Kurt Vonnegut Documentary - Arena (1983)

Part of the BBC’s Arena TV documentary series, this is on the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut. (If the title wasn’t clear enough for you.) I don’t know how you feel about him and his books, but I’ve always sort of enjoyed his opinions and attitude. His books were never as dense or heady as I had wished (or as I thought he was capable), but they’re always entertaining. Vonnegut is a real interesting person, and it comes through well in this documentary. You get a great impression of who Vonnegut is, as a person … which, alone, makes it worth a watch. He speaks about his father, family, and the great depression during his youth:

My father became [my grandfather's] partner in architecture and the great depression hit and there was no business done in architecture, as building stopped. And so my father, when I knew him, was a demoralized man, as there was no work for him to do. And he had every reason to be grumpy and melancholy, as there was no way for him to make a living.

He discusses the faith in science during the depression (a theme that can be found everywhere in his work, and the source of many of his most original thoughts), the hope surrounding technological advances, and the way it related to him and his family:

During the depression when people were looking for radical solutions to economic problems, they became technocratic, families. They believed that scientists and engineers and mathematicians should run the world, that they were the only ones with common sense.

He talks about his beginnings as an author of short-stories and the golden age of magazine publishing.

I had a family and wasn’t making nearly enough money to support the family. So I started writing short stories on weekends. And there was an enormous magazine industry, at that time, which paid very high prices for stories and they needed lots of them. Saturday Evening Post published five a week, Collier’s pushed five a week, Liberty published five a week, and they paid tons of money for them. And, so, I began that way and I wrote one, and The Saturday Evening Post bought it and paid me … uh … one eighth of what I was making at General Electric a year. And so I wrote another one and they paid me more. And, in a period of a few months I had made more money than General Electric was prepared to pay me all year … I … uh … I had money piled up [laughing] I’d never been this rich, as there was all this unused currency all over the house that’d come by mail.

And so that’s how I began. And that opportunity doesn’t exist now for American writers. The temptation of that big magazine money, too, was part of a learning machine. You were penalized immediately for any errors. And, writing for the magazines, they told me an awful lot about how to tell a story. So I would mail off a story, and wait for the money to come and the money wouldn’t come. The story would come back instead. And they would tell me what was wrong with it. And … uh … they were right.

And that’s just the beginning. There’s a ton of interview footage with Vonnegut. He remembers back, gives funny anecdotes, and talks about his books and characters (notably, Kilgore Trout). He reads from his books, which makes me realize how well his work sounds … Vonnegut’s writing sounds so natural compared to a lot of shit out there. The video runs at a little over an hour, and there is a ton more of information and background, but I’ll leave you with it.

Kurt Vonnegut – BBC’s “Arena” (1983)

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