And So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut: A Life

Charles J. Shields

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781429973793
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 The first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who changed the conversation of American literature. In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter, asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a passion for his subject, and already deep into his research, Shields wrote again and this time, to his delight, the answer came back: "O.K." For the next year—a year that ended up being Vonnegut's last—Shields had access to Vonnegut and his letters.
And So It Goes is the culmination of five years of research and writing—the first-ever biography of the life of Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut resonates with readers of all generations from the baby boomers who grew up with him to high-school and college students who are discovering his work for the first time. Vonnegut's concise collection of personal essays, Man Without a Country, published in 2006, spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 300, 000 copies to date. The twenty-first century has seen interest in and scholarship about Vonnegut's works grow even stronger, and this is the first book to examine in full the life of one of the most influential iconoclasts of his time.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Prologue: Out of Print and Scared to Death
• 1: You Were an Accident, 1922–1940
• 2: One of the Biggest Fools on the Hill, 1940–1943
• 3: To War in the Bridal Suite, 1943–1945
• 4: Folk Society and the House of Magic, 1945–1947
• 5: Stop Being Such a Hardheaded Realist, 1948–1951
• 6: The Dead Engineer, 1951–1958
• 7: Cooped Up with All These Kids, 1958–1965
• 8: A Community of Writers, 1965–1967
• 9: The Big Ka-BOOM, 1967–1969
• 10: Goodbye and Goodbye and Goodbye, 1969–1971
• 11: Cultural Bureaucrat, 1971–1974
• 12: Ripped Off, 1975–1979
• 13: Looking for Mr. Vonnegut, 1980–1984
• 14: Dear Celebrity, 1984–1991
• 15: Waiting to Die, 1992–2007
• Appendix: Vonnegut-Lieber Family History
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author
• Also by Charles J. Shields
• Copyright