76 Books & arts The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
2 Turkey’s south-east.
Yet for all the cultural depredations that
they sometimes entail, development pro-
jects can help save ancient treasures, too.
Indeed, reckons Gul Pulhan, an archaeolo-
gist at the British Institute at Ankara, a re-
search centre, such ventures are becoming
the only way that archaeology can be done.
Bureaucracy partly explains that paradox:
foreign and local researchers who apply for
excavation permits in Turkey have to jump
through countless hoops. (The memory of
European archaeologists who plundered
Ottoman lands in the 18th and 19th centu-
ries might be to blame for this rigmarole.)
Another reason is money. “Across the
world, there is less and less money avail-
able for archaeological work,” says Ms Pul-
han. Turkey is no exception.
The outlook changes, however, when a
commercial or infrastructure scheme is at
stake. “The bureaucracy is lighter and
friendlier because they want to support
those projects,” Ms Pulhan says. Finance is
also available more readily, since develop-
ers in Turkey and elsewhere are required by
law to cover the costs of excavation (though
frequently they shelve their plans to avoid
the expense). In Antakya, a necropolis un-
earthed during previous construction
eventually became a museum. In Istanbul a
hotel project recently uncovered a Byzan-
tine road. In London, meanwhile, Bloom-
berg’s new headquarters incorporates a Ro-
man temple, which is open to the public.
Bankrolling archaeology in this way is
not an ideal solution. Excavation risks be-
ing rushed, because investors want to get
on with the job. Archaeologists may be
tempted or forced to cut corners. But im-
provisations like the museum hotel in An-
takya might be the best available approach.
“Had it not been for that project, probably
none of those things would have been un-
earthed,” says Ms Pulhan.
Seeing it through to the end was not
easy. Soon after construction began, war
broke out across the border in Syria, send-
ing millions of refugees into Turkey and
deterring tourism. The economy took a
turn for the worse. Because of the excava-
tions, the delays and the changes to the de-
sign, “we had to spend three times more
than we planned,” recalls Mr Asfuroglu’s
daughter, Sabiha Asfuroglu Abbasoglu,
who oversaw the development. The final
cost came to $120m.
“We had to sell some of our other prop-
erties, but we never gave up,” Ms Abbasoglu
says, standing next to the site’s centre-
piece, a giant mosaic that seems to float
above ground like a magic carpet, the effect
of centuries of earthquakes and floods that
caused some of its parts to rise and others
to sink. Ms Abbasoglu says she hopes the
outcome will be an example to others. The
next developer who stumbles upon a few
pots and pans might want to take note. 7O
n indiana avenuein Indianapolis, In-
diana stands the new Kurt Vonnegut
Museum and Library. Its repetitious ad-
dress chimes with its subject’s views on ge-
ography and belonging. Vonnegut believed
that a person should never forget where he
came from. “All my jokes are Indianapolis,”
he once said. “All my attitudes are India-
napolis. My adenoids are Indianapolis. If I
ever severed myself from Indianapolis, I
would be out of business. What people like
about me is Indianapolis.” As much as he
mocked the term—and those who used
it—in his novel “Cat’s Cradle” (1963), Von-
negut was a bona fide Hoosier.
Indianapolis is not known for its litera-
ture. It is overshadowed by America’s
coastal cities and its bigger neighbour on
Lake Michigan. Vonnegut himself is asso-
ciated with other places: Cape Cod, where
he ran a car dealership; upstate New York,
where he was a prman for General Electric;
Chicago, where he learned to be a journal-
ist and failed to earn a master’s degree.
Nevertheless, the Vonnegut museum
belongs in Indianapolis, where he was
born and grew up, says Julia Whitehead, its
founder and boss. “There’s a lack of arro-
gance here,” she reckons, “a humility” that
is distilled in his prose. The opening of the
museum coincides with the 50th anniver-
sary of the publication of Vonnegut’s most
famous novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five”,
which propelled him to fame. Half a cen-
tury on, the book—and the author—still
feel contemporary.“Slaughterhouse-Five” was distingui-
shed by its grim yet wildly imaginative por-
trayal of the second world war, which com-
bines sci-fi motifs and a distorted
chronology with moral clarity. The protag-
onist, Billy Pilgrim, is no Captain America.
He trudges passively through Germany
with his fellow prisoners of war wearing
silver boots, a fur-collared coat many sizes
too small, and a blue toga. Eventually, he
decides to tell the world about his kidnap
by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. He
is shot and killed soon afterwards by a fel-
low former captive. Experienced time-trav-
eller that he is, Billy knew his death was
coming. He had seen it many times.
The book transmuted the trauma Von-
negut himself suffered while witnessing
the firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of
war in 1945. When the museum opened on
November 9th, many of the first visitors
were veterans; several said their experi-
ences of Vietnam, Korea or Afghanistan
were reflected in Billy’s odyssey through
time and space. There are no evil characters
in his story, only ugly realities. When, to-
wards the end, he is recuperating from a
plane crash, his hospital bunk-mate, an
air-force historian, mentions Dresden’s
destruction. He asks Billy to “pity the men
who had to do it”. Billy does.
What explains Vonnegut’s enduring ap-
peal to readers from other generations and
backgrounds, who have never seen war
first-hand? An unassuming candour that is
native to the American Midwest, argues Ms
Whitehead, a quality that disarms readers
and forces them to confront eternal ques-
tions. His books are not simply criticisms
of war; they are meditations on human na-
ture and the meaning of life, wrapped up in
zany plots and deadpan wit.
Still, the idea of a Vonnegut museum
may seem odd. The author was a slouchy
hero of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture:
an anti-establishment, anti-war, satirical
pessimist with a self-professed penchant
for late-night drunken phone calls and Pall
Mall cigarettes. He was full of contradic-
tions. “When vivisected”, he conceded,
“the beliefs I have to defend...turn into
bowls of undifferentiated mush.” He listed
them wryly: “I am a pacifist, I am an anar-
chist, I am a planetary citizen, and so on.”
Together, though, the museum’s collec-
tion of personal effects, rejection letters
and art inspired by his writing attests to a
set of steadfast beliefs, which continue to
inspire readers. Vonnegut was an unyield-
ing advocate for free speech and the arts.
He wrote about the importance of commu-
nity and family. He thought that everyone
should be kind, goddammit, and that death
was neither good nor bad, merely inevita-
ble. Vonnegut himself died in 2007; hum-
ble as he was, says Ms Whitehead, “he
might be a little bit embarrassed about a
building with his name on it.” 7INDIANAPOLIS
Kurt Vonnegut gets his own museumLiterary posteritySo it goes
Hoosier hero