Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, in full Kurt Vonnegut,
Jr. (b. Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis,
Ind., U.S.—d. April 11, 2007, New York,
N.Y.), American novelist noted for his
pessimistic and satirical novels that
use fantasy and science fiction to
highlight the horrors and ironies of
20th-century civilization.
Vonnegut studied at Cornell University
before serving in the U.S. Air Force in
World War II. Captured by the Germans,
he was one of the survivors of the fire
bombing of Dresden, Ger., in February
1945. After the war he studied
anthropology at the University of
Chicago. In the late 1940s he worked as
a reporter and as a public relations
writer.
Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano
(1952), visualizes a completely
mechanized and automated society whose
dehumanizing effects are unsuccessfully
resisted by the scientists and workers
in a New York factory town. The Sirens
of Titan (1959) is a
quasi-science-fiction novel in which the
entire history of the human race is
considered an accident attendant on an
alien planet’s search for a spare part
for a spaceship. In Cat’s Cradle (1963),
some Caribbean islanders adopt a new
religion consisting of harmless
trivialities in response to an
unforeseen scientific discovery that
eventually destroys all life on Earth.
In Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The
Children’s Crusade (1969), Vonnegut drew
on his Dresden experience; the book uses
that bombing raid as a symbol of the
cruelty and destructiveness of war down
through the centuries.
Vonnegut also wrote several plays,
including Happy Birthday, Wanda June
(1970); several works of nonfiction,
such as Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
(1974); and several collections of short
stories, chief among which was Welcome
to the Monkey House (1968). His other
novels include Mother Night (1961), God
Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965),
Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick
(1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick
(1983), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard
(1987), Hocus Pocus (1990), and
Timequake (1997). In 2005 he published A
Man Without a Country, a collection of
essays and speeches. Vonnegut’s
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008), a
collection of fiction and nonfiction
that focuses on war and peace, and Look
at the Birdie (2009), previously
unpublished short stories, appeared
posthumously.
