In the introduction to this exhaustively researched biography of author and countercultural hero Kurt Vonnegut, Charles J. Shields admits that writing the book was "like conversing with an empty chair."
That's because Vonnegut died shortly after giving Shields permission to write And So It Goes (the title coming from the famous catchphrase echoing throughout Slaughterhouse-Five). Unprepared for his subject's death, then barred from further access to his records by Vonnegut's family, Shields was left to craft the book from old interviews, letters he was prohibited from quoting directly and a few brief conversations with the man himself. In spite of these limitations, Shields animates the figure in the "empty chair"--and he looks much different from what fans may expect.
Through a sensitive analysis of Vonnegut's privileged but lonely childhood, chaotic personal life and devotion to his work (often at the expense of those close to him), Shields reveals a man quite at odds with the cherished image of the wistful humanist who wrote himself into his novels and extolled a simple philosophy best explained by the famous line, "God damn it, babies, you've got to be kind."
If Shields's presentation of Vonnegut is a little disenchanting, it is still sympathetic at heart. He never suggests Vonnegut's reality compromised the integrity of his fiction, instead showing us a complicated, conflicted man who "made choices, consciously or unconsciously, that had created multiple and contradicting identities." Vonnegut was, in Shields's portrait, a "hero, a guru, and a leftist to his fans; a wealthy investor to his broker; a champion of family and community, and yet a distant father; a satirist of American life, but feeding at the trough of celebrity."
This may be an apt place to sigh, "And so it goes." --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice