Kurt Vonnegut: His memory gap for the bombing of Dresden and the dissociative features (suggestive of multiple personality) in his writing process.

Memory Gap

Vonnegut: “…the book [Slaughterhouse-Five] was largely a found object. It was what was in my head, and I was able to get it out, but one of the characteristics about this object was that there was a complete blank where the bombing of Dresden took place, because I don’t remember…There were all kinds of information surrounding the event, but as far as my memory bank was concerned, the center had been pulled right out of the story…”

Q: “Even if you don’t remember it, did the experience of being interned—and bombed—in Dresden change you in any way?”

Vonnegut: No. I suppose you’d think so, because that’s the cliché. The importance of Dresden in my life has been considerably exaggerated because my book about it became a best seller. If the book hadn’t been a best seller, it would seem like a very minor experience in my life. And I don’t think people’s lives are changed by short-term events like that. Dresden was astonishing, but experiences can be astonishing without changing you” (1, p. 94).

People with multiple personality have memory gaps that go beyond ordinary forgetting. His memory gap for the bombing of Dresden may be significant in that regard. Search “memory gaps” in this blog for previous posts.

Writing Process

Vonnegut describes automatic writing, becoming his characters, and getting messages from his “intelligence,” all of which suggests that his writing process involved alternate personalities.

“All this falls into the area of automatic writing, really. There isn’t time to be rational about it and plan what you’re going to do” (1, p. 50).

“When I write I also act, and I think this is true of most novelists. I will walk around talking to myself, saying out loud what a character is going to say, so that I will become one character and then another one, trying each on for size. So in the process of writing I have identified with every reasonably complex character in any of my books” (1, p. 68).

“…I know that if I spend enough time at the typewriter the most intelligent part of me will finally make itself known and I will be able to decode what it is trying to talk about. It’s a little like a ouija board. I will get a clue to what my intelligence wants to talk about, and then I will try to talk about it more and more” (1, p. 73).

Q.: What sort of things do you plan to write from now on?

Vonnegut: I can guess. It isn’t really up to me. I come to work every morning and I see what words come out of the typewriter. I feel like a copyboy whose job is to tear off stories from the teletype machine and deliver them to the editor” (1, pp. 109-110).

“…after a day when I’ve been at it for hours and am dissatisfied with what I’ve produced…if I’m patient, a nice egg-shaped idea emerges and I can tell my intelligence has gotten through. It’s a slow process, though, and an annoying one, because you have to sit so long” (1, p. 199).

1. Willian Rodney Allen (Editor). Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1999.