(Vonnegut interviews part 2; stuff from a 1974 interview by Joe Bellamy and John Casey)
Casey: What about your novel Slaughterhouse-Five?
Vonnegut: It was written to treat a disaster. I was present in the greatest massacre in European history, which was the destruction of Dresden by fire-bombing. So I said, Okay, you were there.
The American and British air forces together killed 135,000 people in two hours. This is a worlds record. Its never been done faster, not in the Battle of Britain or Hiroshima. (In order to qualify as a massacre, you have to kill real fast.) But I was there, and there was no news about it in the American papers, it was so embarrassing. I was there- so say something about it.
The way we survived- we were in the stockyards in the middle of Dresden. How does a firestorm work? Waves and waves of planes come over carrying high explosives which open roofs, make lots of kindling, and drive the firemen underground. Then they take hundreds of thousands of little incendiary bombs (the size had been reduced from a foot and a half to the size of a shotgun shell by the end of the war) and scatter them. Then more high explosives until all the little fires join up into one apocalyptic flame with tornadoes around the edges sucking more and more, feeding the inferno.
Dresden was a highly ornamented city, like Paris. There were no air-raid shelters, just ordinary cellars, because a raid was not expected and the war was almost over.
We got through it, the Americans there, because we were quartered in the stockyards were it was wide and open and there was a meat locker three stories beneath the surface, the only decent shelter in the city. So we went down into the meat locker, and when we came up again the city was gone and everyone was dead. We walked for miles before we saw anybody else; all organic things were consumed.
Anyway, I came home in 1945, started writing about it, and wrote about it, and wrote about it, and wrote about it. This thin book is about what its like to write a book about a thing like that. I couldnt get much closer. I would head myself back into a memory of it, the circuit breakers would kick out; Id head in again, Id back off. The book is a process of twenty years of this sort of living with Dresden and the aftermath. Its like Heinrich Bolls book, Absent Without Leave- stories about German soldiers with the war part missing. You see them leave and return, but theres this terrible hole in the middle. That is like my memory of Dresden; actually, theres nothing there.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Vonnegut (a page later): I think writers are the most important members of our society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have, and stand by, their own ideas.
I like everything there is about being a writer except the way my neighbors treat me, because I honor them for what they are, and they really do find me irrelevant on Cape Cod. Theres my state representative; I campaigned for him, and he got drunk one night and came over and said, You know, I cant understand a word you write and neither can any of your neighbors so why dont you change your style, so why not write something people will like? He was just telling me for my own good. He was a former English major at Brown.
Casey: Did he win?
Vonnegut: He went crazy. He really went bughouse, finally.
Casey: What about your novel Slaughterhouse-Five?
Vonnegut: It was written to treat a disaster. I was present in the greatest massacre in European history, which was the destruction of Dresden by fire-bombing. So I said, Okay, you were there.
The American and British air forces together killed 135,000 people in two hours. This is a worlds record. Its never been done faster, not in the Battle of Britain or Hiroshima. (In order to qualify as a massacre, you have to kill real fast.) But I was there, and there was no news about it in the American papers, it was so embarrassing. I was there- so say something about it.
The way we survived- we were in the stockyards in the middle of Dresden. How does a firestorm work? Waves and waves of planes come over carrying high explosives which open roofs, make lots of kindling, and drive the firemen underground. Then they take hundreds of thousands of little incendiary bombs (the size had been reduced from a foot and a half to the size of a shotgun shell by the end of the war) and scatter them. Then more high explosives until all the little fires join up into one apocalyptic flame with tornadoes around the edges sucking more and more, feeding the inferno.
Dresden was a highly ornamented city, like Paris. There were no air-raid shelters, just ordinary cellars, because a raid was not expected and the war was almost over.
We got through it, the Americans there, because we were quartered in the stockyards were it was wide and open and there was a meat locker three stories beneath the surface, the only decent shelter in the city. So we went down into the meat locker, and when we came up again the city was gone and everyone was dead. We walked for miles before we saw anybody else; all organic things were consumed.
Anyway, I came home in 1945, started writing about it, and wrote about it, and wrote about it, and wrote about it. This thin book is about what its like to write a book about a thing like that. I couldnt get much closer. I would head myself back into a memory of it, the circuit breakers would kick out; Id head in again, Id back off. The book is a process of twenty years of this sort of living with Dresden and the aftermath. Its like Heinrich Bolls book, Absent Without Leave- stories about German soldiers with the war part missing. You see them leave and return, but theres this terrible hole in the middle. That is like my memory of Dresden; actually, theres nothing there.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Vonnegut (a page later): I think writers are the most important members of our society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have, and stand by, their own ideas.
I like everything there is about being a writer except the way my neighbors treat me, because I honor them for what they are, and they really do find me irrelevant on Cape Cod. Theres my state representative; I campaigned for him, and he got drunk one night and came over and said, You know, I cant understand a word you write and neither can any of your neighbors so why dont you change your style, so why not write something people will like? He was just telling me for my own good. He was a former English major at Brown.
Casey: Did he win?
Vonnegut: He went crazy. He really went bughouse, finally.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
I don't know the *exact* differences between mice and rats except that I know rats are bigger than mice, and if you put them both together the rat will kill the mouse or hamster or whatever rodent you put in with it that isn't a rat.