The Whole Kit and Caboodle, as Pertaining to the Authors

Not only for its similarities to other works of the same years from 1950-1980 and that spans' heroic redefining of the only somewhat defined word, “literature (1),” I argue that this text should be looked at as a product of its time. It should be considered an indicator, as it were, of the period from whence it came. While the book's contents come from a somewhat predictable time, the text not only takes place in a different time than the late seventies, but the time period within the contents happened... and didn't (2).
Let's look at our similar authors again, shall we? Robbins, Vonnegut, Thompson, and Dahl all wrote a great bulk of their combined works from 1950-1980, a time when literature was having yet another one of its seizing rebirths. Take into account though the seizing culture of that time, and we have an obvious link from the world each of those authors lived in to the world their stories took place in. Each of the authors listed either participated in war or saw it from the sidelines with incredibly pronounced opinions, these men were not only the children of the first World War and its lasting effects, but also found themselves participating in World War II, one of the many other wars of that period, or, as the insubordinate Thompson chose, commenting on war at every available opportunity in the face of being smothered with it.
Beyond war, though we find these authors including from time to time in their writing, the world that they lived in was tumultuous and constantly changing. The United States experienced many profound changes during this thirty year period (3), and I assert that the changing nature of the beast is awfully responsible for the boundaries these men felt they could bend to their will, or simply break. This time of change and redefining of their world and many of its broad words allowed for personal interpretation on a level which no generation before had ever quite experienced, sure there had been times before them during which new schools of thought had been born and new genres accepted, but this time, this was the time of radios and airwaves, of television (4). The blossoming ideas that American culture now formed around were war and peace, and all the muck-luck in between (5). This nonsensical, no holds barred, every man for himself but don't forget your neighbor mentality yielded such notions as world peace and harmony with nature, superior races and saviors purely genetic.
I maintain that coming from such a time may not only have made these authors feel they had been granted the right to go forth and publish their works, but also it created in them a need to create worlds uplifting, and allegorical, too. Vonnegut chose to show the world through morbid yet strangely comedic fables that it was basically digging itself deeper into a hole, and this one would not pleasantly end with a surprise trip to the Forbidden Gardens or that rather large wall (6). Instead, it would be tragically consumed with ice or partially destroyed by those who tried to save it, fortunately or unfortunately, because it was necessary to save the world.
Thompson chose to introduce to the world the concept that reality was much too much to bear, so it may just be best to take reality off its hinges and perhaps drag it down a terribly sandy road, inhabited by violent bats, to a place which only mimicked reality by exaggerating its least awful features (7). These stories, often largely non-fictitious, weren't the fables Vonnegut speared popular culture with, they were more the informative stories of someone who, in the face of great horror, chose to look reality in the eye and not sugar-coat it with propaganda and shiny new kitchen appliances (8). Having looked into the eye of the beast, he promptly chose to heavily medicate himself and go full hog, no rousing posters or gleaming toasters for Raoul Duke, for the horse that would save him did not run as fast as quicksilver, but instead it shown with the same liquid gleam.
Dahl took a slightly less offensive approach, though not truly a far cry from Vonnegut or Thompson (9). In writing the many children's books he published, Dahl created slightly magical realities, much as Robbins would, to land the characters in positions that didn't quite spare them from their own reality so much as take a miserable life and make it kind of average, but in a kind of fantastical way. Matilda, for instance, loses her magical powers but is somehow legally left in the care of the lovely Miss Honey who stands for everything the child yearns for in life, while Charlie Bucket gains the adult task of maintaining a chocolate factory as no child should be left to do, gains freedom from poverty, and mystically is allowed to own and operate his own monumental candy shop (10).
I reason that the culture in which these authors were raised sparked in them more than a desire to see what else their fellows, swarmed with new ideas, could tolerate, and their like-minded publishers would dole out to the world, but also that it brought out in them prophets and story-tellers who honestly sought to bring the world back to its senses (11). As I said before, the time that the most of these stories take place in happened, and didn't. Yes, Vonnegut was held in slaughterhouse number five, but there was no Pilgrim who traveled through time introduced to us in his memoirs. Sure, Thompson based Raoul Duke largely on himself. Of course, Dahl wrote of occurrences that might very well have happened in his time. All of these stories still share an element of fiction while coming from people who, in some sense, were trying to deliver some sort of message instead of just a tale of characters exiting one plot point to enter another. I would argue that this book, Still Life, fits firmly into the odd structure that was the culture it came from; it is indicative of this culture for its unorthodox reason for being, its internal need to share feelings about the present times, and the strange necessity it feels to graduate its characters from coddled notions of reality to the full brunt of truth through intoxication and passionate manipulations of their own state of being (12).

1 Really, look it up sometime. It's so vague they'd be better off defining what it isn't
2 Mysterious and insightful, no? Okay, no. Not really, but I tried
3 Not the least of which being the introduction of Astronaut Ice Cream. Which, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, only went up in space once in 1968 and will never be put into orbit again.
4 Or, "devil box" as many came to call it
5 Wonderboy, won't you take me far away from the mucky muck?
6 I'm sure that was during a moment when I thought, "this will later become an annotation," and then I liked it so much it stayed
7 Viva Las Vegas!
8 Instead, it got powdered with coke and iced with meth. Drug references make baking references so much easier. Thanks thugs!
9 In one book, "snozberry" is a male genital reference, in another, it's a candy. WTF Dahl?
10 Not only would these things never happen in real life, they'd be somewhat illegal if they ever did
11 By explaining things like the Hawaiian mongoose problem, of course
12 Read; lots of drugs and alcohol. Oh, and passion