperback.
Shields saves blows for second Vonnegut wife Jill Krementz, an accomplished photographer. The biographer savages her as bitchy, neurotic and unlikable.
It was instructive for me to read transcripts of the biographer’s interviews with sources and see how he steered the conversation.
Always he allowed how he was trying to be fair with Jill but found few who liked her.
A judge would have tossed him out of a courtroom for leading the witnesses, but it worked. Each source babbled some new harsh tidbit that allowed Shields to cast Krementz as a harpy from hell.
When Jill declined to go on the record, Shields wrote her a letter, to me rude and unseemly, where he advised her to talk with him because so many of his sources framed her in negative terms.
Moreover, that prissy, prudish, intolerant side of Charles J. Shields jumps off the page now and then in “So It Goes.”
And when Kurt and Jill attend a huge feast at a party for Craig Claiborne attended by 36 chefs and a boatload of celebrities, Shields knocks himself out with irate indignation: “a good example of the disconnect between the values (Vonnegut) espoused and the life he was living.”
The hardcover edition of the biography contained a self-indulgent introduction.
Shields said that he tried convincing Kurt to let him be his authorized biographer by praising Kurt’s books as “part of the literature that guides and inspired the next forward-looking age.”
Shields admitted in an online interview that he only read each Vonnegut book once.
The bulk of Vonnegut’s quotations and paraphrased words given to Shields came the last two days of a tired-out, diminished Vonnegut.
Shields describes the author as unhealthy appearing, and indeed, Vonnegut’s last comments sound morose and whiny.
Shields left the brownstone after the session on March 14, 2007. That evening Vonnegut fell while outside and was never to revive. Shields noted that fall in his notes.
Later, in his biography, Shields dresses up the story by saying Vonnegut tripped over his white dog Flour’s leash.
That may be a shaggy dog story. The 911 caller who saw Vonnegut on the pavement gave neither his name nor much detail. The biographer’s sources for the “leash” story is a “summary of interviews with Lily Vonnegut, Edie Vonnegut, and Knox Burger.”
None saw Vonnegut fall.
The biography ends with the author’s death April 11, 2007.
Shields was an indefatigable researcher. His interviews with dozens of sources stored at the Indianapolis Historical Society will be used in dozens of scholarly articles and, undoubtedly, future Vonnegut biographies.
I sent an email to Charles J. Shields to ask him for an interview. He declined.
I wanted to ask the biographer about Mark Vonnegut’s charge that “So It Goes” was “a book whose existence is completely and utterly dependent on a picture that Shields would have made up out of whole cloth if he had to.”
Perhaps “So It Goes” could be worse, could contain more factual errors and self-righteous pronouncements. But, for the life of me, I don’t see how.
Books routinely were sent to reviewers years ago with an appended sheet of author or editor corrections.
I would hope the publisher would ask the author to help readers and, yes, Vonnegut scholars by removing these mistakes in future printings and replacing them with carefully checked factual information. The biographer put too much work into this book to let misinformation mar the work as it now does.
This post appeared in different lengths in the Cordova Times and the State House File.