Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a satirical essayist and novelist who blended science-fiction and humor with literary themes and topics of philosophical weight, become an icon of 1960 and 1970s counterculture. A bestseller who also experimented with form, genre, and voice, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain (the writer who Vonnegut most admired) for his fusion of cynicism, humanitarianism, comedy, and social critique. Born during the depression, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the youngest of three children. His more...
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a satirical essayist and novelist who blended science-fiction and humor with literary themes and topics of philosophical weight, become an icon of 1960 and 1970s counterculture. A bestseller who also experimented with form, genre, and voice, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain (the writer who Vonnegut most admired) for his fusion of cynicism, humanitarianism, comedy, and social critique. Born during the depression, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the youngest of three children. His father was an architect and his mother suffered from bouts of severe mental illness, eventually committing suicide during World War II, an event that would haunt Vonnegut his entire life. Vonnegut enlisted in the army in 1943, and was captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. He was a prisoner of war in Dresden and was working in an underground meat locker during the firebombing of the city in 1945; in the aftermath, he worked disposing the thousands of charred corpses. Upon his return to the states, Vonnegut married his high school sweetheart and had three children; they also adopted his sister's children after she and her husband died within a day of each other. Vonnegut worked as a police reporter and studied anthropology in the M.A. program at the University of Chicago, but his thesis on "The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales" was rejected. He went to work as a public relations writer for General Electric, taught emotionally disturbed children, and began publishing his first short stories. In 1952 he published his first novel, PLAYER PIANO, a science-fiction send-up of corporate culture. His science-fiction novels, such as CAT'S CRADLE, were filled with outlandish concepts such as "Karass" (an unwitting group of people who serve some larger purpose) and "Foma" (harmless untruths), and attracted a small but devoted cult-following. His semi-autobiographical time-traveling novel SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, which dealt deeply with his experiences during the war, brought him worldwide fame, and from that point on his novels have met with commercial and mostly critical success. However in the 1980s Vonnegut fell into a deep depression, culminating with an attempted suicide in 1984. He published his last novel, TIMEQUAKE, in 1997. In 2005, Vonnegut, a fierce pacifist, human-rights, and free-speech advocate, published a best-selling collection of essays, MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. In April 2007, several weeks after falling and suffering brain damage, Vonnegut passed away.less...
The delight of life is in the details - and the details are missing in this doomsday novel. It is clever and dark - but not entirely truthful. People are not as plastic as they sometimes seem to be on the surface - and this novel rarely gets below that surface. Boko (the founder of Bokononism, a new religion) says that we need to lie to ourselves in order to be happy. I'm not convinced that life is so bleak - nor do I think Vonnegut really did either, at least not completely. My favorite Vonnegut quote is not from one of his novels, but from an article he wrote towards the end of his life:
vonnegut was brilliant..... but also a hard core repulican and supporter of ronald reagan. obviously a person of stark contrasts, he always could and can make me laugh, and make me think
The delight of life is in the details - and the details are missing in this doomsday novel. It is clever and dark - but not entirely truthful. People are not as plastic as they sometimes seem to be on the surface - and this novel rarely gets below that surface. Boko (the founder of Bokononism, a new religion) says that we need to lie to ourselves in order to be happy. I'm not convinced that life is so bleak - nor do I think Vonnegut really did either, at least not completely. My favorite Vonnegut quote is not from one of his novels, but from an article he wrote towards the end of his life: