Mark Vonnegut, the son of the great Kurt Vonnegut, disputed his father’s new biography today on a science fiction blog.
Charles Shields just published an authorized biography of the late novelist, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. Mark Vonnegut wrote an email to io9 defending his late father and criticizing the work of biographer Charles Shields.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter: “Shields spent very little time with a much diminished 84 year old who right up to the end showed more flashes of brilliance and warmth than most. There’s a ton of evidence, including his art and writing that he fought hard and largely succeeded to overcome PTSD from WWII and a quirky, but not altogether unloving childhood to have mostly loving and supportive relationships with his siblings and children and even his allegedly distant father. Shields had to ignore most of what I and other people who knew Kurt and most of what he read in the letters to come up with these shocking truths about a beloved writer.”