Venus on the Half-Shell (4 page)

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has become a collector’s item, not because of its literary worth but because of the highly erotic illustrations. This is the fate of many of Trout’s books. In
Breakfast of Champions
we find that his best distributed book,
Plague on Wheels,
brings twelve dollars a copy because of its cover art, which depicts fellatio.

The irony of this is that few of Trout’s books have any erotic content. Only one has a major female character, and she was a rabbit
(The Smart Bunny).

Trout only wrote one purposely “dirty” book in his life,
The Son of Jimmy Valentine,
and he did this because his second wife, Darlene, said that that was the only way for him to make money.

This book did make money but not for Trout. Its publisher, World Classics Library, a hardcore Los Angeles outfit, sent none of the royalties due to Trout. World Classics Library issued many of Trout’s books, not because the readers were interested in the texts but because they needed his books to fill out their quota. They illustrated them with art that had nothing whatsoever to do with the story, and they often changed Trout’s titles to something more appealing to their peculiar type of reader.
Pan-Galactic Straw-boss,
for instance, was published as
Mouth Crazy.

Vonnegut says that Trout was cheated by his publishers, but
Breakfast of Champions
reveals that Trout’s poverty and obscurity was largely his own fault. He sent his manuscripts to publishers whose addresses he found in magazines whose main market was would-be writers. He never inquired into their reputation or the type of literature they published. Moreover, he frequently sent his stories without a stamped, self-addressed return envelope or without his own address. When he made one of his frequent moves, he never left a forwarding address at the post office. Even if his publishers had wished to deal fairly with him, they could not have located him.

Actually, Trout was a prime example of the highly neurotic writer whose creativity is compulsive and who could care less for the fate of his stories once they’d been set down on paper. He did not even own a copy of any of his own works.

Vonnegut calls Trout a science fiction writer, but he was one only in a special sense. He knew little of science and was indifferent to technical details. Vonnegut claims that most science fiction writers lack a knowledge of science. Perhaps this is so, but Vonnegut, who has a knowledge of science, ignores it in his fiction. Like Trout, he deals in time warps, extrasensory perception, space-flight, robots, and extraterrestrials. The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be “future fairy tales.” And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near. Anyway, the better writers spend most of their time trying to escape any labels whatsoever.

In fact, there is a lot of Kilgore Trout in science fiction writers, including Vonnegut. If I did not know that Trout was a living person, I’d think he was an archetype plucked by Vonnegut out of his unconscious or the collective unconscious of science fiction writers. He’s miserable, he wrestles with concepts and themes that only a genius could pin to the mat (and very few are geniuses), he feels that he is ignored and despised, he knows that the society in which he is forced to live could be a much better one, and, no matter how gregarious he seems to be, he is a loner, a monad. He may be rich and famous (and some science fiction authors are), but he is essentially that person described in the previous sentence. Millions may admire him, but he knows that the universe is totally unconscious of him and that he is a spark fading out in the blackness of eternity and infinity. But he has an untrammeled imagination, and while his spark is still glowing, he can defeat time and space. His stories are his weapons, and, poor as they may be, they are better than none. As Eliot Rosewater says, the mainstream writers, narrators of the mundane, are “sparrowfarts.” But the science fiction writer is a god. At least, that is what he secretly believes.

Trout’s favorite formula is to describe a hideous society, much like our own, and then, toward the end of the book, outline ways in which the society may be improved. In his
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he shows an America which is so highly cybernated that only people with three or more Ph.D.’s can get jobs. There are also Ethical Suicide Parlors where useless people volunteer for euthanasia.
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sounds like a combination of Vonnegut’s novel,
Player Piano
, and his short story, “Welcome to the Monkey House.” I’m not accusing Vonnegut of plagiarism, but Vonnegut does think highly enough of Trout’s plots to borrow some now and then. Trout’s
The Big Board
is about a man and a woman abducted and put on display by the extraterrestrials of the planet Zircon-212. Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five
tells how the Tralfamadorians carried off Billy Pilgrim and the movie star, Montana Wildhack, and put them in a luxurious cage.

It may be that Trout gave Vonnegut permission to adapt some of his plots. At one time Trout lived in Hyannis, Massachusetts, which is very near West Barnstable, where Vonnegut also lived.

Vonnegut admires Trout’s ideas, though he condemns his prose. It is atrocious and Trout’s unpopularity is deserved. (By the way, I’d characterize Vonnegut’s own prose, and his philosophy, as by Sterne out of Smollett.) A specimen of Trout’s prose, taken from
Venus on the Half-Shell
, sounds like that of the typical hack semipornographer’s. Most of the science fiction writers, according to Eliot Rosewater, have a style no better than Trout’s. But this doesn’t matter. Science fiction writers are poets with a sort of radar which detects only the meaningful in this world. They don’t write of the trivial; their concerns are the really big issues: galaxies, eternity, and the fate of all of us. And Trout is looking for the answer to the question that so sorely troubles Eliot Rosewater (and many of us). That is, how do you love people who have no use? How do you love the unlovable?

Vonnegut lists Trout’s known residences as Bermuda, Dayton, Ohio, Hyannis, Massachusetts, and Ilium and Cohoes of New York. To this I can add Peoria, Illinois. A letter from Kilgore Trout was printed in the vox pop section of the editorial page of the
Peoria Journal Star
in 1971. In this Trout denounced Peoria as essentially obscene. It suggested that the natives quit raising so much hell about dirty movies and books and look in their own hearts for the genuine smut: hate, prejudice, and greed. Trout gave his address as West Main Street. Unfortunately, I no longer have the letter or the address, since I clipped out the letter and sent it to Theodore Sturgeon, who lives in the Los Angeles area. Before doing this, however, I did ascertain that the address was genuine, though Trout no longer lived there. And he had failed, as usual, to leave a forwarding address.

I do have a letter which appeared on the editorial page of the
Peoria Journal Star
of August 14th, 1971. This gives us some information about Trout’s activities while he was in Peoria. The letter was signed by a D. Raabe, whom I met briefly after I’d given a lecture at Bradley University. Some extracts of the letter follow.

“...Eminent scatologist, Dr. K. Trout, W.E.A., in an interview outside the public facilities in Glen Oak Park, had some things to say about the Russian-Indian pact... On the subject of internal disorder, Dr. Trout noted that if Indian food becomes a fad in Russia, the Russians may ‘loosen up a bit’ although they might become a little touchier in certain areas—”

Apparently, Trout had a job with the Peoria Public Works Department at this time, and he claimed to have a doctor’s degree. I don’t know what the initials stand for, unless it’s Watercloset Engineering Assistant, but I suspect that he sent in fifty dollars to an institution of dubious standing and received his diploma through the mails. Despite the degree, he still had a menial and unpleasant job. This was to be expected. One whom the world treats crappily will become an authority on crap. He knows where it’s at, and he works where it all hangs out.

Trout’s last known job was as an installer of aluminum combination storm windows and screens in Cohoes, New York. At this time (late 1972), Trout was living in a basement. Because of his lack of charm and other social graces, Trout’s employer had refused to use him as a salesman. His fellow employees had little to do with him and did not even know that he wrote science fiction. And then one day he received a letter. It was the harbinger of a new life, a prelude to recognition of a writer too long neglected.

Trout had an invitation to be a guest of honor at a festival of arts. This was to celebrate the opening of the Mildred Barry Memorial Center for Arts in Midway Center, Indiana. With the invitation was a check for a thousand dollars. Both the honor and the check were due to Eliot Rosewater. He had agreed to loan his El Greco for exhibit at the Center if Kilgore Trout, possibly the greatest living writer in the world, would be invited.

Overjoyed, though still suspicious, Trout went to New York City to buy some copies of his own books so he could read passages from them at the festival. While there, he was mugged and picked up by the police on suspicion of robbery. He spent Veterans’ Day in jail. On being released, he hitchhiked a ride with a truck driver and arrived in Midway Center. There, unfortunately, the joint of his right index finger was bitten off by a madman, and the festival was called off. This made Trout hope that he would never again have to touch, or be touched by, a human being.

Breakfast of Champions
is, according to Vonnegut, the last word we’ll get from him on Trout. I’m sorry to hear that, but I am also grateful to Mr. Vonnegut for having first brought Trout to the attention of the nonpornography-reading public. I am also sorry that Mr. Vonnegut indulges in sheer fantasy in the last quarter of the book. The first three parts are factual, but the last part might lead some to believe that Kilgore Trout is a fictional character. The serious reader and student of Trout will disregard the final quarter of
Breakfast of Champions
except to sift fact from fantasy.

Though the Midway Center Art Festival was aborted, Kilgore Trout is nevertheless on his way to fame. I’ve just received word that Mr. David Harris, an editor of Dell Publishing Company, is negotiating for the reprinting of
Venus on the Half-Shell.
If the arrangements are satisfactory to both parties, the general public will have, for the first time, a chance to read a novel by Kilgore Trout.

The following is a list of the known titles of the one-hundred-and-seventeen novels and two thousand short stories written by Trout. It’s a tragically short list, and it can only be lengthened if Troutophiles make a diligent search through secondhand bookstores and porno shops for the missing works.

NOVELS

The Gutless Wonder
(1932)

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Venus on the Half-Shell

Oh Say Can You Smell?

The First District Court of Thankyou

Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass

Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension
(1948)

The Gospel from Outer Space

The Big Board

Pan-Galactic Straw-boss
(
Mouth Crazy
)

Plague on Wheels

Now It Can Be Told

The Son of Jimmy Valentine

How You Doin’?

The Smart Bunny

The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank

SHORT STORIES

The Dancing Fool
(April 1962 issue of
Black Garterbelt,
a magazine published by World Classics Library)

This Means You

Gilgongo!

Hail to the Chief

The Baring-gaffner of Bagnialto or This Year’s Masterpiece

(Author’s Note: Since this was first written, Mr. Vonnegut’s novel
Jailbird
has come out. In this Mr. Vonnegut claims that it was not Trout but another man who wrote the works which Vonnegut hitherto had claimed to be Trout’s. Nobody believes this disclaimer, but the reasons for it have been the subject of much speculation. Several people have wondered why the initial letter of the surname of the man Mr. Vonnegut claims is the real Trout is also mine. Is Mr. Vonnegut obliquely pointing his finger at me?

I really don’t know. In one of many senses, or perhaps two or three, I am Kilgore Trout. But then the same could be said of at least fifty science fiction writers.)

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