Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (born November 11, 1922) is an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist.

Trivia

Vonnegut smokes Pall Mall cigarettes, which he claims are a "classy" way to commit suicide.

Related Topics:
Smokes - Pall Mall - Cigarette - Suicide

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Vonnegut used to run a car dealership called "Saab Cape Cod" in West Barnstable, Massachusetts but he failed to sell the Swedish two-stroke SAAB cars, and went into bankruptcy. He has jokingly said that this may be the reason he has never received a Nobel prize. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1726/

Related Topics:
Saab - Cape Cod - West Barnstable, Massachusetts - Swedish - Two-stroke - SAAB - Bankruptcy - Nobel prize

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He was a close friend of fellow author (and World War II veteran) Joseph Heller.

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The asteroid 25399 Vonnegut is named in his honour.

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There was a widely-circulated urban legend on the Internet that Kurt Vonnegut gave a commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997 in which he advised students to wear sunscreen - the main theme and title of a quite odd pop song by Baz Luhrmann. In fact, the commencement speaker at MIT in 1997 was Kofi Annan and the putative Vonnegut speech was an article published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997 by columnist Mary Schmich.

Related Topics:
Urban legend - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 1997 - Baz Luhrmann - Kofi Annan - Chicago Tribune - June 1 - Mary Schmich

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Vonnegut did, however, play himself in a cameo in 1986's Back To School, starring Rodney Dangerfield, and is invoked as a pop culture reference in many teen flicks such as "Can't Hardly Wait," in which the character Preston (Ethan Embry) is bound for Massachusetts to attend a writing seminar by the acclaimed author. He also appears very briefly in Keith Gordon's film of his novel Mother Night.

Related Topics:
1986 - Rodney Dangerfield - Ethan Embry - Keith Gordon - Mother Night

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Vonnegut also has a brief cameo as a TV commercial director in the film version of Breakfast of Champions.

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