Book Review by Hank Nuwer
A strange, disconcerting use of point of view mars Dan Wakefield’s bio for young adults, Kurt Vonnegut: The Making of a Writer, $23.95 U.S.
The cover’s sprawling type looks like a ransom note with underarm hair.
For me the biggest turnoff in this biography is that Wakefield presents Kurt through a never-never-ending second-person point of view.
All the way through, it’s “You, You, You, You” to take the reader on a ride through Vonnegut’s life.
The best pages are when Kurt writes letters to family, editors and friends. That’s the only relief in sight to get away from “You, You, You, You.” But really, putting in something like a two-page letter to Theodore Sturgeon’s widow throws the book’s pacing way off. The letter belongs in Dan Wakefield’s collection of Vonnegut letters. It’s a woeful nuisance in this young adult biography.
For most of the 290 pages, it’s “You, you, you, you.”
I wanted to scream in pain and misery. “Dan, Dan, you’re killing ME, ME, ME, ME!”
To paraphrase Uncle Alex Vonnegut, “If that isn’t nuts, I don’t know what is.”
Factually, Wakefield usually is spot-on, but he makes the same serious error that Vonnegut biographers Charles J. Shields and Ginger Strand make. Namely, they have Kurt present at the firing-squad execution Of Michael Palaia for plundering food from a Dresden cellar.
Moreover, Wakefield writes that Kurt watched the execution, which is also untrue. The burial party waited nearby with their pick and shovels, but they were not called upon by German guards to witness Palaia’s death.
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. The names of the grave diggers emerged rom the investigations of military war crime investigators Joseph Carpenter, William Busch and Joseph S. Smith. Bernard O’Hare was also questioned, but all his information was hearsay.
Dan Wakefield accepts Uncle John Rauch’s Vonnegut family “history” that says she died from an overdose of sleeping bills. He ignores the primary document, the death certificate signed by coroner Dr. Roy B. Storms listing a “coronary occlusion” as the cause of death.
Pages have a chapter notice on the side of the page. So distracting!
Pages have a chapter notice on the side of the page. So distracting!
Also, the level of writing shifts way too much. At times, it seems the book is aimed at 11-15 year-olds.
Other times, it’s like you–Wakefield–forgot your audience is young adult, and you seem to be writing for adults.
As when you add the “F” bomb into the text. Well, at least you refrain from saying “F You, You, You, You.”
Mr. Wakefield, a great friend to Vonnegut, died in 2024. Wakefield’s biography appeared after Charles J. Shields’ unflattering “And So It Goes,” and Wakefield clearly intended a far more favorable depiction of Kurt Vonnegut, both alums of Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.
I think the book’s cover would benefit from a redesign. The Vonnegut doodle-self portrait loses quality blown up like this. The hair and mustache look like underarm hair. The cover’s typography? Well, it looks like the work of a ransom note writer.
And on the left and right margins of every page, the designer has inexplicably placed chapter notes. That’s an annoying addition design,, and I’ve never seen anything like it in any other book.
However, I found Wakefield’s editing of the Letters of Kurt Vonnegut to be immensely helpful as I researched my own biography of Vonnegut. I loved Wakefield’s Going All the Way, his magazine journalism, and his tales of New York life when he was starting out as a writer.
Thus, although Wakefield’s biography for Triangle Square, an imprint of Seven Stories Press, disappoints me, I am happy that high school fans of Vonnegut can turn to it for an introduction to his life and woks.
Photo: Young Dan Wakefield. Below, sample page from Dan Wakefield’s Kurt Vonnegut: The Making of a Writer.
Excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut, The Making of a Writer by Dan Wakefield