‘Kurt Vonnegut Letters’, by Dan Wakefield – review

In the early 1950s Kurt Vonnegut became the manager of a Saab dealership in Cape Cod, a job which often involved him taking prospective clients out on test drives. Keen to demonstrate the Saab’s front-wheel drive, Vonnegut would take corners at a tremendous lick, leaving his often elderly passengers ‘sickly and green’ afterwards.

Vonnegut’s early writings left a number of editors feeling pretty sickly and green too. As the rejection slips piled up, he cast around desperately for some alternative source of income. He tried to flog a board-game he’d invented, as well as a bowtie made from ribbon the Atomic Energy Commission used to cordon off highly radioactive areas which he was convinced would prove a big hit.

He also had a try-out for a sports magazine called Sports Illustrated. Told to write an article about a racehorse that had bolted before the starting gun had gone off, Vonnegut stared at a blank piece of paper for an hour, wrote, ‘The horse jumped over the fucking fence’, then went home.