Who Is Kurt Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut - A full life lived

 

On Wednesday 11 April 2007, author Kurt Vonnegut died at the age of 84, following severe brain injuries sustained after a fall several weeks earlier.

Vonnegut was the author of cult classic novels Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions.

Kurt Vonnegut was one of the great barometers of our times. He was prepared to look at what others refused to see, he wrote about the things we all needed to know - using fiction, fantastical sci-fi, aliens, time travel, to lure us in - and he made sure the world had a chance to find out about issues that were important. Until Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, the bombing of Dresden was relatively unknown and not talked about.

Kurt Vonnegut will be remembered for making us think.



Kurt Vonnegut caricature copyright © Elsa Neal

Kurt Vonnegut 

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indiana on 11 November 1922. He fought in World War 2 in the U.S. 106th Infantry Division, and was captured by German soldiers on 14 December 1944.

Vonnegut was being held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany, when the beautiful city was bombed. As one of the few surviving prisoners, Vonnegut was forced to gather the corpses for burial, but eventually the Nazis chose to set fire to the bodies with flamethrowers instead. The building where Vonnegut was being held, and which later became the scene of corpses reduced to ashes, was a meat packing house called "Slaughterhouse Five", and this later became the title for Vonnegut's 1969 novel.

Vonnegut was rescued in May 1945, and awarded a Purple Heart on his return to the US.

Kurt Vonnegut, photographer unknown, source.

Marriage and family 

Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox when he returned from the war. They were divorced in 1979, and Vonnegut married photographer Jill Krementz.

With Jane, Kurt Vonnegut had three children, and adopted four (his sister, Alice's, three children, and an unrelated child).

 

Official website of Kurt Vonnegut
The official website of Kurt Vonnegut. Pause for a bit. There's only one page to look at now, featuring an empty bird cage, the gate ajar, that says all that needs to be said. Release. The End. No more.
The Vonnegut Web
Kurt Vonnegut's writings, speeches, FAQ, and biography.
Knowing what's nice
A collection of witticisms that Vonnegut has said while addressing students.

"It must be kind of spooky to be a student or teacher in a university as great as this one, with its libraries and laboratories and lecture halls, while knowing it is within the borders of a nation where wisdom, reason, knowledge and truth no longer apply."
Verbotomy - Vonnegut week
To celebrate Kurt Vonnegut's lifetime of creativity and unmatched comic genius, all Verbotomy definitions, for the week of April 16-22, will be based on invented words he created. Top player of the week will win a 1968 Hardcover Edition of Cat's Cradle. The kick-off definition for Vonnegut week is: "A harmless untruth, intended to comfort simple souls".

Slaughterhouse-Five 

Using his horrific experiences during the bombing of Dresden, when Vonnegut was held as a prisoner of war in a building called "Slaughterhouse Five", this novel uses time travel and aliens to fictionalise a series of random events that combine to illustrate the humanist themes that Vonnegut wanted to portray.

After an encounter with aliens, Billy Pilgrim, prisoner of war and witness to the Dresden bombing, gains the aliens' ability to experience all moments of his life - past, present, and future - at once, meaning that he knows when he will die and how.

This has been a contraversial novel in the past due to blasphemy, swearing, and sexually explicit content not previously common in such literature. In some areas it has been banned, and even burned.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Amazon Price: $11.20 (as of 07/25/2008)

 

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad.

From Slaughterhouse-Five, Chapter 1

Cat's Cradle 

In Cat's Cradle Vonnegut explores the concept of ordinary Americans living their lives on the day of the bombing of Hiroshima, and the families of those directly and indirectly involved in developing the nuclear bomb.

The plot revolves around a strange substance called "Ice-Nine" which is solid at room temperature and can freeze other water molecules instantly.

A powerful man suffering cancer decides to use Ice-Nine to commit suicide. Accidentally, his frozen body is dropped into the ocean, and the planet's water is instantaneously solidified.

Cat's Cradle

Amazon Price: $11.20 (as of 07/25/2008)

 

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be.

And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things."

"Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand."

She fired me.

From Cat's Cradle, Chapter 3, "Folly"

Kurt Vonnegut talks about Cat's Cradle 

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Part 6

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Breakfast of Champions 

Breakfast of Champions is Vonnegut's satirical look at two characters who are opposites of each other. One character is a writer, whom Vonnegut's narrator torments by letting him know that he is a character in a story being controlled by the narrator.

Breakfast of Champions

Amazon Price: $11.20 (as of 07/25/2008)

A Man Without a Country 

"Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family's legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism. What makes this all the more remarkable is that most of it happens in Indiana." - Studs Terkel quoted on the 2005 edition of A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country

Amazon Price: $16.29 (as of 07/25/2008)

Kurt Vonnegut inspires 

Lori Harfinest reads from Kurt Vonnegut's final book, A Man Without a Country

Kurt Vonnegut is The Resident's People

The Res reads passages that focus on her latest obsessive topic, global warming, from her favorite author's latest book. For more info on the show, visit www.theresident.net. Thanks to the best rock band on Earth, The Sound of Urchin, for use of their song, "Don't Walk Me Down That Road." More info on them at www.soundofurchin.com

Runtime: 6:23
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Vote for your favourite Kurt Vonnegut books 

 

"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, so we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice and I made this sad world a paradise."

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Reader Feedback 

RickBasset

I love how Vonnegut could take the absurd aspects of our lives and serve them up to us in a totally different form and make us finally see thing for what they are. Great lens!

Peace! :~)

Posted July 12, 2008

chefkeem

"Mother Night" is my favorite out of the three I've read, so far. I definitely want to read all his books. Great tribute lens! 5*s

Posted June 25, 2008

Snorri

I was thinking about doing a lens about Vonnegut, but I can see there is no need with one this good already published. Great job!

Posted June 04, 2008

jsr54

I remember reading Breakfast of Champions in high school, and it opened up a whole new genre of fiction that I hadn't suspected existed. A great mind.

Posted May 05, 2008

rms

Great lens! 5*

Posted September 06, 2007

 
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Lens content copyright © Elsa Neal 2007-2008. All rights reserved.