(Author's note: For security reasons, I stated in this interview that I met "Lord Greystoke" in Africa. It's safe now to reveal that the meeting actually took place in Chicago.)
Sexual Implications of the Charge of the Light Brigade
This is an extract from "Riders of the Purple Wage," which won a Hugo in 1967. Some might think it a satire on Freudian analysis. Believe me, it's not a bit exaggerated.
Sexual Implications of the Charge of the Light Brigade is so fascinating a book that Doctor Jespersen Joyce Bathymens, psycholinguist for the Federal Bureau of Group Reconfiguration and Intercommunicability, hates to stop reading. But duty beckons.
"A radish is not necessarily reddish," he says into the recorder. "The Young Radishes so named their group because a radish is a radicle, hence, radical. Also, there's a play on roots and on red-ass, a slang term for anger, and possibly on ruttish and rattish. And undoubtedly on rudeickle, Beverly Hills dialectical term for a repulsive, unruly, and socially ungraceful person.
"Yet the Young Radishes are not what I would call Left Wing; they represent the current resentment against Life-In-General and advocate no radical policy of reconstruction. They howl against Things As They Are, like monkeys in a tree, but never give constructive criticism. They want to destroy without any thought of what to do after the destruction.
"In short, they represent the average citizen's grousing and bitching, being different in that they are more articulate. There are thousands of groups like them in LA and possibly millions all over the world. They had normal life as children. In fact, they were born and raised in the same clutch, which is one reason why they were chosen for this study. What phenomenon produced ten such creative persons, all mothered in the seven houses of Area 69-14, all about the same time, all practically raised together, since they were put together in the playpen on top of the pedestal while one mother took her turn baby-sitting and the others did whatever they had to do, which... where was I?
"Oh, yes, they had a normal life, went to the same school, palled around, enjoyed the usual sexual play among themselves, joined the juvenile gangs and engaged in some rather bloody warfare with the Westwood and other gangs. All were distinguished, however, by an intense intellectual curiosity and all became active in the creative arts.
"It has been suggested -- and might be true -- that that mysterious stranger, Raleigh Renaissance, was the father of all ten. This is possible but can't be proved. Raleigh Renaissance was living in the house of Mrs. Winnegan at the time, but he seems to have been unusually active in the clutch and, indeed, all over Beverly Hills. Where this man came from, who he was, and where he went are still unknown despite intensive search by various agencies. He had no ID or other cards of any kind, yet he went unchallenged for a long time. He seems to have had something on the Chief of Police of Beverly Hills and possibly on some of the Federal agents stationed in Beverly Hills.
"He lived for two years with Mrs. Winnegan, then dropped out of sight. It is rumored that he left LA to join a tribe of white neo-Amerinds, sometimes called the Seminal Indians.
"Anyway, back to the Young (pun on Jung?) Radishes. They are revolting against the Father Image of Uncle Sam, whom they both love and hate. Uncle is, of course, linked by their subconsciouses with unco, a Scottish word meaning strange, uncanny, weird, this indicating that their own fathers were strangers to them. All come from homes where the father was missing or weak, a phenomenon regrettably common in our culture.
"I never knew my own father... Tooney, wipe that out as irrelevant. Unco also means news or tidings, indicating that the unfortunate young men are eagerly awaiting news of the return of their fathers and perhaps secretly hoping for reconciliation with Uncle Sam, that is, their fathers.
"Uncle Sam. Sam is short for Samuel, from the Hebrew Shemu'el, meaning Name of God. All the Radishes are atheists, although some, notably Omar Runic and Chibiabos Winnegan, were given religious instruction as children (Panamorite and Roman Catholic, respectively).
"Young Winnegan's revolt against God, and against the Catholic Church, was undoubtedly reinforced by the fact that his mother forced strong cathartics upon him when he had a chronic constipation. He probably also resented having to learn his catechism when he preferred to play. And there is the deeply significant and traumatic incident in with a catheter was used on him. (This refusal to excrete when young will be analyzed in a later report.)
"Uncle Sam, the Father Figure. Figure is so obvious a play that I won't bother to point it out. Also perhaps on figger, in the sense of 'a fig on thee!' -- look this up in Dante's Inferno, some Italian or other in Hell said, 'A fig on thee, God!' biting his thumb in the ancient gesture of defiance and disrespect. Hmm? Biting the thumb -- an infantile characteristic?
"Sam is also a multileveled pun on phonetically, orthographically, and semisemantically linked words. It is significant that young Winnegan can't stand to be called dear; he claims that his mother called him that so many times it nauseates him. Yet the word has a deeper meaning to him. For instance, sambar is an Asiatic deer with three-pointed antlers. (Note the sam, also.) Obviously, the three points symbolize, to him, the Triple Revolution document, the historic dating point of the beginning of our era, which Chib claims to hate so. The three points are also archetypes of the Holy Trinity, which the Young Radishes frequently blaspheme against.
"I might point out that in this the group differs from others I've studied. The others expressed an infrequent and mild blasphemy in keeping with the mild, indeed pale, religious spirit prevalent nowadays. Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.
"Sam also stands for same, indicating the Radishes' subconscious desire to conform.
"Possibly, although this particular analysis may be invalid, Sam corresponds to Samekh, the fifteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. (Sam! Ech!?) In the old style of English spelling, which the Radishes learned in their childhood, the fifteenth letter of the Roman alphabet is O. In the Alphabet Table of my dictionary, Webster's 128th New Collegiate, the Roman O is in the same horizontal column as the Arabic Dad. Also with the Hebrew Mem. So we get a double connection with the missing and longed-for Father (or Dad) and with the overdominating Mother (or Mem).
"I can make nothing out of the Greek Omicron, also in the same horizontal column. But give me time; this takes study.
"Omicron. The little O! The lower-case omicron has an egg shape. The little egg is their father's sperm fertilized? The womb? The basic shape of modem architecture?
"Sam Hill, an archaic euphemism for Hell. Uncle Sam is a Sam Hill of a father? Better strike that out, Tooney. It's possible that these highly educated youths have read about this obsolete phrase, but it's not confirmable. I don't want to suggest any connections that might make me look ridiculous.
"Let's see. Samisen. A Japanese musical instrument with three strings. The Triple Revolution document and the Trinity again. Trinity? Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mother the thoroughly despised figure, hence, the Wholly Goose? Well, maybe not. Wipe that out, Tooney.
"Samisen. Son of Sam? Which leads naturally to Samson, who pulled down the temple of the Philistines on them and on himself. These boys talk of doing the same thing. Chuckle. Reminds me of myself when I was their age, before I matured. Strike out that last remark, Tooney.
"Samovar. The Russian word means, literally, self-boiler. There's no doubt the Radishes are boiling with revolutionary fervor. Yet their disturbed psyches know, deep down, that Uncle Sam is their ever-loving Father-Mother, that he has only their best interests at heart. But they force themselves to hate him, hence, they self-boil.
"A samlet is a young salmon. Cooked salmon is a yellowish pink or pale red, near to a radish in color, in their unconsciouses, anyway. Samlet equals Young Radish; they feel they're being cooked in the great pressure cooker of modem society.
"How's that for a trinely fumed phase -- I mean, finely turned phrase, Tooney? Run this off, edit as indicated, smooth it out, you know how, and send it off to the
boss. I got to go. I'm late for lunch with Mother; she gets very upset if I'm not there on the dot.
"Oh, postscript! I recommend that the agents watch Winnegan more closely. His friends are blowing off psychic steam through talk and drink, but he has suddenly altered his behavior pattern. He has long periods of silence, he's given up smoking, drinking, and sex."
The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout
A Skirmish in Biography
This is another specimen of the "biographical." It originally appeared in a fanzine, Moebius Trip, December, 1971 issue, edited and published by Ed Connor of Peoria, Illinois. Later on, I suggested to the editor of Esquire that he might want to publish this "life." Regretfully, he rejected the idea. He did not think that Kilgore Trout was as well-known as Tarzan. This is true, but the majority of Esquire's readers are probably readers of Kurt Vonnegut's works and would be acquainted with Trout. So it goes.
I identify strongly with Trout.
The editor and readers of Moebius Trip thought that the letter from Trout and the letter describing Trout's interview in the Peoria Journal Star were made up by me. No such thing. These letters actually appeared in the letter section of the editorial page of Peoria's only local newspaper, and I can prove it.
Since I wrote this, I have been fortunate enough to read the galleys of Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions. It contains many new facts which have enabled me to amplify and to correct the original article. Even so, some things are still in doubt because of contradictions in the three books in which Trout figures. Mr. Vonnegut evidently regards consistency as the hobgoblin of small writers.
Internal evidence in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the first book about Trout, implies that Trout was born in 1890 or 1898. Slaughterhouse Five, the second, implies that he was born in 1902. But Breakfast of Champions makes it clear that he was born in 1907.
There are other discrepancies. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater says that no two of Trout's books ever had the same publisher. In Breakfast of Champions the World Classics Library publishers have issued many of his books.
Rosewater states that Trout's works can only be found in disreputable bookstores dealing in pornography. Yet the same book has Eliot Rosewater picking up a Trout novel from a book rack in an airport.
Trout's novels are supposed to be extremely difficult to find. Rosewater is an avid collector of Trout (in fact, the only one), and he has only forty-one novels and sixty-three short stories. Yet the crooked lawyer, Mushari, goes into a Washington, D.C., smut dealer's and finds every one of Trout's eighty-seven novels.
Breakfast of Champions says that until Trout met a truck driver in 1972 he had never talked with anybody who'd read one of his stories. But Eliot Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim had read his stories and had met him some years before.
Trout's sole fan letter (from Rosewater) reached him in Cohoes, New York, according to Breakfast. But Rosewater says that Trout was living in Hyannis, Massachusetts, when he got the letter.
The description of the extraterrestrial Tralfamadorians in The Sirens of Titan differs considerably from that in Slaughterhouse Five.
And so it goes.
Who is the greatest living science fiction author?
Some say he is Isaac Asimov. Many swear he's Robert A. Heinlein. Others nominate Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, or Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Franz Rottensteiner, Austrian critic and editor, proclaims the Pole, Stanislaw Lem, as the champion. Mr. Rottensteiner may be biased, however, since he is also Lem's literary agent.
None of the above can equal Kilgore Trout -- if we can believe Eliot Rosewater, Indiana multimillionaire, war hero, philanthropist, fireman extraordinaire, and science fiction connoisseur. According to Rosewater, Trout is not only the greatest science fiction writer alive, he is the world's greatest writer. He ranks Trout above Dostoevski, Tolstoi, Balzac, Fielding, and Melville. Rosewater believes that Trout should be president of Earth. He alone would have the imagination, ingenuity, and perception to solve the problems of this planet.
Rosewater, drunk as usual, once burst into a science fiction writers' convention at Milford, Pennsylvania. He had come to meet his idol, but he found, to his sorrow and amazement, that Trout was not there. Lesser men could attend it, but Trout was too poor to leave Hyannis, Massachusetts, where he was a stock clerk in a trading-stamp redemption center.
Who is this Kilgore Trout, this poverty-stricken and neglected genius?
To begin with, Kilgore Trout is not a nom de plume of Theodore Sturgeon. Let us dispose of that base rumor at once. It is only coincidence that the final syllables of the first names of these two authors end in ore or that their last names are those of fish. The author of the classical and beautifully written More Than Human and The Saucer of Loneliness could not possibly be the man whom even his greatest admirer admitted couldn't write for sour apples.
Trout was born in 1907, but the exact day is unknown. Until a definite date is supplied by an authoritative source, I'll postulate the midnight of February 19th, 1907, as the day on which society's "greatest prophet" was born. Trout's character indicates that he is an Aquarian and so was born between January 20th and February 19th. There is, however, so much of the Piscean in him that he was probably bom on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, that is, near midnight of February 19th.
Trout first saw the light of day on the British island of Bermuda. His parents were citizens of the United States of America. (Trout has depicted them in his novel, Now It Can Be Told.) His father, Leo Trout, had taken a position as birdwatcher for the Royal Ornithological Society in Bermuda. His chief duty was to guard the very rare Bermudian ern, a green sea eagle. Despite his vigilance, the ern became extinct, and Leo took his family back to the States. Kilgore attended a Bermudian grammar school and then entered Thomas Jefferson High School in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from this in 1924.
Though Trout was born in Bermuda, he was probably conceived in Indiana. His character smells strongly of certain Hoosier elements, and it is in Indianapolis, Indiana, that we first meet him. This state has produced many writers: Edward Eggleston (The Hoosier Schoolmaster), George Ade (Fables in Slang), Theodore
Dreiser (Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, The Genius), George Barr McCutcheon (Graustark, Brewster's Millions), Gene Stratton Porter (A Girl of the Limberlost), William Vaughn Moody (The Great Divide), Booth Tarkington (Penrod, The Magnificent Ambersons), Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), James Whitcomb Riley (The Old Swimmin'-Hole, When the Frost is on the Punkin'), Ross Lockridge (Raintree County), Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor (Osiris on Crutches, The Vaccinatorsfrom Vega), Rex Stout (author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries), and, last but far from least, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, "Welcome to the Monkey House," Mother Night, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Jailbird, and others.)
Mr. Vonnegut is the primary source of our information about Kilgore Trout. We should all be grateful to him for bringing Trout's life and works to our attention. Unfortunately, Vonnegut refers to him only in the latter three books, and these are popularly believed to be fictional. They are to some extent, but Kilgore Trout is a real-life person, and anybody who doubts this is free to look up his birth record in Bermuda.
Vonnegut has brought Trout out of obscurity and has given us much of his immediate life. He has not, however, given us the background of Trout's parents, and so I have conducted my own investigations into Trout's pedigree. The full name of Kilgore's father was Leo Cabell Trout, and he was born circa 1881 in Roanoke, Virginia. Trouts have lived for generations in this city and its neighbor, Salem. Leo's mother was a Cabell and related to that family which has produced the famous author, James Branch Cabell (Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen) and a novelist well-known in the nineteenth century, Princess AmelieTroubetzkoy. The princess was the granddaughter of William Cabell Rives, a U.S. Senator and minister to France. Her first novel, The Quick or the Dead?, was a sensation in 1888.
/>
Trout inherited a talent for writing from his mother's side also. She was Eva Alice Shawnessy (1880-1926), author of the Little Eva series, popular children's books around the turn of the century. She wrote these under the nom de plume of Eva Westward and received only a fraction of the royalties they earned. Her publisher ran off with his firm's profits to Brazil after inducing her to sink her money into the firm's stock. Her unpublished biography of her father was the main source of information for Ross Lockridge when he wrote Raintree County.
Her father was John Wickliff Shawnessy (1839-1941), a Civil War veteran, country schoolteacher, and a frustrated dramatist and poet. Johnny spent much of his life thinking about and seeking the legended Golden Raintree, an arboreal Holy Grail, hidden somewhere in the Great Swamp of Raintree County. Johnny never finished his epic, Sphinx Recumbent, but a great-grandson has taken this and rewritten it as a science fiction novel. Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor (born 1918) is the son of Allegra Shawnessy (born 1898), daughter of Wesley Shawnessy (1879-1939), eldest son of John Wickliff Shawnessy. Kilgore's cousin, Leo, is primarily a painter, but he has written some science fiction stories which have been favorably compared to Kilgore's.