Biography
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Kurt Vonnegut was born November 11th, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the
third and last child born to Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. and Edith Lieber Vonnegut.
Vonnegut's father was an architect and his mother a member of a socially prominent
family in the area. Vonnegut's older siblings attended elite private schools but the
stock market crash of 1929 forced the family to economize and they moved to a
smaller house and young Kurt attended public school. At Shortridge High School
Vonnegut became the editor of the school's unique daily paper and while studying
chemistry and biology at Cornell University he served as editor for the Cornell Sun.
In 1943 he enlisted in the Army and as part of his military training he studied
mechanical engineering. Before he left for service in Europe he returned to
Indianapolis to visit his family. During his visit his mother committed suicide on
Mother's Day with an overdose of sleeping pills. Vonnegut went to Europe as an
advance infantry scout and arrived in time to experience the last major German
offensive of the war during the course of which he is taken prisoner and sent to
Dresden to work in the factories. He survived the controversial firebombing of the
city, which resulted in the largest single loss of life from a military operation in
history. The experience informs most of his work and is the foundation for his most
successful novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969).
After the war he married his childhood sweetheart Jane Cox and began graduate work
in anthropology at the University of Chicago. While studying anthropology he worked
as a part-time reporter for the City News Bureau. Vonnegut finished his course work
but after his thesis proposal was rejected he left Chicago to work as a publicist for
General Electric's Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York where he mingled
with prominent scientists, including his brother Bernard, but became increasingly
disillusioned with corporate America. His first short story "The Barnhouse Effect"
was published in Collier's magazine on February 11, 1950 and Vonnegut resigned his
position at GE to move to Cape Cod in order to write full time. His first novel, Player
Piano was published in 1952. Publication of stories did not provide an adequate
income, however, and Vonnegut continued to work various odd jobs while writing
during the 1950's. In 1958 he and his wife, already parents to three children, adopted
the three children of Vonnegut's sister and brother-in-law who had died within days of
each other. Vonnegut continued to publish stories and novels and came to rely upon
the publication of paperback novels as the magazines that had sustained him during
the 1950's began to dry up. During these years he published works such as The Sirens
of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964)
which for the first time since Player Piano garnished critical attention. From 1965-67
Vonnegut taught at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop and during this era his
earlier works were rediscovered by the growing population of disaffected American
youth. A Guggenheim Fellowship grant in 1968 allowed Vonnegut to revisit Dresden
and a year later he published Slaughterhouse Five which became an immediate bestseller and established Vonnegut as one of the spokesmen of his age. Vonnegut began
to experiment with dramatic works and non-fiction during the 1970's and during this
time he was awarded his M.A. in Anthropology by the University of Chicago after the
school determined that Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle qualified as a thesis. In
1973 the City University of New York made him Distinguished Professor of English
Prose.
Vonnegut and his wife officially divorced in 1979 and Vonnegut married the
photographer Jill Krementz. Vonnegut's 1976 novel Slapstick had received negative
reviews but Vonnegut continued to publish novels such as Jailbird (1979), a children's
book Sun Moon Star (1980) Galápagos (1985), and Bluebeard (1987). In 1985
Vonnegut attempted suicide and in 2000 he was hospitalized for smoke inhalation
from a fire in his New York home. His 1997 novel Timequake was published as his
last work.