“As soon as I was out of the hospital I went to see her. [An aunt who stopped believing in gravity.] I was still weak, still separated by a great unmeasured gulf from the world, from anyone who has no serious doubts about rising whole the next morning and who tranquilly says ‘I will come.’, ‘I will go.’, as though he could make such promises.” – Joanne Greenburg, “Certain Distant Suns”
Part 1 of an interesting speech by Vonnegut at Albion College in 2002 (“Kurt Vonnegut – How to get a job like mine”). We’re big fans of Vonnegut’s “early work,” including his masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five, but his edge dulled considerably later on as he moved away — consciously, apparently — from his special brand of wry tragi-comic sci-fi with Breakfast of Champions. That was good enough to get us to start Jailbird, little more than a rant, which seemed to advocate the release of all criminals from prisons. Mm no. We don’t believe we finished that one.
Vonnegut deftly applied his personal experience as a POW at Dresden and its bombing as the central historical event of Slaughterhouse Five, spinning it into an indictment of war in general and U.S. warmaking in particular. In many ways the tragedy of the event was shortchanged and Vonnegut’s use of it facile and somewhat flip — practically an exploitation, but a canny one for the anti-war times. Dresden had more strategic importance than many post-event analysts allow. There were political considerations that went beyond bombing ball-bearing factories over porcelain workshops. In short, the Western Allies had pledged to assist their major Eastern ally, the Soviet Union in any way possible and were always, perhaps overly, alert to opportunities to do this from long distance. The USSR was in the middle of an offensive, and their leadership, meaning Stalin, would have no qualms about cruelty to German civilians, who comprised the bulk of the half-million-plus refugees in the city, there trying to escape the advancing Russian armies. Dresden would spend the Cold War under Russian control.
For an excellent, detailed and chilling account of Dresden’s bombing from the ground, the air and the leadership on both sides see John Toland’s essential The Last 100 Days. And for lots more detail about this raid see the page on it at the USAF’s Air University site: Historical Analysis of the 14-15 February 1945
Money Quote, Storytelling, Writing | bshears April 29, 2011 | 
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