Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. 1922-2007, American novelist, b. Indianapolis. After serving in a World War II combat unit, he worked as a police reporter. Marked by wry black humor, Vonnegut's satirical, pessimistic, and morally urgent novels frequently protest the horrors of the 20th cent., as in the best-selling
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969; film, 1972). His fiction spoke with particular forcefulness to the generation that came of age in the 1960s and 70s. Vonnegut's books frequently include elements of science fiction, featuring fantastic plots and sometimes involving such devices as trips in outer space, time faults, and apocalyptic destruction. Among his other novels are
Player Piano (1952),
Mother Night (1961; film, 1996),
Cat's Cradle (1963),
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965),
Breakfast of Champions (1973; film, 1999),
Deadeye Dick (1983),
Bluebeard (1987), and the novel-memoir
Timequake (1997). He also wrote short stories, plays, and essays, e.g., the collections
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974),
The Man without a Country (2005), and the posthumously published
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008).
See his semiautobiographical Fates Worse than Death (1991); W. R. Allen, ed., Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (1988); P. J. Reed and M. Leeds, Vonnegut Chronicles: Interviews and Essays (1996); studies by S. Schatt (1976), J. Lundquist (1977), R. Merrill, ed. (1990), W. R. Allen (1991), L. Mustazza (1990 and 1994), P. J. Reed (1972 and 1997), H. Bloom, ed. (2000), K. A. Boon, ed. (2001), T. F. Marvin (2002), D. E. Morse (1992 and 2003), J. Klinkowitz (1982 and 2004), J. Tomedi (2004), and T. F. Davis (2006); M. Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (1995).
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