Kurt Vonnegut ( VON-ə-gət; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty years; further works have been published since his death. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau. Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. It received favorable reviews yet sold poorly. In the nearly 20 years that followed, several well-regarded novels were published, including The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963), both of which were nominated for the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year. His short-story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, was published in 1968. Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Its anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amid the Vietnam War, and its reviews were generally positive. It rose to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list and made Vonnegut famous. Later in his career, Vonnegut published autobiographical essays and short-story collections such as Fates Worse Than Death (1991) and A Man Without a Country (2005). He has been hailed for his darkly humorous commentary on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his work, Armageddon in Retrospect, in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction.
Biography
Family and early life Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, on November 11, 1922, the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and his wife Edith (née Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard and Alice. He descended from a long line of German Americans; his paternal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut, settled in Indianapolis and founded the Vonnegut Hardware Company. His father and grandfather Bernard were architects; the architecture firm under Kurt Sr. designed such buildings as Das Deutsche Haus (now called "The Athenæum"), the Indiana headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company, and the Fletcher Trust Building. Vonnegut's mother was born into Indianapolis's Gilded Age high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among the wealthiest in the city based on a fortune derived from a successful brewery. Both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent speakers of German, but pervasive anti-German sentiment during and after World War I caused them to abandon German culture. Many German Americans were told at the time that this was a precondition for American patriotism; thus, his parents did not teach Vonnegut to speak German or introduce him to German literature, cuisine, or traditions, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless." Vonnegut credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper during the first decade of his life, for raising him and giving him values. He later said, "she gave me decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to me," and "was as great an influence on me as anybody." He described her as "humane and wise" and added that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her. The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts had once enjoyed were destroyed in a matter of years. The Liebers' brewery closed down in 1921 after the advent of Prohibition. When the Great Depression hit, few people could afford to build, causing clients at Kurt Sr.'s architectural firm to become scarce. Vonnegut's brother and sister had finished their primary and secondary educations in private schools, but Vonnegut was placed in a public school called Public School No. 43 (now the James Whitcomb Riley School). He was bothered by the Great Depression, and both his parents were affected deeply by their economic misfortune. His father withdrew from normal life and became what Vonnegut called a "dreamy artist." His mother became depressed, withdrawn, bitter, and abusive. She labored to regain the family's wealth and status, and Vonnegut said that she expressed hatred for her husband that was "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid." She often tried in vain to sell short stories she had written to Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines.
High school and Cornell University
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
