Contents introduction chapter I. Existentialism as a literary trend

CHAPTER II. IDEA AND ARTISTIC ORIGINALITY OF KURT VONNEGUT'S NOVEL
2.1 Biographical premises of the existential genre in the work of Kurt Vonnegut
In 2006, British journalist John Preston published his interview with Kurt Vonnegut, in which the author reveals many of the autobiographical reasons that influenced the formation of the philosophy of his literary work. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: “Civilization will come to an end in five years. But people are tenacious, and, probably, they will hold out for a little longer. This article reveals many of the hidden motives of his work. Let's take a look at some of the statements.
“God, I’m 83 years old already,” says Kurt Vonnegut and laughs hoarsely. “I didn’t expect to be here for so long.” Big eyes, tousled gray curls, downturned lips and unusually long earlobes make Vonnegut look like a spaniel.⁹
"I've always been a man without a title"
However, there is nothing domestic in his latest works. He seemed to have finally decided to give America a good shake-up. In his new book, "A Man Without a Motherland," claims are made against America's ruling elite - those people who, in his opinion, caused this country "as much fear and hatred around the world as the Nazis once caused ... We deleted from the human class millions and millions of people simply because of their religious beliefs and race. We kill them and torture them and throw them in as many prisons as we want.”
The Man Without a Country is a huge success in the United States, and to his surprise, Vonnegut notices that his literary star has shone brighter than ever.
“In this country, I have always been a man without a title,” he tells me. “Today I am who I was during the Second World War, a private first class.”
“But somehow I can't remember the names of the writers who were awarded the Purple Heart medal for bravery,” I argue. He shrugged. "Yes? Maybe… But it would be embarrassing to talk about it.”
At 19, as a prisoner of war in Germany, he witnessed the bombing of Dresden. Shortly after he returned from the war, his mother committed suicide. In the 60s, his only son Mark suffered a severe mental disorder, twenty years later, Vonnegut made an attempt to commit suicide, and in 2000 almost died of suffocation during a fire in his house.
“You can say that my whole life consists of small insights”
According to Vonnegut, when a person comes face to face with such horrors, he can do nothing but laugh at them. But under the unbridled glee of his novels like Breakfast of Champions and Mother Night, with their descent into the realm of strange quirks, science fiction, and personal memories, there is always a suppressed groan of pain. The author cannot believe that people so mindlessly ruin their lives, and is even more surprised at what they managed to turn our planet into.
“What I've always tried to do is look for things that make life worth living for,” he says. - In fact, you can say that my whole life consists of small insights. For example, quite recently I recalled the case of British officers. During the war, the division in which I served was almost completely destroyed, and the Germans transported those who survived to the Stalag 4B POW camp.
This camp was full of British officers who were incredibly kind to us. We were dying of hunger and freezing, and they fed us and even played a performance to raise our spirits.
It was "Cinderella", of course, in the male performance. I remember a line from this performance - one of the best things I have ever heard in my life. When the clock struck twelve, Cinderella turned to the audience and said, “Oh my God! The clock is already striking, but I still don't ...!"
And Vonnegut bursts into his raucous laugh again. “I can’t explain why, but because of this phrase, I felt that life is still worth living. And people seemed to me amazing creatures.
He says that he joked all his life, even as a child, so that they would pay attention to him and partly to dispel the gloomy atmosphere that reigned in the family. “I was born during the Great Depression, when life was quite difficult. My mother came from a wealthy family in Indianapolis, but they lost all their money on Black Tuesday when the stock market crashed, and my father was an architect and couldn't get a job."¹⁰
“I remember that I spent a lot of time listening to comedians on the radio. I think that's how I got the idea that if you can still laugh, then all is not lost. Sometimes people ask me what literary works influenced my work, but I think none. But I have always felt indebted to Thomas Hardy. I fell in love with him as a child and felt how vulnerable he was. Trying to make this world a better place, he showed its dangers.
By the time Vonnegut was eighteen, he was already fighting in France. After returning from the war, he worked in the public relations department of the General Electric Company, and in the late 40s he began to write short stories. “I never had any literary ambitions,” he insists. - I don't feel like I can't write. I started writing to help my family. I sent my stories to two magazines. They paid very well and I was never short of ideas. I wrote a lot of fiction, but I also included other pieces in it.
Starting with the first stroke of the typewriter keys, Vonnegut obeyed his unique, shamelessly eccentric voice and never knew in advance how everything would end.
“Yes, I was just a genius,” he says, choking. “But all I tried to do was make myself laugh. And then a new technique appeared and changed a lot in life. Television appeared, beautiful magazines, and it was necessary to think about how to earn a living.
“I started writing novels. But then it turned out that if the book comes out in hardcover, then I have to wait a whole year before I get paid for it. And if I was printed in the form of a pocket book of some scruffy publishing house, then I immediately received money. So when I had to choose between money and reputation, I always pecked at the money.
In February 1945, Vonnegut, along with 100 other soldiers, was locked in the basement of a Dresden slaughterhouse for 24 hours while the city around them was reduced to rubble.
“We were lucky that there was nothing to burn there - around us there were only cages in which cattle were previously kept. I remember that we got out of the basement when the bombardment ended, and there was no stone left unturned around us. I couldn't believe my eyes. Our guides were teenagers and old people who were deemed unfit for service on the Russian front. It was much harder for them, because Dresden was their hometown. They kept saying, "Is it possible?"
Slaughterhouse Five is a very unusual book about war. The protagonist Billy Pilgrim travels through time and several times gets to the planet Tralfamador, whose inhabitants are only sixty centimeters tall and have green skin. At the darkest moments of the story, Vonnegut casually chimes in with his comments, constantly repeating the phrase "like this."¹¹
“I wrote this book the way it turned out. I didn't try to experiment. But it seems to me that the Vietnam War untied my hands, because it demonstrated the stupidity of our command and the insignificance of our goals. Finally, we could talk about the evil that we had done to the worst people in the world - the Nazis. And what I saw and what I was going to write about made the war monstrous.
"Slaughterhouse Five" was a huge success, but Vonnegut took it in his own way: "It was just nice to make more money, but at that moment I was no longer going without a penny. And my life hasn't changed at all."
In A Man Without a Homeland, Vonnegut writes that joining the ranks of writers was not an act of rebellion for him. Many of his relatives were distinguished by creativity, but they were also characterized by depression.
"If I die, hopefully someone will say, 'Kurt is in heaven now'"
“When I returned from the war, I married my childhood friend. My mother was against this marriage, because, according to her, there were many mentally abnormal people in the girl's family. And then my mom committed suicide. And what can be said? Sometimes life turns into a joke. My mother's death was not a shock to me because she was very unhappy. But that was our secret. Otherwise, the chances of the rest of the relatives to have a family could fall significantly.”¹²
When Vonnegut says that he had no title in his life, this is not entirely true. He is President Emeritus of the American Humanist Association, a title he inherited from his friend Isaac Asimov.
“Being a humanist means that you try to behave honorably and honestly, without expecting any rewards or punishments for this in your next life. When we were commemorating Isaac a few years ago, I gave a speech and said, "Isaac is in heaven now." I couldn't think of anything more ridiculous for a humanist audience. But it worked - they smiled. If I ever die, I hope someone will say, "Kurt is in heaven now." This is my favorite joke."
And while his future doesn't look too certain, Vonnegut is much more worried about the future of the planet. On this topic, he never jokes.
In the United States of America, where optimism has long been elevated to the rank of almost a "national philosophy", the pessimist Vonnegut writes his strange, very funny and very sad books, preventing contemporary readers from establishing themselves in comfortable ignorance, offering everyday life to turn to itself in a bizarre the mirror of the grotesque.