Kurt Vonnegut wrote these letters to his future wife, Jane Marie Cox, in the twilight of his teens and in his early twenties, during the tumultuous years of the Second World War. He addresses her as Woofy, a nickname that, according to their daughter Edith Vonnegut, Cox didn’t particularly care for. Their correspondence reveals a fitful courting, with a persistent Vonnegut peppering Cox with declarations of love, even as both attend casual dates with other people. In 1943, Vonnegut enlisted in the army, and, after a brief mobilization, was sent to the European front in 1944. Meanwhile, Cox finished college and began a job in the Office of Strategic Services, the office that would later become the C.I.A. Vonnegut, who was trained as a reconnaissance scout, was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and spent time as a laborer in a German P.O.W. camp in Dresden. He witnessed the Allied firebombing of the city, an experience foundational to the writing of “Slaughterhouse-Five” many years later. Vonnegut returned to America in 1945, and he and Cox were married later that year—after his second proposal was accepted. The pair’s correspondence is collected in “Love, Kurt,” which Random House will publish on December 1st. —The Editors
Dear Woofy:
Naturally your recent letter ripped my heart from my wounded breast (poetic license). My Princeton friend, Morgan Bird (It’s a Small World Department: he kissed you good-bye just before the Triangle Club pulled out of Union Station some two New Year’s Eves ago), and the rest of our picked squad of All-American Barflies spent the week-end in a Raleigh hotel suite. This contest of giants ended in a draw though I was awarded a decoration for valor beyond the call of duty for making a breakfast of beer Monday morning.
So many of my friends are commissioned that I can’t help feeling a little distinctive with absolutely nothing on my uniform but buttons. Ryan and I are very happy as privates. How long this attitude will hold out is a sober question. Methinks it had better be durable enough to last for duration and six months. In a couple of weeks I’ll know if I’m to be an officer, a college student, or a dead duck.
Lovey, I know what hell you’ve been going through being absolutely true to me. I want you to know that I appreciate it. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. These once cool, tapering and artistic hands have been initiated into the more brutal mysteries of Ju-Jitsu. I am now a match for any woman twice my size. I shall probably be back late in July. I shall probably try to see you as much as possible—or as much of you as possible. Are you glad? If you want to break up an otherwise morbid summer I don’t care if you want to get married. I, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., am financially independent and in a position to afford a one-week honeymoon in the Seminole Hotel.
Apropos, are you ever going to get married? I am willing to fill out any required forms in duplicate, triplicate, and quintuplicate for your hand and all accessories thereof: not now, but sometime. You don’t object to my playing with the idea, do you?
Write me a letter, sweet mamma.
Kurt
August 30th, 1943
Dear Woof:
I had another fine date with Nance last night. One more, and I’d be head-over-heels in love with her, so last night was the last of a pleasant, mildly tight series. You have a standing invitation to stay with her, here in Pittsburgh, and long before my assignment is completed at Tech I hope you take her up on it at least once. One time, when you were very low, Woof, I remember your worrying about your feminine friends: that is, your lack of really good and loyal ones. I’m pretty sure that worry was baseless, but I’d like to point out that Nance likes you one helluva lot, and is, whether you’ve ever looked at it that way or not, one of your best friends. You two are the most wonderful pair of girls I’ve come across. And I’ve been from Memphis to Mobile; from Natchez to St. Joe. . . .
Here’s that idea again, and if ever I’m commissioned I promise I’ll propose. (Lt. and Mrs. J. C. Adams have now been in dreamland for eight months—I’d love to be that happy!) Nance and I have, without consulting you or Buck (something like the Atlantic Charter without Stalin or Chiang), planned Heaven (“Everybody talkin’ ‘bout Heaven ain’t goin’ there”) for the four of us. Would you like to live in Charleston, one block from Calhoun’s grave and within sight of Fort Sumter? That’s just about where we figured Heaven was. To be exact, it’s in a cottage (with a studio) in a hidden patio in the finest, and oldest part of town. Not a church in the neighborhood is under 200 years old. I just happened upon it. The entrance is an inconspicuous little arch, guarded by an antique wrought-iron gate, between a fine wine shop and a musty bookstore. Both are tiny, and neither bothers to advertise beyond a small, neat shingle. Both sell the fine, the very old, and the deliciously delicate. Their clientele is a fraternity to which only the connoisseur may belong.
Within the gate is a long path between the buildings, and from this path you can peek between shutters into the musty back room of the wine shop where those rare bottles, which weren’t smashed by the roar of the Union naval guns, firing on blockade runners, still collect dust. ((Speaking of blockade runners—and hence Rhett Butler—: Scarlett O’Hara went to finishing school in Fayetteville, one mile from Fort Bragg.)) The path opens into a patio, in which stands a giant old oak and a lush green-grass carpet. A not-so-historical cottage (it’s always summer in sleepy Charleston) snoozes in the shade of the oak: room for four merry young people with tremendous appetites for happiness.
This may bore you. It’s been so long since we’ve been together that I’ve grown self-conscious about what I say. I must miss you, Woof, because I’m miserably lonely with hundreds of good friends about me. During one of our rowdy “in-love-with-each-other” phases, it was your habit to pique me by asking, “Why do you love me?” I’ve finally hit on a rational answer and I think it’s the right one. I have a number of wild dreams which come and go with the green in the leaves. Once conceived I tell you about them. If they’re good dreams you take them up with a flood of enthusiasm and we’re very soon shrieking to each other about them in a transport of delight much greater than if the dream were realized. Then we sink back, logically in each other’s arms, happily exhausted by a swift trip to heaven and back.
I asked Nance how many times she had seen me make you cry. I hated to hear her say four. This, I hope is a step toward maturity, Woof—: I pray to God I never make you cry again.
I never enjoyed writing a letter so much as this one. It flowed from me without a murmur.
Love,
Kurt
