Notes on a Vonnegut Review

I recently spent a day in Dresden. The former "Florenz an der Elbe", while still a wonderful city, is a little sad looking these days, reflecting no doubt its dreary recent history as part of the DDR ("East Germany", as we knew it in the West) but also the horrific consequences of that night in February 1945.

By pure happenstance, on the same week that I returned from Dresden, in the incomparable Paris Review, I came upon an interview with Kurt Vonnegut which was hilarious more or less throughout.

You'll need to read it yourself to fully appreciate its humour, but as necessary background it is important to know in relation to Vonnegut that

• As his name suggests, he was ethnically German, and the language was often used in his family home as he was growing up
• he fought Germany as a U.S. soldier in World War II without misgivings
• he was captured during the "Battle of the Bulge" and sent to a P.O.W. camp near Dresden in early 1945
• he participated in the recovery of corpses after the infamous Allied raid
• the experience was an important influence behind probably his most famous book Slaughterhouse Five

Incidentally, I am not sure what to make of Vonnegut's use of a much higher number for deaths than seems to have been the case.