Zoomed Out: Kurt Vonnegut, with guest Nic Pietersma

Hi there, and welcome back to the Hugo's There podcast. I'm your host, Seth Heasley, and this is another zoomed out episode. And this one's an author deep dive about Kurt Vonnegut. And my guest for this episode is Nick Petersma. Hi there, Nick. Thanks for joining me. Hello. Thanks for having me on. It's great to have you. So what should people know about you?

I live in London. I'm a marketing analyst. I think quite rarely for a guest in your podcast, I'm just a civilian. I don't have a blog or any sort of podcast of my own. I'm just interested in the show, really.

thought a Kurt Vonnegut episode would be a blast. Yeah, yeah. And you had reached out a long time ago, I think, and just sort of said, hey, you've kind of inspired me to read all the Hugo winners. Yeah, I mean, actually, it's interesting. I started reading The Hugos probably around 2008, 2009. got through, you know, half the list and I lost steam. Yeah. And I discovered your podcast roundabout, I think, the Neuromancer.

Dune episode? Okay, that was early on. Fairly early days, and I thought, hey, this is quite nice. What I'm going to do is I'll get back on the wagon, start reading the Hugos again, and I'll kind of try and time it so that I'm, you know, keeping pace with the show. So, yeah, I finished the Hugo novels back in the last year. a couple months after you and really enjoyed it. And I guess after a couple months of free reading, which I really enjoyed, I thought another project would be quite nice.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote 14 novels, which felt quite sort of manageable and reasonable to get through. Yeah. Okay, cool. So what is it about Vonnegut, though, that made you want to do this? I think, you know, he was a... an author i was very into in sort of my university days and i think i mean i don't know i don't know if maybe i'm just projecting my own experience but i think he's a bit of a gen x kind of author if you you know if you grew up in the 70s or 80s

I think, you know, at some point, Kurt Vonnegut may have come onto your radar. There's something about his writing style that I really appreciate. He's very sort of plain spoken. A lot of authors, they kind of say you've got like a bit of subtext and fancy prose, whereas Kurt Vonnegut has this really great way of just sort of saying the thing, which I really appreciate and enjoy.

So I think you've prepared just a little bit of sort of Vonnegut. What about him? You know, I think, what do we call this intro to Vonnegut? Yeah. So he was born in Indianapolis in 1922, which I think is. quite helpful to know because it means he would have been a little kid growing up in the Great Depression. And that kind of does come through when you sort of see he's quite cynical about capitalism.

and, you know, about what markets can do to people. He's also, the fact that he was born in Indianapolis kind of seeps through into his writing. He often writes about where he grew up and, you know, that part of the world. He apparently grew up pretty well off, but during the Great Depression, his family fell onto hard times. He eventually studied biochemistry at Cornell University and then...

I think towards the end of his degree, he was drafted into the Second World War. And that was where he was a scout and he ended up fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and being taken as a prisoner of war. After being taken as a prisoner of war, he kind of got taken off to Dresden. That was bombed February 1945, and it was a huge part of kind of what influenced his writing for the Salter House Five in particular. And actually, the other interesting thing I saw was he...

He apparently was bombed twice by the Allies, once in Dresden and once he was actually on a train being transported as a prisoner of war and the train was blown up. So, you know, fortunately for us, he got through both of those events. Yeah. So at the end of a lot of the Vonnegut audiobooks, there's little clips of interviews with Vonnegut or with somebody else. And there was one that was an interview with Gay Talese, who was this kind of famous interviewer, and mentioned that just...

how Vonnegut was sort of like a breath of fresh air at the time because here he wasn't – a lot of the other authors like John Updike and other people very much fronted the northeast of the United States, right? New York, Boston, you know. And here, all of a sudden, he comes in with this, I guess, middle America thing, which when you look at a map, Indiana is a lot further east than I even ever think it is. But it felt like something very different then.

the eastern seaboard yeah and actually i think that was one of the things he's quite critical about you know uh about america is the way things are going, it sort of seems like it's made of like interchangeable places with, you know, maybe some of the local characters lost and, you know, interchangeable parts of a big machine.

um so i don't know i mean i've never lived in america so i don't know to what extent that is that's true you know what what people experience out there but he spoke about it a lot i think he described it as a place a place for automobiles um which yeah

It definitely comes up in a couple of his novels, actually. Yeah, I can see that. So how about Vonnegut 101? If somebody has never read Kurt Vonnegut, where should they start, do you think?

Well, I guess there's three novels you start with. Sword of House Five, I think that's kind of the quintessential Vonnegut novel. You've covered it before in one of your podcasts, so I don't think we need to go there again. But, you know, that was kind of it felt semi-autobiographical. It was about a soldier who was caught in the Dresden bombings. And the kind of science fiction side of things is that he gets unstuck in time.

And he bounces around through different periods of his life. And we get an introduction in that to the Trophamadorians, who are these kind of... slightly inconsistent aliens that crop up across a bunch of his books. It's a fantastic novel, and everyone should read it. You can't really say anything else.

Yeah. And like you mentioned, right, we covered that one on Take Me to Your Reader. We had Emmanuel Dubois on for that one to kind of – he's a historian to kind of bring in the World War II history side of things. And, you know, the whole nature of it. And I don't know how common this is with Kurt Vonnegut. From what I can tell in the limited amount of reading that I've done on him, sometimes he catches on a phrase and then it will keep...

popping up. And certainly in that one, there's So It Goes, right? Anytime he mentions death, even metaphorical death, he'll use that phrase. There's something else in Breakfast of Champions that I want to talk about. That's that way. But even now I can't remember. Oh, doodly squat. Yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting. So in the prologue to Slapstick.

he sort of says, you know, you kind of, you have to forgive me. I've got this kind of verbal tick and sometimes it's all that I can say. And in that one, it's hi-ho. So, you know. It'll usually be dropped in at the end of a kind of appointment sentence or when something a bit bleak has happened, I hope. Okay. So he acknowledges this trait. Yeah.

I think at the time Slapstick came out, the critics kind of gave him a bit of a hard time about it. But I still think it's a lovely book. Okay. Okay. And yeah, Slaughterhouse-Five, it's a classic for a reason. I think I revisited it when my son read it in school. And it was one that I hadn't read since I kind of started getting back into science fiction. And it was one that I had heard was so well regarded that... I read it. It's short. And I really like it. Yeah.

All right, move on to another one. I guess next up is Breakfast of Champions. I'd say, you know, it's one of the big three. It's very famous. That novel deals with, I think... mental health and illness. The main character in that is Dwight Hoover, who I think is a, he's kind of a small business owner who has a nervous breakdown. More clearly a comic novel than I think a lot of his books. And it's made up of these little short vignettes. There's a lot of doodles in it.

Again, it's very well-loved, very well-written. What I would say about Breakfast of Champions, though, is if you read it and you think this is sort of not for me, I would say don't give up on Kurt Vonnegut. It's kind of the more extreme, zany, broken up piece of, you know, it's not a very traditionally structured novel, I'd say. Yeah. Now, you mentioned the doodles, and this is one of the ones that I did on audio.

I felt like I bounced off of it pretty hard. Yeah. It, I, I kept wondering what the story was and because of the kind of vignette sort of broken up. And actually something that he does quite often is you'll start reading the prologue and the prologue will be actually wonderfully written and insightful. And at some point you're reading the novel and you can't quite pinpoint. yeah when did the prologue stop i'm in the novel now

And I think Breakfast of Champions is one that does that. Slapstick is one that does that. And I think Jailbird is the other one that you just kind of suddenly are in the novel. Breakfast of Champions had a weird fixation in it, a weird repeated motif of describing the size of it. Everyone's junk. Yes. And actually, I think in Slaughterhouse-Five, he has to mention Billy Pilgrim's assets as well, just to be awesome. Yeah.

But the fact that it's basically a dossier of everyone's endowedness. Yeah. I mean, what's nice about him as an author is he's... You know, he's a bit literary, but also a bit lowbrow. And that's kind of what makes him fun, I think. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you, what exactly was this book about? But now that you mentioned the nervous breakdown, I'm like, okay, it makes a little more sense in that way. This may be one that's just best not done on audio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut's mother had a sort of mental health issues and I think she committed suicide. So it's, again, it's something that was quite big in his life. And in the prologue, he talks about, you know, people being a big bag of chemicals and sometimes the chemicals go wrong and life goes off the rails. Yeah. All right. Anything else for the starter pack?

Well, I guess Cat's Cradle is the one that we've both read recently. And I think it's really a fantastic choice. I'm very enthusiastic about it. It's a short read. It goes down easy, which I think at this stage of my life, that's the highest praise you can give. You know, the characters are really fleshed out. There's a big central idea. I just love Cat's Cradle.

Really, really pleased that we're talking about that. Yeah. And this one, I know it was nominated for the Hugo Award. I think it lost out to Waystation, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Was it Waystation? I thought Starship Troopers. I might be wrong on that. If it was WayStation, I think I'd feel quite, maybe the wrong decision had been made. Yeah, it was.

Waystation. Was it Waystation? Okay. And we talked about that on the podcast. David Agarinoff was on there. And he said he felt like the voters may have intuitively realized that Vonnegut was never going to come to the Hugo Awards.

So they honored WayStation. Well, I think he – did he have quite an ambivalent attitude towards science fiction? I don't think he particularly liked being – described as a science fiction author. Yeah, I did want to mention that aspect of where he fits in science fiction. Because certainly he's known as a science fiction author, but he was not a fan of being categorized in a genre.

Yeah, he sort of said, you know, if you notice technology, suddenly you're a science fiction writer and they put you in that drawer. And the critics mistake it for a urinal. And I don't really want to be in that drawer. You know, that said, I think science fiction readers see him as one of theirs, regardless of his feelings. Now, of the three that we've talked about so far, obviously Slaughterhouse-Five with the being unstuck in time and the travel to other worlds, or, I mean, I...

My friend Colin was like, no, no, that movie is not about somebody traveling to other worlds. It's about somebody having a mental breakdown. Yeah, he uses science fiction as a vehicle to talk about social and human things, really. He's not particularly concerned with plots or adventure. lasers or spaceships. That's not the point of his books, really. Would you categorize Breakfast of Champions as science fiction? I don't think I would. He's sitting science fiction in via Kilgore Trout, who's...

Yes. You know, arguably his sort of stand in for him and you get these little kind of tiny macro short stories. So that always makes things feel a little bit like a science fiction novel, but it isn't really. I always figured Kilgore Trout was a reference to Theodore Sturgeon. Yes, apparently that was something that he only confirmed after Theodore Sturgeon had passed away. Okay. But I still feel like it's also a stand-in for him.

And in fact, that's maybe one of the things that I don't like so much about Breakfast of Champions is there's a scene where Kilgortrat's in the room, the characters are in the room, and he sort of writes himself into the room explicitly as well. I didn't really care for that so much. Right, right. Well, and then, like I mentioned, the repeated mention of everyone's penis size, he gives himself a comically out of proportion member.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It was a world record. So Cat's Cradle is definitely more science fiction as well, right? I feel like lots of times he has science fiction elements.

in his books, but he's reluctant to front that part of the story until the crucial moment. Yeah. And actually, I think- The sardir of Asnan is very central to Cat's Cradle, and that feels like a real kind of science fiction prop. So ice naan is essentially a form of water ice that is solid at room temperatures. Right.

Not just room temperatures, but quite high temperatures. But quite high temperatures, exactly, exactly. So it doesn't need to freeze in order to turn into a solid. And it's introduced into the story as something that...

you know, a scientist working for the army kind of developed because they thought it wouldn't have been neat if we could kind of ride over the mud and we just made it nice and solid and that the troops could move over easily. And, you know, obviously you go, well, the mud is then going to touch the...

you know, the rivers, which are going to turn into a solid and go down to the sea, which will turn into a solid. And, and it's kind of like, yes, that's you, you, you understand it. So it's, it's kind of that. That crystal is sort of like the gun on the wall throughout the novel. Exactly. Yeah. I was going to say it's like a MacGuffin kind of moving the plot forward because then each of the children of that scientist have a little vial of it.

Yeah, and they carry it around in flasks, and he kind of more or less says, what pulls, you know? Could you believe that they would do that? Yeah. I did come across something kind of interesting in researching this. Now, Ice Nine is obviously a nonsense thing, nonsense concept, but this idea that like a...

crystal lattice can sort of form a seed and contaminate the whole, the batch and anything it touches is actually a real thing in chemistry. It's called a disappearing, what is it? A disappearing polymorph. And apparently it's an issue that you see in pharmaceutical labs where they'll make a version of a drug.

you know, Paxil or something. And for years and years, it'll be fine. It'll be stable. And you get a form of the exact same chemical compound, but it's got like the wrong crystal lattice or the wrong shape. And it kind of touches and contaminates the whole batch. And apparently once a lab has kind of like switched over, it's virtually impossible to kind of decontaminate it. And everything you produce in that lab...

is the wrong polymorph. And asparagus is really common, xylitol even. When it was initially synthesized, it was, I think, a liquid at like 60 degrees or something. You're talking about the artificial sweetener? yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly but it it sort of had one form for decades um and then kind of a new form emerged which is is now the the kind of one that is commonly available in in the air and in the environment and in labs and everywhere

So it's not this idea of a crystal kind of, I guess, spreading through substances. It's not completely crazy. Yeah, I remember doing chemistry experiments with sort of... is it called supercooling? I can't remember where you've cooled a solution down to the point that it should crystallize, but it doesn't. But then if you disturb it even slightly, then the entire thing will have a chain reaction.

Yes. Yeah. That's exactly what happens with the Zolitol. And I've heard tales of people finding the ocean that way and throwing a stone in and seeing it freeze over. which would be fascinating to see. I'm sure it would be quite loud because ice is more... It's less dense than water. And so it expands. And this is, of course, part of the apocalyptic part of ICE 9 is that if it gets into a person, that's going to be catastrophic as well.

Exactly. And he kind of, I don't know if he sort of spoils the story for himself and he leaves you in suspense, but he definitely telegraphs that this is going to end badly from quite early on in the novel. I thought the other interesting idea was Bookonanism. Yes. One of the big ideas in the book is this idea of Bookonanism, which is a fake religion. And the kind of... The quote that captures this fake religion is,

live by the FOMA that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. And then it goes on to describe, well, what is a FOMA? And Biconanism is full of these like fake words. you know, grandfaloons, wampitters, fomas, but the word foma means a harmless untruth. So it's this idea that you can have a religion that maybe is not true.

But it helps the adherents be better people, healthier, cope with what's going on in their life. And I think I thought this was a really influential idea for me, reading it in my early 20s. And I think... Maybe if you come at it from a religious angle, it's a little bit cynical and nihilistic, and this idea that maybe there's untruth in religion and people just believe what they believe for kind of practical purposes.

But I think if you are an atheist or you're a non-believer, it's a really neat way of just actually giving people a bit of a break about what they believe and being a little bit more open-minded about why do people believe what they believe. And if there's a set of beliefs which does make you a kinder, better person, then actually that's probably a good thing. So I like this and it influenced my thinking a lot.

Yeah, yeah. And certainly, I think in my younger, more dogmatic days, it might have goaded me a little bit and might have not appreciated that. But anymore, I think, of course, there's lies in every religion. Even as a Christian myself, I know that the history of the church becoming corrupt in so many ways, certainly the way the evangelical Christian church today is wedded to Christian nationalism.

That's full of lies. And it's the kind of thing where I see Christianity as something that should make you a kinder person who cares for people. And yet, we see every day that that is not what's happening. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I was brought up pretty religious. And when I left, I think I did what a lot of atheists do and get quite dogmatic. You know, you're going to jump up from behind a bush and convince everyone that they're wrong.

And I think it was ideas like this that I think encouraged me to go maybe just chill a little bit. You know, people believe all sorts of things and doesn't make that, you know, it might make them better kind of people. So I really like this idea. And, you know, you hear about it a lot. It's been very influential, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I like the bit in the novel about that kind of in order to – is it in order to make the religion more popular that it is officially outlawed?

Yeah, yeah. So in the novel it started by Briconon, but his actual name is Lionel Boyd Johnson before he kind of becomes a sort of... religious leader and he's shipwrecked on an island with another character by the name of earl mccabe and they decide they're going to make this religion which will make life a little bit easier for people and better for people but he says to earl mccabe who becomes the island's

president or dictator, you're going to need to ban it to make it feel like it has a bit more substance. And actually the penalty for being an adherent is that you go on the hook. But the hook was basically inspired by like a wax museum.

uh like a horror show you peek behind the curtains and you see something gruesome and it never kind of got it never kind of got implemented for most of the history of the island um although i don't know if i was following the story correctly that that maybe did take a darker turn later um i couldn't i couldn't probably put my finger on actually did it eventually become a real uh upward religion what is quite interesting also is i think um

There's a character, Papa Manzano, who's the last dictator of the island. He sort of says on his deathbed, we need to really get rid of this corrosive Bacodonist religion now. And everyone says, yes, yes, okay, we'll do that. And then they try and give him last rites. And he says, no, no, not you. Go fetch me a Bacona and a Spreece to do the last rites. So again, it's like, it's playing with that, like, weird idea of, like, keeping...

keeping the two things in your head that, you know, it's, it's both bad and it's good, or it's what I do believe at the same time. Yep. So. Yeah, it's an interesting novel. And it's definitely one that I would like to, I read part of it in print and part of it I listened to on audio. So I think I'd like to go back and read it a little more slowly.

Yeah, and it's got a lot of great characters. It starts out with the protagonist, a guy called John. He's writing a book about the father of the bomb. And it follows this scientist, three kids around. So Felix Newton, I think. or the three kids. And those characters, I think, are very well-drawn and well-fleshed out. And there's even little characters that are really just so well-written. There's these two ambassadors who...

who the protagonist meets on the plane. And they only get a couple of pages, but they're kind of really fully fleshed out. And the wife of the ambassador, her job is as an indexer. And she has lots of like really strong opinions about people who index their own books. calls themselves indexes and reads into their personality from how they've indexed their own book. It's just a delightful book and well worth reading. Is that the one who wants him to call her mom?

I think, no, the one who wants to call her mum is like a would-be factory owner's wife. And she also loves meeting people from Indianapolis, which is apparently a whoosier. Is that the right word? A Hoosier, yeah. A Hoosier, okay. So I'd never come across that term before. That's right. I remember there was an Indiana connection. I just couldn't remember what it was. Yeah. And anyone, anyone who's a Hoosier is like their family. So then they have to call her mom. Right. Right. Yeah.

All right. So we've kind of covered some recommendations for the Vonnegut Starter Pack or Vonnegut 101. I like your terminology of starter pack. But advanced Vonnegut, where should people go if they've already read the basics? What would you recommend? Okay, so I've listed four books here, which I think are all wonderful, thought-provoking books and would definitely be the next ones I'd read. So Mother Night, that was 1961.

Play a piano, that was the first novel, full-length novel he wrote, that was 1952. Slapstick or Lonesome No More, there's this kind of subtitle to that one, and then Sirens of Titan. So I think we can probably talk briefly about those. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what order – I think it's interesting that your recommendations both for 101 and for Advanced cover a pretty wide swath of his career, right? Not everything is early Vonnegut, not everything is late Vonnegut.

Yeah, in fact, I mean, we could probably jump into Player Piano as the first one. That's a book that I kind of sat on for a long time. Because I sort of thought, you know, it's his first novel. It's going to be a little bit rough around the edges. And I'm very sorry, actually, because even though it was his first novel, it's just a very fine novel. It's great. Okay.

Give us a quick, you know, what is the book about? Because this is one I haven't read. So he's talking, he essentially talks about automation. And this is where, you know. he's quite critical of capitalism but I think the thing about capitalism that he's most critical about is not necessarily the gap between you know rich and poor but he doesn't like the way economies automate and they make people you know

you know, make people kind of redundant and useless. And he kind of, he paints this picture of a society where things get more and more efficient and you kind of have a managerial and engineering class and more and more people are just kind of basically cared for by the state. And, you know, again, what's quite balanced about this book is he doesn't, you know, no one's starving. What happens is people are sitting at home in a kind of identikit houses, watching TV all day, and he just sort of...

You can see he really doesn't like this idea. There's other parts of Player Piano that I think really kind of had a lot of foresight. So the middle section of the book is kind of an away week. um where you know like what we think of as a team building week and the business has to go away and form the green team and the blue team and the way it's written is kind of a little bit of a horror story um you you you read it and you can kind of think okay this this is

almost along the same lines as Severance, if you're watching it. And it's kind of that's where he was going. And I think it's a fine novel. And I thought you could put it on your shelf next to... You can put it on a shelf next to 1984, Brave New World. It's a great kind of dystopian novel. Okay. Yeah. Just kind of you talking about the leisure class being everyone, reminding me of Brave New World.

Yeah. Well, that's exactly the thing that I think is quite similar. He doesn't necessarily paint it as a horrible dystopia, but there's things that jar and don't feel very good to us. Adrian Tchaikovsky recently published a story called... human resources that kind of talked about the increased use of use of ai and and you know that's an it's another kind of automation right yeah i'd uh i'd love to read that the problem with him is he's just so prolific i know

He needs to really slow down and just let us all catch up because my list of two reads from him, this is getting longer and longer. Well, human resources will only take you 20 minutes to read.

More of a novella? No, just a short story. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so Player PNR I think is great. Definitely worth reading. We could probably cover Mother Nights next. Okay. So what I did when kind of a couple weeks ago preparing for this, I went to my library and just found all the Vonnegut that they had. And it wasn't very many at my local library.

I was listening to the audiobook for Cat's Cradle or for Breakfast of Champions. And I had this other stack of books where I just went, okay, I'm going to read the first chapter and see if any of these pull me in. So I did read the first chapter of Mother Night, but give us a... a quick idea of what this one's about. So Mother Nut is, it follows an American who has moved over to Germany prior to World War II.

His father, I think, was an engineer and he worked there and he became a playwright. And when the war broke out, he decided to stay in Germany and he became a kind of an American Nazi. and actually got sucked because of his skill with words and storytelling. He got sucked into kind of departments of propaganda with Goebbels. And he actually, the main character in Mother Night has a kind of a walk-on role in Slaughterhouse-Five.

They kind of describe him coming to speak to the American soldiers and saying, you know, you can switch sides and you can fight for us, but you'll only fight on the Russian side. Oh, he's the Captain America guy. Yeah, the Captain America guy with the kind of red, white, and blue swastikas and all that. But what also goes on in this book is he is actually co-opted as a spy.

by an American sergeant who meets him on a bench. He's described as, I think, the blue fairy godmother. And he says, look, whatever happens, I can't admit that you ever exist. So you're just going to have to carry on with your role. And what the novel plays with is the degree of guilt that this person must really bear. So, you know, was he...

Was he a spy pretending to be a Nazi? Or was he really a Nazi and also a spy? And how much guilt should he bear for his role in the war? And there's a kind of a throwaway line where his... I think his father-in-law suspected he might be a spy, but decided he does his job so well that he kind of doesn't care. And there's a lot of a kind of meditation on guilt and it's...

It's really interesting. There's a section towards the end where he talks about how, you know, I think he's talking to some American neo-Nazis and how they, in order to believe what they believe, they have to kind of file away. at the gears of cognition in their head. They have to believe things that are not realistic and their mental machinery is effectively broken.

But this character, because he understood really exactly what he was doing and exactly what was happening, ultimately he kind of bears the full guilt for what he did and the role he played. A slightly darker story, a little bit more serious than I think the first three we've discussed, but just a really wonderful book. And that actually was also made into a movie, I think, with...

It looks like it was Nick Nolte. Nick Nolte, that's it. Right, okay, so next one? Yeah, let's move on to the next one. The third one on the list is Slapstick or Lonesome No More. This is quite an interesting...

because it was quite critically panned at the time. I think Kurt Vonnegut, at one point he did an article where he rated his own works and he gave it, I think, a D or something. But, you know, I absolutely love it. It's probably one of my favourite ones, just personally. It's another one that starts with one of these long prologues, and I'd almost say the prologue is the best part of the novel.

He talks about his brother, who he loves very much, who is a scientist, and he can kind of see the chemistry inside clouds by pointing lasers at it. He speaks very romantically about his family.

He speaks about his sister who's deceased and how all of the books that he has been writing in his career up until then really were kind of almost written as stories to her. And that's the segue into the two characters who... sort of drive the story forward it's basically um two children who are born as twins uh wilbur and eliza swain and they are apparently

tall monstrosities, you know, with tall fingers and extra nipples and they, you know, crazy, you know, crazy freakish things. But when they're together...

They have an unbreakable bond and they kind of have this kind of collective intelligence, which makes them the smartest sort of organism in the world. But when they get pulled apart, then they kind of revert back to... these kind of lonely freakish characters and the whole book is basically a study on loneliness and he he talks about in you know in the book

basically this character goes on to become president. He sort of thinks of a cure for loneliness. He runs on that. And the cure for loneliness is he's going to give everyone kind of a noun and a number. So it'll be like your first name and then Eagle 12 and then your surname.

And if you come across someone else who is an Eagle 12, then that person is your brother or your sister. If you come across another person who's only an Eagle but like a different number, you should be treating those people as cousins. And wouldn't it be great if...

if we all had so many friends in the world. You know, he does the maths and it's kind of everyone would have tens of thousands of brothers and hundreds of thousands of cousins. And actually, I think this is something where Kurt Vonnegut... Despite how popular and successful he was, I think he did suffer from loneliness. There's an obituary interview with John Irving that...

was an absolutely amazing thing to kind of discover. Actually, I should probably go back a step. John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut at some points in my life were my two favourite authors. And I had absolutely no idea that they were connected at all. So when Kurt Vonnegut passed away, there was this obituary from, I think, Entertainment Weekly, and they interviewed John Irving. And apparently John Irving had been a student of Kurt Vonnegut's back in the 60s.

I think Kurt Vonnegut ran like a writer's workshop and he was talking about their friendship and their relationship over time. And he'd sort of say that there were certain things about Kurt Vonnegut where, you know, he'd be the life and soul of the party, but he'd often kind of like arrive early. be very entertaining and then just kind of like leave. You know, he wasn't always that comfortable with people and he tells a story in that interview.

about at one point he lived quite close to Kurt who was a very good friend of his in the end and he'd sort of hop around for coffee in the morning you know just say I was passing through let's have a cup of coffee and leave and you know the kids would love him He'd head off afterwards and they'd see that he'd been waiting on the porch. And they'd kind of count the number of cigarette butts, which kind of gave them an indication of, you know, how long he had been there.

And I just thought it was kind of such a sweet story of a guy who was quite a lone lady, obviously valued his friendship with John Irving. But he seemed to struggle with it, I think. And the whole book is about that. And it's a fantastic read. You know, it's not super polished, but for me, it just spoke to me. I thought it was great. Okay.

Now, there is a very ill-regarded film adaptation of that book. Oh, yes. I've never seen it. All right. Anything else for Advanced Vonnegut? I guess the last one I had done was Sirens of Titan. Yes.

This one I went back and forth on should it be in the 101. I think that's that good and that successful. If you enjoyed Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, you will almost certainly enjoy Sirens of Titan. I would agree that this, so this was in breakfast of champions was kind of a bounce off for me, but the sirens of Titan was much, I thought much more in the vein of slaughterhouse five. Yeah. It's, it's got a.

I think it's got Tralfamadorians, for one thing. I don't know that they're particularly consistent in terms of how they're described. No, I don't think so. But they play a role, and the protagonist is... a little bit like Billy Pilgrim in that he's kind of, events go, get out of his control and he's kind of taken, he's, you know, he goes on this quite disturbing, troubled journey.

He's probably less of a nice guy than Billy Pilgrim. He starts the novel being maybe quite rich and entitled, and he comes across this guy who's been caught in. I kind of call it a time warp of some kind, and he materializes every 39 days or something, and he says, you know, your life is going to change. You're going to end up having a child with my ex-wife, Beatrice, and, you know.

What he says sort of suggests he might die on Titan. And the character there, Malachar Constant, he kind of goes, none of that sounds good to me. I'm going to do everything I can to avoid it. and of course that that's what kind of triggers off the that sets off the things that kind of leads to his downfall and a lot of like trials and tribulations uh which i mean it's not easy to ruin

of a Vonnegut novel, but I think I should probably leave it there. So he certainly, he goes on a journey and it's dark. You see this guy suffering. There's a lot of humor. But again, just a wonderful novel. And the first one that I read, it kind of got me going on the rest. Okay. And yeah, it's...

surprisingly sad in places just because of some of the tragic things that happen and the limited information that is given to some of the characters. One of them commits a particular act but doesn't know it. Yeah, exactly. And I think I wouldn't even say that this character does anything necessary to redeem himself. But his downfall is so complete.

that you kind of can't help but, like, have sympathy and kind of pity for him. Yeah. It's – yeah, definitely it's a novel that really captures what Bonnegut does well, which is – He can write incredibly dark novels, but also kind of that are quite comedic and funny. So that one definitely goes, you know, it could have been in the 101. It's that good. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I love the term.

chronosynclastic infindibulum yeah it reminds me um what's the gadgets in dude where's my car uh i have not seen that movie you haven't okay it's uh There's a device there, and every time it comes up, they say its power is unexceeded by its mystery. And it's got a similar sort of sounding name. I'll have to look it up. Like Turbo Encambulator kind of thing?

It's the chronosomething infidibulum. It's very similar sounding. Okay. The continuum transfunctioner. The continuum transfunctioner, yes. And there's some Swedish guys who are tasked with recovering. The Continuum Transfunctioner. It's very fun. I'd forgotten that that was a sneakily science fiction movie. Yeah, yeah. It's also definitely a guilty pleasure. Lowbrow, late night movie.

I might have to put that. I love Sean William Scott. He cracks me up. Yeah. Well, okay. So that gets me to the end of Advanced Vonnegut. And I think...

I'd bore everyone if I went through the next seven novels in the same detail, but should I do a speed run of the last piece? Yeah, why don't you do it? I mean, because it's a fairly limited number of novels to begin with. Okay, okay, brilliant. So other great books that are well worth reading. You've got Bluebeard. Bluebeard is much more of a kind of character-driven novel. It follows the story of an Armenian fellow called Rabbo Karabikian, who also ends up playing a small role in the war.

It's the closest thing, I think, to a Vonnegut romance. There's a kind of, there's a little bit of a romance in there. And it's funny, I said earlier that I didn't realise there was a connection between John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut. Bluebeard for me feels like a book you could put next to the John Irving novels on your shelf. It's that kind of novel. But very good. And obviously there's a reference there to the classic fairy tale.

And the question of, you know, what's in the room does drive the story forward a little bit. Then you've got Jailbird. Jailbird is, again, it's one that sort of split the critics. I think Jailbird is again a little bit of a meditation on guilt. It's this guy who plays a small role in the Watergate affair, ends up going to prison for it. He gets released. There's a lot of discussion on kind of sort of...

social justice and labour movements because he meets up again with his old girlfriend from university and they were part of the labour and the trade union societies and things. This is actually quite a good book. I feel like it can be paired with Mother Night a little bit in that it's discussing guilt. This character, I think there's a little bit more sympathy for him and you maybe fall down on the side of he's just not very good at life.

maybe made some bad decisions and very enjoyable. Galapagos, I didn't reread for this podcast, but it's kind of set in the far future. It's funny, the one thing I remember about it, it deals with our human brains and intelligence. Are we too smart for our own good?

The one thing that I remember about this is he has this view of humans who've kind of devolved into like seals on an island and that would be quite a good thing because we wouldn't have opposable thumbs, which means we can't use grenades or machine guns. And occasionally one of the seals will pass wind and they'll all laugh. And that would be a good outcome, right? It's a very sweet idea. And then the last four, for the completists only, I think.

God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, Dead Eye Dick, Hocus Pocus, and Time Quick. There are, you know, there's people out there who really enjoy those titles. Me personally, I didn't. I would say if you didn't like... Breakfast of Champions, don't read Timequake because Timequake, it feels like Breakfast of Champions on speed. Hocus Pocus was, you know, that was a book where he kind of dealt with the criminal justice system.

But again, I didn't feel that I got what he was trying to say. And Dead Eye Dick, I think it's quite actually closely connected to Breakfast of Champions in terms of it's set in the same city. It's about a young man who, you know, fires an office gun into the air and accidentally kills someone. And that was probably the last book I read before not reading Vonnegut for 10 or 15 years.

before now so I don't remember it that fondly but you know you read write 14 books and you know 10 of them are absolute crackers you can't you can't you can't blame Kurt Vonnegut for

for not giving us lots of great stories yeah yeah well cool um so kind of what i just wanted to ask you about you know you set out to do this project or what what have you Have you gained anything from it? Do you feel like it was a worthwhile endeavor to just read everything Vonnegut wrote? Well, it gave me a little bit of a project to replace reading the Hugos. Okay. You're kind of casting it out for something a bit structured.

I think there were a few things that occurred to me. I think I got a feel for the broader themes in Kurt Vonnegut's work. There were things I hadn't quite appreciated, like he reuses characters.

And you sort of don't see that when you read novels spaced out, but there'll be a character, Paul Schlesinger, and he kind of crops up in this book and then that book. I hadn't realised, for example, that in Slaughterhouse-Five, Elliot Rosewater, he's in a hospital bed next to him, actually he's got his own book. There's more of a kind of Vonnegut-y verse than I'd appreciated before. Yeah, Rosewater was in, now I can't remember if it was Cat's Cradle or Sirens of Titan or Breakfast of Champions.

Yeah, so he was in his own book, which was, you know, he was a character experimenting with, like, radical empathy. And he got the kind of the short version of Walk on Roll in Slaughterhouse-Five. sitting next to Billy Pilgrim and, you know. Yeah, yeah. There was another one of the novels that I remember him being referenced in as well. Yeah, yeah. Maybe just one time. He does that. And it even could, actually, Kilgore Trout is not consistently written.

So the Killgold Trout that is in Jailbird is a completely different character to the one that's in, let's say, Townquake. Right. Well, likewise, the Trout from Midorians, right? Where you don't really learn anything about them in Waterhouse 5. But in Sirens of Titan, you find out that they're machines. Yeah, exactly. And that can be put together and taken apart and put back together again.

So, yeah, I enjoyed it. I loved it. And I think I read about half of his books in university and then nothing for years and years. So it was just a nice chance to go back in time a little bit and revisit them. I knew I'd enjoy them. Wouldn't be time badly spent.

Do you feel like his work has aged well? Oh, that's always a tricky question. There are things that you read that don't sit so well with you. So I thought in Breakfast of Champion, he dealt with race relations. in a way that I think he wanted to be quite progressive. But reading it now, it felt like a little bit flippant, maybe.

But he's the sort of writer where if he got retrospectively cancelled because he wasn't perfect, I think that would be a real loss to kind of like progressive thinking and progressive literature. he was so progressive and he did write so much about, you know, in more tolerant societies, you know, less self-destructive societies. So there's definitely things that haven't aged well. Yeah. Yeah. Some, yeah. Some of the language he uses, yeah, there, there's.

racial and ethnic slurs that abound yeah and i think it's it's fun for sarah's literature i feel sometimes he's a little bit flippant with it and easy you know but a little bit loose and too easy um but He's not the kind of author I'd want to see kind of judged too harshly. Because, you know, if you look at the whole body of his work, it is progressive. And I think it's...

moves the way we think about things in the right direction generally. It's also been, I think, noted that he doesn't write women particularly well. If I think about... Cat's Cradle, for example, there's a woman who really exists, Mona, just to be kind of an object to desire. Yeah, just to be admired. Yeah, kind of, she's quite one-dimensional. She does have quite a last moment, though.

Yeah, and she's introduced late, isn't she? You don't hear about her at all until halfway through. But, you know, in Bluebeard, for example, I think there's a... a woman who engages with the protagonist and you sort of think, is this a romantic interest? And she's very well drawn and three-dimensional and great. So I don't think it's a fair criticism across his whole body of work. Okay.

All right. Well, that seems to cover things pretty, pretty well. So I'd be curious to hear from listeners, you know, if they've read a lot of Vonnegut and if they have recommendations to add or any comments on the recommendations that you had. Anyone's journey with an author is going to be unique and from their own perspective. And so I'd be curious to hear about that. Any social media that you want to give out?

Not particularly. I'm on Blue Scar. I go under the name Wilbur Daffodil. So if someone wants to follow me, I occasionally post opinions on movies. But, yeah, as I said, I don't have a blog or I don't produce much content other than... Movie reviews and book reviews, really. Okay. All right. And now your first podcast. And now my first podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it was a pleasure. So thank you so much. It was a long time ago you reached out about this. And I know that you had wanted to do a thorough job. And so it made sense to kick it down the road a ways. But I appreciate your patience. Thank you. And thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like you've given me some reading recommendations that I'm going to need to follow up on now. Because after I finished Breakfast of Champions, I thought, I don't know if Vonnegut's for me. But then Sirens of Titan kind of...

pulled me back and went, okay, yeah, he's got something. Yeah, yeah. I listened to your, I think, Scalzi episode recently, and it was a sort of similar thing. I mean, I think writers can go through periods where you don't love what they're doing. Yeah.

You can't write them off completely. Yeah. Well, thanks again, Nick. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you. All right. Bye now. Well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed that discussion with Nick. He really brought a lot of knowledge of Vonnegut to that. And so I hope you picked up some reading recommendations. I know I did. So I will probably be checking those out next time I get some extra reading time on my hands.

Since this episode is coming out during the window for voting for the Hugo Awards, I have already done some voting myself, and I would humbly ask if you think this podcast is worthy that you add me to the ballot.

It's in my home turf, so I will be at Worldcon. If you're going to be there as well, then let me know if you want to meet up. I would love to do that. Of course, as usual, you can support the podcast in a variety of ways. Look at the show notes. All the details are there. And as always...

Reach out to me if you want to tell me something. Social media, email, feedback at hugospodcast.com. All the ways. Okay. I think that's going to do it for this time. So thank you again so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye. The theme music for the Hugo's There podcast was composed and performed by Tim Kuske.