Kurt Vonnegut's eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother's attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than two hundred love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship. Full of the humor and wit that we have come to associate with Kurt Vonnegut, the letters also reveal little-known private corners of his mind. Passionate and tender, they form an illuminating portrait of a young soldier's life in World War II as he attempts to come to grips with love and mortality. And they bring to light the origins of Vonnegut the writer, when Jane was the only person who believed in and supported him supported him, the young couple having no idea how celebrated he would become. A beautiful full-color collection of handwritten letters, notes, sketches, and comics, interspersed with Edith's insights and family memories, Love, Kurt is an intimate record of a young man growing into himself, a fascinating account of a writer finding his voice, and a moving testament to the life-altering experience of falling in love.
These letters are rich fodder, both as firsthand accounts of World War II, and a glimpse into the mind of a writer finding his voice. Above all, though, these are love letters, many of them so rapturous that were it possible to distill these pages into liquid form, it might be prescribed as an elixir for malaise ... Would the manic creativity on display in these letters have thrummed its way into print had his love life taken a different turn? We are speculators here, peering into someone else’s marriage. Even as literary biography, voyeurism is voyeurism all the same ... Love, Kurt is story of two people deeply in love, living through what Kurt speculates are 'the most horrible times in history.' It may be an exercise in delusion, but it’s still heartening to bask in these letters, to take this feral love for what it was at a freeze-frame moment in time.
