Chances are that you might be most likely to write if I were to adopt a light vein: The “She’s Went and Gone to the Pentagon, Left Me Flat to be a Bureaucrat Blues” have bogged down pending more particulars from you. Also, there will be considerable relief felt in these quarters when Mother Nature pronounces our horrendous assault on join immortality through progeny a mechanical fiasco.
Pfc. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
xxxxxxxxxx
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Pfc. Kurt Vonnegut
D-2, A.S.T.P. 4431
TENN. U., KNOXVILLE, TENN.
JANE M. COX
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
SWARTHMORE, PA.
Through mighty fights and awful plights
And fever’s dread delirium––
My only need, my only creed,
Is to clean my teeth with
irium
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4-4-44
Dear Woofy:
Maybe you’ve mailed me some biting and terribly just rebuttle to my last inane outburst from Knoxville––I don’t know. I’ve moved so often since that I’ve not got a letter for a couple of weeks. Well, no matter.
I’m in Battallion Intelligence now, in the 106th Division, in a staging area––Camp Atterbury. I got home last week-end and saw [Rich] and Thos. H. at the Player’s Club dance. They were very pleasant, seeming to be having a near-ecstatic time. They said Hairbreadth Harry had planned to be at the dance but had, at the last minute, been unable to attend––bombing O-boats in the Wabash I should imagine. Your family was radiant in giving me the impression that Bloody Bruce is something not far removed from a gentile Jesus. I shall seek him out once more if I can get another pass.
I feel one helluva lot better now that I’m back with combat troops. The 106th has completed its training, having just come from Tennessee maneuvers in which it was judged the best. We’ve just been given overseas physicals (I passed) and furloughs are being given out (I’m not eligible).
My new job is to cover my face and hands with soot and crawl into enemy lines to see what in hell they’ve got. This isn’t dramatizing my position: ––I’ve been given a job and that’s it. There are seven of us in the battallion: we work singly or in pairs. It is a job so completely foreign to my nature that I’m getting a pleasurable kick out of anticipating doing it under the nose of the enemy––a sunburst of new sensations––possibly you understand.
I may still be here when and if you come home in June or before. I hope to see you, though the motive and mission are obscure. In any event, Woofy, please write.
Love,
Kurt––
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4-17-44
Dear Woofy:
I like you. I think I like you more than anyone else in the world: you tell me what I want to hear; you ask me questions I love to answer. I like the letter I got today.
I like your fiendish curiosity. If you were to say, “All right, let’s get married in 1945?” When you posed the question you surely realized what a Delphic question it was: 1946, 1947, or 1948 for that matter. I may be dead before the war ends. People, even people you know quite well, do get killed. Apparently ours is not an undeniable passion, like Jim’s and Allie’s, perhaps, that tells us to be greedily in love; to take great mouthfulls of everything on the banquet-board before us. It was once. Tell me, would you enjoy living with me, sleeping with me, leading a carnival life? Do you ever think about it and think it would be good? Carnival life: I’ll explain:––sideshow after sideshow––half truths, colorfully displayed,––the net effects of our roccoco environments and educations; with intermittant Ferris Wheels and Lindy Loops,––occasional binges and my chasing you naked all over the bedroom. Would you like that, Woofy? Do you think it’s a thing we should have, a thing you would bitterly regret having missed were I killed? Do you love me? That’s important.
Or possibly you assume that the war will be over in 1945: I am once more a civilian, unscathed. Were you to accept my hypothetical proposal I would suffer minor shock––coming face to face with the full-blown fruit of years of playful effort would have that effect. Once aclimated to the astonishing situation I’ve got myself into I would be both delighted and proud––a world beater, I think. If, instead of giving me a riddle, you had said, “Let’s get married in 1945” I would have replied, “Good idea, Woofy. We will be happy. If I am here in 1945 we’ll do it.”
Maybe, when and if you come home soon, Kendall and I will meet. I’ll not seek him out. Week-ends are too short. The general conception of polygamy is one man with two or more wives. I can’t see it any other way.
Jimmy Adams wrote that he will try to get me into the Public Relations Office of the European Theater of War. That’s his current station––in England. It all hinges on the 106th Division’s releasing me. I don’t think they will. Dear, sweet Jesus, I hope it comes through.
No, Woofy, I’m not really a scientist but rather a passionate and comprehending fan of science. It’s like the lament, “I sing so sweet and it comes out so sour.” That’s about the size of it. I know a lot of fascinating little things like why the wind blows, why things mildew in damp places, how long it will take for a stone to fall from the top to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, how to hold my breath for three minutes, why steel bridges are built the way they are, that sperm travels only upward etc. I like being able to explain things. I can explain a lot.
Allie will have her baby in about six weeks. If you want to have a baby please come home and let it be mine. I asked first.
About revolutionizing education––just what is your plan––universal Orchard School? You ommitted mention of just what changes do you have in mind? Yes, I should say you could influence young minds––surely. You’re just the person, Woofy, to do that. That you should want to do this––dabble or wreak in education, that is––comes as a surprise to me, but upon reflection is wonderfully sound. Tell me your ideas and I’ll try to criticize them
LOVE KURT
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5-3-44
Dear Woofy:
When I consider how my love is spent e’re half my days in this dark world and wide I wonder why you––(that person in whose being so much of my love has been spent)––are not here with me to relish and interpret in terms of the nobility and full-bodied lush justice of life this omnipotent warm Spring day. Jane, Darling, at this moment, as I write, you are being loved so much that my heart is nearly bursting. That love is inbred, a thing I can’t deny and which, under the compunction of an uninhibited and completely naked and shapely Proserpine I have given free rein. At a full run, dearest, with the wind rushing past my ears, with the hot sun beating down on my bare head, with clouds of dust rolling behind, I love you, Jane.
I shan’t be here when you return. But in your heart know this––I’ve loved you with more violence and passion than riot or rebellion. You’ve been loved well this lovely Spring day.
Kurt––
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Pfc Kurt Vonnegut 12102964
HQ. Co., 2nd Bn. 423 INF
A.P.O. 443, Camp Atterbury, IND.
JANE MARIE COX
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
SWARTHMORE, PA.
5-8-44
Dear Woofy:
Someone said that there are three kinds of lies: little white lies, big lies, and statistics. Here are a few statistics, built on the miserable fact that we have been together nine hours out of a little more than a year.
At that rate we have been together one hour out of every thousand hours––
One day out of every three years––
One month out of a lifetime or about half that part of your life dedicated to brushing your teeth––
&n
bsp; And were we to be together for what remains of our lives (our prewar birthright) we would have to be born in 50000 B.C., the Early Stone Age, when man first used fire and was learning to chip crude weapons from flint, before he moved into caves!
ALL OF
THIS IS
VERY SAD
AND WILL
DOUBTLESS
BECOME
MUCH WORSE
GLOOM
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5-30-44
Dear Woofy:
Your warm letter is beside me now.
Allie and I found mother curled up as if asleep. There was no distortion––nothing grotesque. In the simplest, the legendary way, mother died. Absolute normalcy: birth, a few years, and then death.
Grief over a death is a selfish thing and the magnitude of the genuine grief is in a way a monument to the deceased. I still need my mother terribly, Woofy. It is a source of self-damnation that I should have been such a prosaic adolescent, vociferously denying that mother was still the reservoir of my strength. These things I should have said to my mother I have left unsaid. That is the melancholy and haunting thought. What is this thing that makes people deny full and frequent expression of love and devotion? My train of thought becomes less commonplace and maudlin in the light of a thing I may have intimated to you: mother was––(as a result of a cruelly severe menopause)––at times completely irrational. Your experience with such matters was perhaps more sustained than mine but we’ve both been on the same rack––and it is an unbelievably excruciating rack. There-in lies a bond of which you may not have been conscious. While on that rack my reactions were frequently more human than compassionate. Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance. I must be tolerant. I must try to understand. The variations in human nature are degrees of illness. I’ve got to remember that. Please never mention to anyone what I’ve just said. It cried out to be told. Words between us are uninhibited and for such a relationship I am grateful.
It is rather for us, the living, to be here dedicated––: and dedicated we are, Bernard, Alice and Coy, to those elements of our mother which were her birthright: complete and unselfish devotion to her family; morality; inflexible sense of fair play; childlike love for all things alive. I see now the what and why of my being. Mother is dead. I can’t tell her what I know.
I need someone to tell me big wonderful lies about myself––someone to be deeply concerned about me––I want to feel that someone is watching my every move and giving very much of a damn––I want a deep and boundless love that I can brashly abuse and be forgiven for it. These playthings were mine two weeks ago. I cried for a very long time.
If I’m not mistaken, you will graduate around June 27. Very nicely done, Woofy––as well as is possible I should suppose. The question now rises in my mind: what manner of person are you––emerging from your cocoon? What are your plans? Public Relations in England says they will take me but I must first get over there. I’ve pulled wires to that end. How long it will take me I’ve no idea. You’ll be home in late June or early July, I guess. My hope is that we’ll see each other at that time. There’s nothing I want more.
Allie’s baby is due at any minute. Life goes on and on and on for billions of years until the Sun burns up––then it and immortality die. Love, Kurt
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6-16-44
Dear Woofy:
In that you have completed sixteen years of the best education this country has to offer, and in that you have done the best possible work during each of those sixteen years, and in that my own education has been punctuated with much gnashing of teeth and chagrin, I take awed note of your graduation.
My garbled college education to date has been, from a humanistic standpoint, shallow and insipid at best. Yours has been neither of those, certainly. “A cultivated heart and a disciplined mind are elements of power.”–Caleb Mills, naturally. Those elements are yours now, I should suppose. But, upon reflection, those elements have, for the few years during which I’ve known you, been evident potentialities. A thing to which I look foreward is the precipitation of all things floating about inside of you––impulses, passions, inhibitions––into tangible, sparkling, multicolored crystals.
It must be a pretty rough experience to be suddenly pronounced complete and expelled into the world. I haven’t had that happen to me as yet. Methinks that after the war I’ll hedge around a little longer by going to the University of Chicago Law School.
I hope to see you in fifteen more days and nights. At that time I’ll congratulate the hell out of you.
Love––
Kurt
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July 22 - 1944
Dear Woofy:
If you haven’t already seen this it will astonish the hell out of you. It did me. This is a masterfully compiled, unbelievable coincidence––nothing more. But isn’t it wonderfully convincing?
Please save it for me as it’s my only copy. Save me a date this coming Saturday if you possibly can or are so inclined.
Love,
Kurt
CHURCHILL
HITLER
ROOSEVELT
IL DUCE
STALIN
TOJO
YEAR BORN
1874
1889
1882
1883
1879
1884
AGE
70
55
62
61
65
60
TOOK OFFICE
1940
1933
1933
1922
1924
1941
YEARS IN SERVICE
4
11
11
22
20
3
TOTAL
3888
3888
3888
3888
3888
3888
END OF THE WAR: ½ OF 3888 = 1944
½ OF 1944 = 972 = 9 MONTHS, 7 DAYS, 2 P.M.
TO FIND THE SUPREME RULER TAKE FIRST LETTER OF EACH NAME
CHRIST
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August 7 - 1944
Dearest Woofy––:
Time alone is without limits. All other things can endure only a fragment of eternity: necessarily with a beginning, a middle and an end. We have begun. Beyond that the timetable is stupid and meaningless. That may explain the dismal void that besets me today: an insistent, foolish melancholy gremlin. I didn’t get to talk to you Sunday, Woofy: to say how much I loved you the night before; to say I looked foreward to being with you in another six days––and to say good-bye until then.
Jane, darling, dammit––you are such a sensationally attractive little girl to me that I can’t help but love you.
Yin and Yan are too wonderfully smooth on all surfaces to call to mind any
persons I’ve known—least of all, us. The union of most human patterns results in something less symmetrical than a circle. But, Jane, darling dammit, we’re every bit as Euclidian as Yin and Yan––: πr2 is our area and 2πr is our circumference.
Much much much love––
KURT
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POST CARD
CASTLE BARN – ROAD 67 – INDIANAPOLIS, IND.
JANE M. COX
96TH + N. COLLEGE
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.
DARLING––
THERE’S ENOUGH LOVE FOR YOU IN MY HEART AT THE MOMENT TO LAST THE GODDAMN NORMAL PERSON A LIFETIME. KOORT––
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23 August 44
Darling Woofy:
Wouldst thou wert here, my love, for this mellow eventide the antique intellect of some lyrical ancestor has risen to flood my sleepy head with quaint love melodies. Dear sweet lady––I love thee. Thou art as my heart, a pulsating within me, throbbing through the hot sunlit day; beating softly through the black velvet of night. Were it to stop my body would die and decay. My love for thee is as my soul, bounded by the universe, that imperishible shadow of me that will make my loves and hates known though my flesh be ashes. Thou art of all lovely things on earth dearest to me.
…And that’s no damned joke, Jane, darling: nothing has ever meant so much to me as you. Being away from you makes me want to cry like a lost little boy. I want the blessed warmth of you. Fantastic phantasmogoria––I love love love you.
Love, Kurt Page 7
