Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

This American short story writer, novelist, and critic writes: "I am the son and grandson of Indianapolis architects, who were also good painters, so it was natural that I should go into the arts. I am a product of the Indianapolis public schools, which were superb during the Great Depression. I was told by my father to be anything but an architect. He had been made gloomy by years and years of very little work. And, when my brother, Bernard, began to do very well as a chemist, I was given more or less direct order to become a chemist, too. So I kept away from the arts, which were made to seem silly and weak, and studied chemistry for three years at Cornell University. I was delighted to catch pneumonia during my third year and, upon recovery, to forget everything I ever learned about chemistry and go to war."

"I was a battalion scout and was easily captured. The most interesting thing I saw during the war, I suppose, was the destruction of Dresden, the largest single massacre in European history. I was a prisoner of war in a meat locker under a slaughterhouse when the worst of the firestorm was going on. After that I worked as a miner of corpses, breaking into cellars where over a hundred thousand Hansels and Gretels were baked like gingerbread men."

"After the war...I went to the University of Chicago, where they allowed me to be a graduate student in anthropology, even though I had no degree. I stayed there for three years, also working as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. I went broke and hired out as a flack for the research laboratory of the General Electric Company where my brother was doing remarkable work with respect to cloud physics. I hated it there, but curiously made the closest friends I've ever had. At the end of my third year I began to sell short stories to Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post as well as other magazines that were then very fat. I made what seemed like a lot of money so I began a novel that mocked General Electric, quit my job, threw a party that was stopped by the police, and moved to Cape Cod."

Since that time (1951), Mr. Vonnegut's career has encompassed a variety of similarly varied experiences. His freelance writing has been interspersed with activities such as "serving as the SAAB dealer for Cape Cod" and "acting as the entire English department in a school for disturbed children." He was a lecturer at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop from 1965-67; lecturer in English at Harvard University in 1970 and Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York from 1973-1974. A member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, he was the recipient of their literary award in 1970. In 1971, he received an MA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Vonnegut currently resides in New York City.

Slaughterhouse Five, which became a bet seller and was made into a film, made Vonnegut a literary celebrity. Several of his novels are now required reading at several universities. Cat's Cradle and The Sirens of Titan have sold nearly two hundred thousand copies each. Very much in demand as a lecturer, Vonnegut has also established himself in the movie industry with his company, Sourdough Productions. He remains a casual and unpretentious person. "Over six feet tall, rumpled and shaggy . . . fourth generation German-American with a drooping moustache, a brow chevroned like a sergeant major's sleeve, and the eyes of a sacrificial altar-bound virgin caught in mid-shrug," he says he has "worried some about why I write books when presidents and generals do not read them." He concludes that the trick is to catch them at school, "before they become generals and senators and presidents and poison their minds with humanity." When asked what sort of writer he would most like to be known as, Vonnegut replies, "George Orwell."

In Kurt Vonnegut's work, characters make frequent encore performances. Science fiction writer Kilgore Trout first surfaces in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, then returns for Breakfast of Champions, while his son narrates Galapagos. All of Vonnegut's 17 novels and assorted nonfiction seems to be taking place in the same loopy universe. Now a 693-page "authorized compendium," The Vonnegut Encyclopedia, by Marc Leeds (Greenwood Press) summarizes plots, identifies both fictional and real-life folks and explains Vonnegutian concepts like "wampeter," which is any object that unites otherwise unrelated lives.

In 1996, Mother Night went to the silver screen, starring Nick Nolte, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, and a cameo appearance by Vonnegut himself.

Timequake (Putnam), which the publisher calls Vonnegut's "first full-length work of fiction in seven years (since the novel Hocus Pocus)," was published in 1997.

Player Piano (1951) Happy Birthday Wanda June (1970)

Sirens of Titan (1959) Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Canary in a Cathouse (1961) Slapstick, or Lonesome No More (1976)

Mother Night (1962) Deadeye Dick (1982)

Cat's Cradle (1963) Galapagos (1985)

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) Bluebeard (1987)

Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) Hocus Pocus (1990)

Slaughterhouse Five (1969) Fates Worse Than Death (1991)

"How to Get a Job Like Mine" - Vonnegut discusses his own work in a whimsical manner, touches on current events, his philosophy on everything from the state of the family, and relationships, war, censorship, perhaps a current event, and gives the best advice he can to those who would like to become writers.