04-11-2024, 01:52 AM
Kurt Vonnegut (/ˈvɒnəɡət/ VON-ə-gət; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels.[1] In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after 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 (now Carnegie Mellon University) 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, with whom he had three children. Vonnegut adopted three of his sister's sons after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident. 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 positive reviews but was not commercially successful at the time. In the nearly 20 years that followed, he published several novels that were well regarded, two of which—The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963)—were nominated for the Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel of the year. He published a short-story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, in 1968.
His breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Its anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing 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. He gave speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses; he received awards and honors.
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). Since his death, he has been hailed as one of the most important contemporary writers and a dark humor commentator on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his unpublished works, Armageddon in Retrospect, in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction, including five previously unpublished stories, collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
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 (now Carnegie Mellon University) 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, with whom he had three children. Vonnegut adopted three of his sister's sons after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident. 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 positive reviews but was not commercially successful at the time. In the nearly 20 years that followed, he published several novels that were well regarded, two of which—The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963)—were nominated for the Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel of the year. He published a short-story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, in 1968.
His breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Its anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing 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. He gave speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses; he received awards and honors.
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). Since his death, he has been hailed as one of the most important contemporary writers and a dark humor commentator on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his unpublished works, Armageddon in Retrospect, in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction, including five previously unpublished stories, collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
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