For some reason, the irony seems appropriate. Here was a counterculture icon speaking out against the establishment while the investments in his portfolio included a strip mining company and Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the napalm used in Vietnam.
That is just one of the contradictions and conflicts between public persona and private person that arise in Charles J. Shields' thorough and excellent new biography, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
And So It Goes is an "authorized" biography. In 2006, having just published Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, Shields sought and eventually obtained Vonnegut's agreement to work with him on a biography. Unfortunately, after just three meetings, Vonnegut fell and suffered irreversible brain injuries that led to his death in April 2007. After Vonnegut's death, his literary executors told Shields they chose someone else to write the "authorized" biography. As a result, they denied Shields permission to quote from some of Vonnegut's letters. (The new authorized biographer was told by the estate six months later he was no longer the authorized biographer.)
Yet And So It Goes (a title based on a repeated phrase in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five) is about as thoroughly researched as they come. Not only did Shields interview 125 of Vonnegut's contemporaries, friends, and family members, he still had access to some 1,500 personal letters, nearly all of them never before seen. Shields provides plenty of footnotes (many chapters have 150 or more) for those interested in the source material, but his straightforward style makes it a pleasure for the reader who isn't worried about where each statement comes from.
One of the most appealing aspects of the book is its balance. Approaching it chronologically, Shields details aspects of the author's life that Vonnegut and others felt affected him psychologically and emotionally, but doesn't meander into the pop psychoanalysis seen in some biographies. The book does not hesitate to explore Vonnegut's often unusual relationship with his first wife, Jane, his occasional (and at times long-term) dalliances, and his perhaps even more unusual relationship with his second wife, Jill Krementz, but, for the most part, Shields lets the participants or those with firsthand knowledge speak for themselves. (Krementz refused to be interviewed for the book.) He examines the source and meaning of material in Vonnegut's works, but doesn't go romping off in "lit crit" analysis. He talks about the discrepancies between the public persona and the private person, but lets the reader decide whether and how it affects their view of Vonnegut.
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