TITLE: Writing Advice to the Aspiring Kurt Vonnegut AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: March 31, 2019 4:07 PM DESC: ----- BODY: In the fall of 1945, Kurt Vonnegut was serving out the last few months of his military commitment after returning home from Dresden. During the day, he did paperwork in the secretarial pool, and at night he wrote stories in the hopes of making a living as a writer when he left the service. One day his wife, Jane, sent four of his stories to one of those agents who used to advertise in magazines and promise to help frustrated writers get into the business. Her cover letter touted Kurt's desire, ambition, and potential. The agent wrote back with clear-eyed advice for an aspiring professional writer:
You say you think that Kurt is a potential Chekhov. To this I fervently reply "Heaven Save Him!" This is a very revealing statement. I'm glad you made it. I hope the virus has not become so entrenched that it can't be driven out of his system. I recognize the symptoms of a widely prevailing ailment.... Read Chekhov and enjoy him, yes, and all of the other great and inspiring ones, but don't encourage Kurt, or anybody else, to try to write like them. If you want to sell in the current market, you have got to write "current literature". I warmly applaud Kurt's desire to "say something" that will have some influence, however small, that will do something to help uplift humanity. Every writer worth a hoot has ambition. But don't think that it can't be done in terms of current fiction.... So then, what it adds up to or boils down to is this: you have got to master the current technique if you want acceptance for anything, good or drivel, in the current market. The "message to humanity" is a by-product: it always has been.... If you want to make a living writing you will first of all write to entertain, to divert, to amuse. And that in itself is a noble aim.
What a generous response. I don't know if he responded this way to everyone who contacted him, or if he saw something special in Jane Vonnegut's letter. But this doesn't feel like a generic form letter. It's easy to idealize classic works of art and the writers, poets, and playwrights who created them. We forget sometimes that they were writing for an audience in their own time, sometimes a popular one, and that most often they were using the styles and techniques that connected with the people. Shakespeare and Mozart -- and Chekhov -- made great art and pushed boundaries, but they did so in their "current market". They entertained and amused who those saw performances of their works. And that's more than just okay; it, too, is a noble aim. I found this story early in Charles Shields's And So It Goes. Shields met Vonnegut in the last year of his life and received his blessing to write the definitive biography of his life. It's not a perfect book, but it's easy to read and contains a boatload of information. I'm not sure what I'm just now getting around to reading it. -----