Like Shaking Hands with God

First edition hardback cover

Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing is a collection of two conversations between Vonnegut and the writer Lee Stringer, for whose first work Grand Central Winter Vonnegut had recently written the foreword. Featuring an introduction by the company's editor Daniel Simon and photographs by Art Shay, it was originally published by Seven Stories Press in 1999 and reprinted in 2010. The first discussion—recorded and broadcast for BookTV on C-SPAN2—took place on October 1, 1998 at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square at 33 E. 17th St. in Manhattan, moderated by Ross Klavan. The second occurred during a lunch at the Café de Paris where the three, along with Simon, could "smoke and pick up some of the threads of their earlier conversation in a more private setting".

It is prefaced by two epigraphs, the first from Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain—"The shoemaker on earth that had the soul of a poet won't have to make shoes here". The second is from Nathan Der Weise by G.E. Lessing, as quoted in chapter three of The Writer and Psychoanalysis by Edmund Bergler: "Der Wunder hoechstes ist, dass uns die wahren, echten Wunder so alltaeglich werden koennen, werden sollen". ("The greatest miracle is that true and genuine miracles seem to us banal everyday occurrences".) Both are referenced in the conversations. The book concludes with another selection from Twain's work about the greatest writer in human history, unappreciated in life but revered in heaven.

Summary

Foreword by Daniel Simon

Dated May 20, 1999 from Brooklyn, Simon calls the relationship between Vonnegut and Stringer "historic". In the foreword to Grand Central Winter, Vonnegut compared Stringer to Jack London and cited him as "proof that writers are born, not made". Vonnegut's unbridled enthusiasm for Stringer's wordplay is so great as to seemingly seek to transfer his own reputation and stature as an important American writer to Stringer. Unfortunately, American society will require Stringer to write several more works of significance and make a million dollars before he is able to shake his identity as "that formerly homeless, formerly crack-addicted guy". Vonnegut called the first conversation "a magical evening" due in part to the several hundred listeners.

There is a Jewish prayer that says a person's thoughts belong to them, but their expression belongs to God, which can be seen in Vonnegut and Stringer who "both write to catch His eye". Seven Stories Press' mission has been guided by Nelson Algren, who said the purpose of writing is to give expression to voices that would be left unheard, and Vonnegut, who writes "that we exist here on Earth to fart around". Simon believes them both. Although the questions of first conversation were prepared beforehand, none of the participants saw them first. Simon thanks not only Vonnegut, Stringer, Klavan, and Shay, but also Paul Abruzzo, Jon Gilbert, Don Farber, "Debbie and Dennis of Barnes & Noble", the Café de Paris, Jill Krementz, Agnes Krup for the "impromptu assistance" in translating the Lessing quote, and "an audience of truth- and fun-seekers who chose not to stay home on an October evening".

First Conversation

As to the common ground between the two writers, Vonnegut notes they have written about their lives, such as his experience in Dresden, while Stringer notes that they're both tall, but also that they have done their best writing without knowing what they were doing at the time. When teaching creative writing, Vonnegut looked for people who first have something on their minds and then the writing will come. Like the weather, the human condition doesn't really change. Stringer says that now that the world has become so unnatural, simply being human in an alien environment is a struggle. Television and other modern media are part of the problem, whereas reading requires skill and imagination which most people lack, so Vonnegut thanks those like the people in the audience who still bother to read. As society becomes more result-oriented and seeking simple answers, literature is viewed as impractical. Creative writing students are often upset to find no career at the end of their classes. There is no "death of the novel" since it never had much of an audience at all, as William Styron once pointed out about the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century.

While there may not be much optimism for literature, Stringer sees reasons for personal optimism, having left the social tragedy of homelessness, and that even "the bad stuff is an opportunity". Vonnegut notes that Grand Central Winter should have political consequences, discussing the invisible lives of New York City's homeless population, but Stringer reflects that there are no easy answers to the issue and that all people can do is determine their relationship to it and the people it affects. Having sold copies of Street News for years, he began to write for it, becoming editor-in-chief and getting a couch to sleep on in the office. Although it featured editorials about homelessness, there was "never any accord" about solutions and Stringer, looking at the billions of dollars spent and laws passed over the last three decades, doubts there may be a real answer. For him, his favorite writing was when he could "riff" about his own thoughts and not be another anonymous homeless person, an opportunity most people in all economic classes lack. When he runs into old friends from the street, he feels no impulse to help them, since it's presumptuous to believe you have answers or ability to save others, since most everyone "is really just groping their way around in life". Saving himself is going to be his lifetime job, but Vonnegut notes that Stringer's book has been a gift to everyone. Like Jack London when working in a laundry, to whom Vonnegut compared him, Stringer began writing when he'd hit bottom and thought there must be something better. While using a pencil "as a drug implement" to push the screens of his pipe, Stringer began "to use it as a pencil" and wrote for five hours straight, the most concentration he devoted to anything but drugs in years.

Jack London, 1903

After reading excerpts from chapter 8 of Grand Central Winter and chapter 58 of Timequake, Stringer notes "as the new Jack London" that writing "beats working in a laundry". It is, however, also the first thing he chose to do on his own for himself, while also being good for his mental health. He's glad people enjoy his work, but if he tries to write for an audience, it tends to fall apart. Vonnegut cites Edmund Bergler's work The Writer and Psychoanalysis—which is out of print and he suggests Seven Stories look into reprinting it—which states that writers can treat their own neuroses through their work, with horrible consequences when they get blocked. The practice of art is not about money or fame, but to make one's soul grow. Vonnegut would gladly take the bounty offered to kill Salman Rushdie and use it for Bill Gates, who wants humans to be uninterested in their souls and make their computers grow. Stringer, who recently read a review of a book that suggested that people who want power make others dependent on them, hopes if the bullet misses Gates that it hits the author of that book.

Following a further excerpt from chapter 7 of Grand Central Winter, Klavan asks about the relationship between "the adventure of life and... our need to understand" it. Stringer says he did initially view his time on the street as a kind of adventure, not knowing what would happen next, but by the time he "finally came up for air" he realized that in reality he'd got himself "trapped in a certain cycle". However, once he was out of it, he wasn't sure what to do anymore. The book took a year and a half to finish and to do so, he had to find ways and reasons to write that were interesting to himself. Although he never imagined someone in a bookstore browsing a copy, he still wanted it to be good enough that if they did, they might keep reading. To do that, Stringer had to determine what each episode meant to him, not only what people were doing, but why. By the end, he found he answered a number of questions for himself and that publishing the book was almost an afterthought.

Jacqueline Susann, 1951

Klavan next reads excerpts from chapters 56 and 57 of Timequake and Vonnegut notes that the extra dimension that comes with literature is that readers become partners in the act of creation, since they bring themselves to any text. Stringer attempts to convey his ideas about what exists beyond the text on the page through a story: once while walking down 42nd Street on a gray afternoon, he saw a crowd of unsmiling, dispirited, suffering people for whom life seemed to be a burden, but behind them was "a preacher from Jersey who had set up huge speakers" playing loud gospel music who, for no apparent reason, was jumping with joy and ecstasy. That is where Stringer would like readers to be. Vonnegut adds that almost all the writers he knows would rather be musicians, since music is pleasurable, magical, and, even to a humanist like him, proof of the existence of God. He notes that he can only play the clarinet, and badly, although Bill Clinton, then the president, "is no bad reed man". Writers, however, do not tend to envy each other, but feel like "veterans of the same battle" who know what the others have gone through. Anyone who has finished a book, even bad and unpublished, is still their colleague. Stringer did not read Vonnegut's books when they were first published—since he "never wanted to be trendy"—but when he did and then later met him, it was like meeting a comrade. Writers generally work long hours in solitude with no one to tell them if what they are doing is any good or if they are wasting their lives. Writers have different concerns or styles but share something indefinable. Vonnegut recounts that Jacqueline Susann, who he says wrote "with utter sincerity", sent him a note after Breakfast of Champions bumped her from number one on the bestseller list, saying "As long as it had to be someone, I'm glad it was you".

Vonnegut thinks both he and Stringer are born writers, just as others are born with the ability to play music, sports, chess, etc. Perhaps shamefully for writers, both also had fairly happy childhoods, although in Stringer's case punctuated by anger. When he tried to write in his youth, Stringer would often pick topics like "spies, and trips to outer space" and other things he didn't know about it, generally with shallow characters that would make for "a great first paragraph" and go nowhere. When writing this recent book, it was "fun trying to figure out how... to fill up these pages" for hours until suddenly something surprising happens, a situation "like shaking hands with God". Vonnegut notes sculptors also often feel as if someone else is using their hands and Stringer asks him if sometimes when he writes it feels like taking dictation. After some thought, Vonnegut agrees that sometimes it feels like that, but that he's also "written a hell of a lot of crap" he's glad he never published. Stringer says, understandingly, that there "are two other Grand Central Winters in the drawer". With that, Klavan ends the discussion, although afterward when asked if will write another book, Vonnegut replies that Timequake will be his last novel, although he will write a preface for a collection of old short stories that will soon come out.

Second Conversation

Klavan mentions that—unlike reading the newspaper, which makes "us feel stupid and helpless"—reading work by Vonnegut and Stringer make him feel smarter. Vonnegut notes that, unlike someone like Tom Clancy who can "fine-tune" his writing for economic considerations, he and Stringer were born to write what they wrote and simply "lucked out with a public". Stringer notes that it's been hard to write lately since after public readings, people always ask questions that he tries to answer. However, his writing comes from asking himself questions and the readers join him in discovering answers. Vonnegut also points out that Stringer—who says he is wary of people who claim "how victimized they are"—didn't moralize about his experience. He also tells Stringer that he's not obligated to ever write another book unless he wants to for himself. Stringer worries that now he'll be too conscious of public relations, commercial performance, and what the audience expects from him, but Vonnegut assures him that his first book proved that he already knows how to sincerely address an audience and that if he feels satisfied, then he has done enough. He says the span between his own first and second books was "ten years" [sic] and that it just suddenly poured out when talking to an editor at a cocktail party, although it "had been cooking" in his mind for years. Stringer agrees that before the act of writing, a "whole bunch of other stuff has to happen first".

Writing, as Vonnegut has said, is like a blind date that requires holding an audience. People don't really care about the person, but what the book reveals. In the past, writers would have to hide, for example, that they were gay for political reasons since writers need the audience to like them. Journalism needs to tell everything factually, but fiction writing is "like being a magician" who cannot reveal that they were being deceptive to their audience. When Vonnegut wrote short stories, they required inherently artificial endings. Klavan asks them what relationship a writer should have to social issues "as a person of conscience". Vonnegut replies that he believes in "good citizenship" like he learned about in his junior civics class, even though it means he "would have gone to Vietnam, knowing how wrong it was". Stringer, when once asked if he was an activist, "kind of hemmed and hawed" but later realized that before action, writers have to report of the conditions that produce outrage. However, the idea of a better world seems beyond him, except to say that even large-scale problems are connected to personal issues. Vonnegut would like to use his anthropology training to examine German reunification and what it meant especially to the essentially defeated East Germans.

Although lacking any plot lines for a new work, two themes that Stringer has found himself returning to lately are "You're only as sick as your secrets" and "The door to hell is locked from the inside". Speaking of the afterlife, Vonnegut mentions Twain's Captain Stromfield's Visit to Heaven which features in a parade "the greatest writer who ever lived" who never published his works, which were burned by his wife after he was murdered for fun. When Stringer points out that heaven is always portrayed as a world beyond ours filled with nice but somewhat boring things, Vonnegut asks him if he'd rather sleep for eternity or go back to Earth after death. Simon asks if people would get to dream in heaven, in which case he'd sleep, otherwise he'd prefer Earth. Stringer doesn't see this as a "heaven-and-hell thing" since hell is something eternal that we carry with us, nor is heaven just eternal sleep. If it were, Stringer would prefer to come back to Earth. Vonnegut says he's fine with eternal sleep, since he "really was counting on dreaming", even if you can't control them. Vonnegut learns that both he and Stringer, in terms of education, had little beyond good high schools "and everything was noise after that".

Bibliography

The concluding bibliography mentions the two novels of Vonnegut and Stringer from which excerpts were read, as well as Bergler's and Twain's works, Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer which Vonnegut mentions in the second conversation, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann as well as a recommended biography, Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann by Barbara Seaman, and Vonengut's Brekafast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan, further noting that "[a]ny of the other nearly twenty book-length works of fiction by Kurt Vonnegut are also recommended reading".

Reception

Like Shaking Hands with God received little attention from reviewers. Publishers' Weekly in September 1999 simply noted the release of the work—which followed quickly after the publication of Bagombo Snuff Box—and its discussion of topics such as the death of the novel and how writers secretly wish they were musicians. It further notes the forthcoming paperback printing of Grand Central Winter in the fall. Similarly, Entertainment Weekly, in a section focusing on how to get published without already being famous, recounted the story of Daniel Simon picking up a copy of Street News while stuck on a subway for half an hour and learning about Stringer, who noted that he owed his "career to the MTA". It mentioned the publication of his first novel the previous year and the release of this "collaboration with Kurt Vonnegut" due in October. A profile of Stringer in USA Today noted that the title came from one of his remarks. A list of recently published works in The Writer in January 2000 called it a "conversation about where the lives [Vonnegut and Stringer] live meet the art they practice, with candid thoughts on writings, humanity, salvation, are, and the struggle and joy of living". Martin Levin, in an overview in The Globe and Mail on January 15, 2000 on the trend of thinner books, mentioned both this book and God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, saying the former "will engage anybody interested in the writing life, but could have been a magazine piece".

Kathleen De Grave wrote on the work in 2002 for Counterpoise, an alternative review journal associated with the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida that focused on marginalized publications not represented in the American mainstream press. Saying that simply "holding the little book... is an experience in itself", De Grave notes its high quality paper and "jacket that lends a sense of inspiration". Although short, it "packs a lot of thought and humor into about 45 minutes of reading". Calling Vonnegut "as audacious and blunt as ever", she says his pairing with first time novelist Stringer, who answers his questions "with a novice writer's passion", was "a great idea" with their comments producing a discussion that is "free-and-easy and often startling". Noting that "God enters the conversation pretty often", the writer nonetheless keep things ground with the help of Klavan's questions. Both inspirational and providing a "renewed sense of purpose", she recommends the book "to anyone who writes for the love of it", saying it is useful "for those times you need some quick affirmation that all the work and disappointment... are worth it".