Background

Ethnicity: Vonnegut was descended from German immigrants who settled in the United States in the mid-19th century.

Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States; the son of a successful architect, Kurt Vonnegut Sr, and his wife Edith. His older siblings were Bernard and Alice.

Education

Vonnegut enrolled at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1936, graduating in 1940. In 1940 he entered Cornell University, where he majored in chemistry and biology. In 1943, he voluntarily joined the U.S. Army and participated in World War II. The Army initially sent him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering. On December 22, 1944 Vonnegut, who was a battalion scout of the 106th Infantry Division, was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. On May 22, 1945 he was liberated by the Soviet army and returned to the U.S.

After discharge from the Army, Vonnegut undertook graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Chicago. While a student, he worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. Vonnegut left Chicago without a degree, although in 1971 his novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) was accepted in lieu of a thesis, and he was awarded a M.A.

Later in life Vonnegut was given honorary degrees by, among others, Indiana University and Bennington College.

Career

After graduating from the University of Chicago, Vonnegut moved to Schenectady, New York, to work as a publicist for the General Electric Corporation. During this period, he also began submitting short stories to various journals, and in 1951, he resigned his position at General Electric to devote his time solely to writing.

Vonnegut published several novels throughout the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Player Piano in 1952. However, his frequent use of elements of fantasy resulted in his classification as a writer of science fiction, a genre not widely accepted as "serious literature," and his work did not attract significant popular or critical interest until the mid-1960s, when increasing disillusionment with American society led to widespread admiration for his forthright, irreverent satires. His reputation was greatly enhanced in 1969 with the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five, a vehemently antiwar novel that appeared during the peak of protest against American involvement in Vietnam. During the 1970s and 1980s, Vonnegut continued to serve as an important commentator on American society, publishing a series of novels in which he focused on topics ranging from political corruption to environmental pollution. In recent years, Vonnegut has also become a prominent and vocal critic of censorship and militarism in the United States.

Although many critics attribute Vonnegut's classification as a science-fiction writer to a complete misunderstanding of his aims, the element of fantasy is nevertheless one of the most notable features of his early works. Player Piano depicts a fictional city called Ilium in which the people have relinquished control of their lives to a computer humorously named EPICAC, after a substance that induces vomiting, while the The Sirens of Titan (1959) takes place on several different planets, including a thoroughly militarized Mars, where the inhabitants are electronically controlled. The fantastic settings of these works serve primarily as a metaphor for modern society, which Vonnegut views as absurd to the point of being surreal, and as a backdrop for Vonnegut's central focus: the hapless human beings who inhabit these bizarre worlds who struggle with both their environments and themselves. For example, in Player Piano, the protagonist, Dr. Paul Proteus, rebels against the emotional vapidity of his society, wherein, freed from the need to perform any meaningful work, the citizens have lost their sense of dignity and purpose. Proteus joins a subversive organization devoted to toppling the computer-run government and participates in an abortive rebellion. Although he is imprisoned at the end of the novel, Vonnegut suggests that Proteus has triumphed in regaining his humanity.

Vonnegut once again focuses on the role of technology in human society in Cat's Cradle (1963), widely considered one of his best works. The novel recounts the discovery of a form of ice, called ice-nine, which is solid at a much lower temperature than normal ice and is capable of solidifying all water on Earth. Ice-nine serves as a symbol of the enormous destructive potential of technology, particularly when developed or used without regard for the welfare of humanity.

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; or, Pearls before Swine (1965), Vonnegut presents one of his most endearing protagonists in the figure of Eliot Rosewater, a philanthropic but ineffectual man who attempts to use his inherited fortune for the betterment of humanity. Rosewater finds that his generosity, his genuine concern for human beings, and his attempts to establish loving relationships are viewed as madness in a society that values only money. The novel includes traditional religions in its denunciation of materialism and greed in the modern world, suggesting that the wealthy and powerful invented the concept of divine ordination to justify and maintain their exploitation of others.

Vonnegut described Slaughterhouse-Five as a novel he was compelled to write, since it is based on one of the most extraordinary and significant events of his life. During the time he was a prisoner of the German Army, Vonnegut witnessed the Allied bombing of Dresden, which destroyed the city and killed more than 135, 000 people. One of the few to survive, Vonnegut was ordered by his captors to aid in the grisly task of digging bodies from the rubble and destroying them in huge bonfires. Although the attack claimed more lives than the bombing of Hiroshima and was directed at a target of no apparent military importance, it attracted little attention, and Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's attempt to both document and denounce this event.

In the works written after Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut often focuses on the problems of contemporary society in a direct manner. Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday (1973) and Slapstick, or Lonesome No More (1976), for example, examine the widespread feelings of despair and loneliness that result from the loss of traditional culture in the United States; Jailbird (1979) recounts the story of a fictitious participant in the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration, creating an indictment of the American political system; Galapagos (1985) predicts the dire consequences of environmental pollution; and Hocus-Pocus; or, What's the Hurry, Son? (1990) deals with the implications and aftermath of the war in Vietnam. In the 1990s, he also published Fates Worse Than Death (1991) and Timequake (1997). Although many of these works are highly regarded, critics frequently argue that in his later works Vonnegut tends to reiterate themes presented more compellingly in earlier works. Many also suggest that Vonnegut's narrative style, which includes the frequent repetition of distinctive phrases, the use of colloquialisms, and a digressive manner, becomes formulaic in some of his later works.

Vonnegut was also the author of several plays, including Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970; film 1971); several works of nonfiction, such as the collection Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974); and several collections of short stories, chief among which was Welcome to the Monkey House (1968). In 2005 he published A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush’s America, a collection of essays and speeches inspired in part by contemporary politics. Vonnegut’s posthumously published works include Armageddon in Retrospect (2008), a collection of fiction and nonfiction that focuses on war and peace, and a number of previously unpublished short stories, assembled in Look at the Birdie (2009) and While Mortals Sleep (2011). We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012) comprised an early unpublished novella and a fragment of a novel unfinished at his death. A selection of his correspondence was published as Letters (2012).

Apart from writing, he also served as lecturer in English at the Harvard University and the City College of New York, where he was a Distinguished Professor.

Achievements

• During his career Vonnegut published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction, but he is mostly notable for his best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
  
  The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Vonnegut posthumously in 2015. He was also nominated for Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards and Locus Awards several times.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Look at the Birdie

    (In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written j...)

    2009
  • Armageddon in Retrospect

    (First published on the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's dea...)

    2008
  • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

    (In the stingingly irreverent story of a man filled with t...)

    1965
  • Fates Worse Than Death

    (The author offers a collection of essays and speeches dis...)

    1991
  • Hocus Pocus

    (Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college prof...)

    1990
  • Bluebeard

    (Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist ...)

    1987
  • Bagombo Snuff Box

    (An anthology of previously uncollected short stories feat...)

    1999
  • Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

    (This collection of Kurt Vonnegut's most rare and unexamin...)

    1974
  • Galapagos

    (In one of Vonnegut's most peculiar and provocative works,...)

    1985
  • Breakfast of Champions

    (In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most be...)

    1973
  • While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction

    (Published posthumously, While Mortals Sleep is a collecti...)

    2011
  • Player Piano

    (Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of en...)

    1952
  • 2BR02B

    (2BR02B is a satiric short story that imagines life and de...)

    1962
  • Timequake

    (According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science f...)

    1997
  • If This Isn't Nice, What Is?

    (A collection of commencement speeches and other wit and w...)

    2013
  • Happy Birthday, Wanda June

    (Happy Birthday Wanda June was Kurt Vonnegut’s first play,...)

    1970
  • Palm Sunday

    (This volume brings together the best of his shorter work,...)

    1981
  • Deadeye Dick

    (Rudolf Waltz's principal objection to life was that it wa...)

    1982
  • Mother Night

    (Mother Night is a first-person narrative accounting the e...)

    1961
  • Slaughterhouse-Five

    (Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the w...)

    1969
  • Welcome to the Monkey House

    (Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonne...)

    1968
  • Sun, Moon, Star

    (Sun, Moon, Star is the story of the birth of Jesus as tol...)

    1980
  • Jailbird

    (Pay attention please to the life of Walter F. Starbuck. N...)

    1979
  • The Sirens of Titan 1959
  • Slapstick, or Lonesome no more! 1976
  • Canary in a Cat House 1961

Religion

Once Vonnegut stated that his forebears who came to the United States did not believe in God, and he learned his atheism from his parents.

Politics

Vonnegut did not particularly sympathize with liberalism or conservatism and disregarded more mainstream political ideologies in favor of socialism.

Views

Quotations: "I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake."

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

"So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too."

"People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. So they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead."

"Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes."

"The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large."

"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?"

Membership

Vonnegut was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973. He was later elected vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The author was also the honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States

  1973

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Lev Grossman: "Vonnegut's sincerity, his willingness to scoff at received wisdom, is such that reading his work for the first time gives one the sense that everything else is rank hypocrisy. His opinion of human nature was low, and that low opinion applied to his heroes and his villains alike — he was endlessly disappointed in humanity and in himself, and he expressed that disappointment in a mixture of tar-black humor and deep despair. He could easily have become a crank, but he was too smart; he could have become a cynic, but there was something tender in his nature that he could never quite suppress; he could have become a bore, but even at his most despairing he had an endless willingness to entertain his readers: with drawings, jokes, sex, bizarre plot twists, science fiction, whatever it took."
  
  Dinitia Smith: "Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?"
  
  Robert T. Tally Jr.: "Vonnegut's 14 novels, while each does its own thing, together are nevertheless experiments in the same overall project. Experimenting with the form of the American novel itself, Vonnegut engages in a broadly modernist attempt to apprehend and depict the fragmented, unstable, and distressing bizarreries of postmodern American experience ... That he does not actually succeed in representing the shifting multiplicities of that social experience is beside the point. What matters is the attempt, and the recognition that ... we must try to map this unstable and perilous terrain, even if we know in advance that our efforts are doomed."

Interests

• music, drawing, writing

• Writers

  Gustave Flaubert, Mary Shelley, Ray Bradbury

• Artists

  Nancy Davis

Connections

After returning from World War II, he tied the nuptial knot with his childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox. The couple lived at Barnstable Massachusetts. They were blessed with three children.

The relationship did not last long and the two separated in 1970. The same year, he began living in with a photographer, Jill Kremetz. He was legally divorced from his first wife in 1979 and eventually married Kremetz.

In his life, he raised seven children - three from his first wife, three children of his sister Alice and an adopted child with Kremetz.

Father:

Kurt Vonnegut Sr.

Kurt Vonnegut Sr. (November 24, 1884 – October 1, 1957) was an American architect and architectural lecturer active in early- to mid-twentieth-century Indianapolis, Indiana.

Mother:

Edith Lieber Vonnegut

Wife:

Jill Krementz

Jill Krementz is a well-known photographer and author.

Daughter:

Edith Vonnegut

Edith Vonnegut is an American painter.

Son:

Mark Vonnegut

He is an American pediatrician and memoirist.

Brother:

Bernard Vonnegut

Bernard Vonnegut (August 29, 1914 – April 25, 1997) was an American atmospheric scientist credited with discovering that silver iodide could be used effectively in cloud seeding to produce snow and rain.

Sister:

Alice vonnegut

ex-wife:

Jane Marie Cox

References

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  1977
• And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut's life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.
  2012
• Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels
  2011
• Kurt Vonnegut Drawings This book brings together the finest examples of Kurt's funny, strange, and moving drawings in an inexpensive, beautifully produced gift volume for every Vonnegut fan.
  2014
• Kurt Vonnegut's America
  2010