Letter to Kurt Vonnegut Dec 3, 1975

It had been six years since Dad had praised Kurt Vonnegut in a  New York Times Book Review article entitled "Kurt Vonnegut, Head Bookinist", timed for the release of Slaughterhouse-Five. Nine years since he'd written a"ground breaking" retrospective of the author's works for The New Republic. Now, with the looming publication of Friendly Fire, Dad was seeking friendly blurbs from the kind of people who would make a difference. He thought Vonnegut owed him one so when the esteemed author declined, Dad was incensed enough to write Vonnegut a "snarler".

      Dear Kurt:

           Harvey Ginsberg at G.P. Putnam's told me you had declined to read the manuscript of my book Friendly Fire because everyone was asking you to read books these days. When I wrote you and said that if you were too busy I'd understand and promise not to sulk, I did not promise not to be angry and a little amazed. Back in 1966, you may remember, when you were still trying to make it big, I helped you out by doing that long retrospective review of your previous books for The New Republic suggesting people consider you  something more than a science fiction writer and that you be taken seriously. I later, out of friendship for you , did that "side-piece" on you to tie in with Bob Scholes' review of Slaughterhouse-Five for the NYTBR.

         In the copy of Mother Night you autographed for me in Iowa City in 1967 you wrote :

   

          "To Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, cousin of my fourth best student, main sponsor of me as a Guggenheim fellow--in short, a friend worth ten thousand dollars, three thousand of them tax free. Love, Kurt Vonnegut Jr."

   

          As I said, I understand that you are very busy. In turn, I trust you will understand that I figure you're a friend worth about two cents.

         Sincerely,

          C.D.B. Bryan

    

  I have no reason to believe the two ever spoke, or wrote,  to each other again.

In Praise of Vonnegut, 1969

"Two messages recur through all of Vonnegut's writing. The first is Be Kind. The second is God doesn't care whether you are or not"
     C.D.B. Bryan, New York Times


Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the author of six novels and two short-story collections, live and writes in an old house in West Barnstable on Cape Cod with his wife, six children, a sheepdog, and a tidal wave of house guests. Vonnegut is over six feet tall, a rumpled and shaggy 46 year old fourth generation German-American with a drooping mustache, a brow chevroned like a sergeant-major's sleeve, and the eyes of a sacrificial alter-bound virgin caught in mid-shrug.
  Seated, Vonnegut disappears so deeply into cushions that he resembles a courdroy covered bat-wing chair that has been dropped 2,000 feet from a passing airplane.

So begins "Kurt Vonnegut, Head Bookonist", an article Dad wrote for the New York Times Book Review in 1969, the week Slaughter House-Five hit bookstores. It follows his 1966 Vonnegut profile in The New Republic, "Kurt Vonnegut on Target", in which he wrote Vonnegut "had not received the acceptance due him from the reading public" despite being "one of the most readable and amusing of the new humorists".

Dad's articles and Robert Scholes's The Fabulators were the first critical assessments of Vonnegut that treated him seriously. Joe David Bellamy goes so far as to say they were "the essential groundbreaking efforts" in his book Literary Luxuries: American Writing at the End of the Millennium.

More from Dad's 1969 article:

   Among Vonnegut's earlier fans were Conrad Aiken, Nelson Algren, Marc Connelly, Jules Feiffer, Graham Greene and Terry Southern. But today whether because of, or in spite of, the fact that Vonnegut's novels are now being taught at universities, the under-30's are beginning to grant him a cultish attention which Vonnegut finds "very gratifying, it really is. It's charming." an attention that has long been overdue. And, happily, an increasing number of general readers are finding in Vonnegut's quiet, humorous, well-mannered and rational protests against man's inhumanity to man an articulate bridge across the generation chasm.

Vonnegut told Dad he deliberately keeps his books short because he wants them to be read by important people:

"I've worried some about why write books when Presidents and Senators and generals do not read them and the university experience taught me a very good reason: you catch people before they become generals and Senators and Presidents, and you poison their minds with humanity. Encourage them to make a better world."

Dad's signed copy of Cat's Cradle

Dad's 1976 take on his New Republic Article:

     I started doing book reviews in 1963 in The New Republic and did the first big, comprehensive review on Vonnegut which resulted, according to Vonnegut, in his receiving a Guggenheim grant for $10,000 and a three book $75,000 contract with DelaCorte. I then began reviewing for the Times book review, did the front page review on Tom Wolfe's Ken Kesey book and Pump House Gang, and the second front page on Amy Vanderbilt's Etiquette ( illustrated by Edward Gorey) and about 30/40 others/