Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). [1] He was born to third-generation German-American parents in Indianapolis, Indiana.
As a high-schooler at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis2, Vonnegut worked on the nation’s first daily high school newspaper, The Daily Echo. He lived on Illinois Street in Indianapolis, and his boyhood home—featuring a handprint of baby Kurt set in concrete—went on sale in April 2007[citation needed]. He briefly attended Butler University, but dropped out when a professor said his stories were not good enough. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1942, where he served as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, and majored in biochemistry. While attending Cornell University he was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, following in the footsteps of his father. Nevertheless, Vonnegut often spoke and wrote about The Sun being the only enjoyable part of his time at Cornell. [1] He enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1943. He studied there only briefly before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. On May 14, 1944, Mothers’ Day, his mother, Edith Lieber Vonnegut, committed suicide. [3].
World War II and the firebombing of Dresden
Vonnegut’s experience as a soldier and prisoner of war had a profound influence on his later work. As an advance scout with the U.S. 106th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut was cut off from his battalion and wandered alone behind enemy lines for several days until captured by German troops on December 14, 1944. [4] While a prisoner of war, Vonnegut witnessed the aftermath of the February 13, 1945 – February 15, 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany, which destroyed much of the city. Vonnegut was one of just seven American prisoners of war in Dresden to survive, in an underground meatpacking cellar known as Slaughterhouse Five. “Utter destruction,” he recalled. “Carnage unfathomable.” The Nazis put him to work gathering bodies for mass burial … Vonnegut explains. “But there were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in guys with flamethrowers. All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.” [5] This experience formed the core of his most fa ...
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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). [1] He was born to third-generation German-American parents in Indianapolis, Indiana.
As a high-schooler at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis2, Vonnegut worked on the nation’s first daily high school newspaper, The Daily Echo. He lived on Illinois Street in Indianapolis, and his boyhood home—featuring a handprint of baby Kurt set in concrete—went on sale in April 2007[citation needed]. He briefly attended Butler University, but dropped out when a professor said his stories were not good enough. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1942, where he served as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, and majored in biochemistry. While attending Cornell University he was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, following in the footsteps of his father. Nevertheless, Vonnegut often spoke and wrote about The Sun being the only enjoyable part of his time at Cornell. [1] He enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1943. He studied there only briefly before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. On May 14, 1944, Mothers’ Day, his mother, Edith Lieber Vonnegut, committed suicide. [3].
World War II and the firebombing of Dresden
Vonnegut’s experience as a soldier and prisoner of war had a profound influence on his later work. As an advance scout with the U.S. 106th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut was cut off from his battalion and wandered alone behind enemy lines for several days until captured by German troops on December 14, 1944. [4] While a prisoner of war, Vonnegut witnessed the aftermath of the February 13, 1945 – February 15, 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany, which destroyed much of the city. Vonnegut was one of just seven American prisoners of war in Dresden to survive, in an underground meatpacking cellar known as Slaughterhouse Five. “Utter destruction,” he recalled. “Carnage unfathomable.” The Nazis put him to work gathering bodies for mass burial … Vonnegut explains. “But there were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in guys with flamethrowers. All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.” [5] This experience formed the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five and is a theme in at least six other books.[5]
Vonnegut was freed by Soviet troops in May 1945. Upon returning to America, Vonnegut was awarded a Purple Heart for what he called a “ludicrously negligible wound.” [6]
Postbellum career
After the war, Vonnegut attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. According to Vonnegut in Bagombo Snuff Box, the university rejected his first thesis on the necessity of accounting for the similarities between Cubist painting and Native American uprisings of the late 19th century, saying it was “unprofessional.” They later accepted his novel Cat’s Cradle and awarded him the degree. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York, in public relations for General Electric. He attributes his unadorned writing style to his earlier reporting work.[citation needed]
On the verge of abandoning writing, Vonnegut was offered a teaching job at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While he was there Cat’s Cradle became a best-seller, and he began Slaughterhouse-Five, now considered one of the best American Novels of the 20th century, appearing on the 100 best lists of Time magazine7 and the Modern Library8.
Early in his adult life, he moved to Barnstable, Massachusetts, a picturesque town on Cape Cod. [9]
Personal life
He married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox, after returning from World War II, but the couple separated in 1970. He did not divorce Cox until 1979, but from 1970 to 2000, Vonnegut lived with the woman who would later become his second wife, photographer Jill Krementz.[10]
He had seven children: he shared three with his first wife, adopted his sister Alice’s three children when she died of cancer, and adopted another child, Lily. Two of these children have published books, including his only biological son, Mark Vonnegut, who wrote The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity, about his experiences in the late 1960s and his major psychotic breakdown and recovery; the tendency to insanity he acknowledged may be partly hereditary, influencing him to take up the study of medicine and orthomolecular psychiatry. Mark was named after Mark Twain, whom Vonnegut considered an American saint, and to whom he bears some resemblance, in both style and facial appearance.[11] [12]
His daughter Edith Vonnegut, an artist, has also had her work published in a book entitled Domestic Goddesses. Edith was once married to Geraldo Rivera. She was named after Kurt Vonnegut’s mother, Edith Lieber. His youngest daughter is Nanette, named after Nanette Schnull, Vonnegut’s paternal grandmother.
He was the younger brother of atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut, now deceased.
Of Vonnegut’s four adopted children, three are his nephews: James, Steven and Kurt Adams; the fourth is Lily, a girl he adopted as an infant in 1982. James, Steven and Kurt were adopted after a traumatic week in 1958, in which their father was killed when his commuter train went off an open drawbridge in New Jersey, and their mother — Kurt’s sister Alice — died of cancer.[13] The fourth and youngest of the boys, Peter Nice, went to live with a first cousin of their father in Birmingham, Alabama as an infant. Lily is a singer and actress.
On January 31, 2000, a fire destroyed the top story of his home. Vonnegut suffered smoke inhalation and was hospitalized in critical condition for four days. He survived, but his personal archives were destroyed. After leaving the hospital, he recuperated in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Death
Vonnegut died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007, in Manhattan, New York, after a fall at his Manhattan home several weeks prior resulted in irreversible brain injuries.[1][14][15]
See entire Wikipedia article: Vonnegut
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