Kurt Vonnegut

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

Writing career

His first short story, "Report On the Barnhouse Effect" appeared in 1950. His background at GE influenced his first novel, the dystopian science fiction novel Player Piano (1952), in which human workers have been largely replaced by machines. He continued to write science fiction short stories before his second novel, The Sirens of Titan, was published in 1959. Through the 1960s the form of his work changed, from the orthodox science fiction of Cat's Cradle (which in 1971 got him his master's degree) to the acclaimed, semiautobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, given a more experimental structure by using time travel as a plot device.

Related Topics:
Dystopia - Science fiction - Player Piano - 1952 - The Sirens of Titan - 1959 - 1960s - Cat's Cradle - 1971 - Slaughterhouse-Five

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These structural experiments were continued in Breakfast of Champions (1973), which included many rough illustrations, lengthy non-sequiturs and an appearance by the author himself, as a deus ex machina.

Related Topics:
Breakfast of Champions - 1973 - Deus ex machina

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:"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself.

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:

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:"I know," I said.

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:"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.

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:"I know," I said.

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Vonnegut's mother committed suicide while he was in his early twenties. He himself attempted suicide in 1985 and later wrote about this in several essays.

Related Topics:
Suicide - 1985

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Many hostile reviewers found the book formless, but it became one of his best sellers. It includes, beyond the author himself, several of Vonnegut's recurring characters. One of them, Kilgore Trout, plays a major role and interacts with the author's character. Other cameos include Eliot Rosewater from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Francine Pefko from Cat's Cradle. (Kazak, a dog from Galápagos and The Sirens of Titan, was apparently a major character in an earlier draft; she attacks Vonnegut's character as retribution for being cut out.)

Related Topics:
Kilgore Trout - Eliot Rosewater - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Cat's Cradle - Galápagos - The Sirens of Titan

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Although many of his later novels involved science fiction themes, they were widely read and reviewed outside the field, not least due to their anti-authoritarianism, which matched the prevailing mood of the United States in the 1960s. For example, his seminal short story Harrison Bergeron graphically demonstrates how even the (to most) noble sentiment of egalitarianism, when combined with too much authority, becomes horrific repression. A case could be made for Vonnegut's form of political satire through extrapolation and exaggeration requiring a science fiction theme, simply as a milieu for proposing alternative systems, while remaining essentially political satire nonetheless. It is therefore easy for those ignorant of science fiction's long-established (and, for commentators such as Kingsley Amis, dominant) vein of satire to claim that Vonnegut does not write science fiction. However, his work is clearly in the science-fictional tradition descended from Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

Related Topics:
Science fiction - United States - 1960s - Harrison Bergeron - Egalitarianism - Kingsley Amis - Swift - Gulliver's Travels

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In much of his work Vonnegut's own voice is apparent, often filtered through the character of science fiction author Kilgore Trout (based on real-life science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon), characterized by wild leaps of imagination and a deep cynicism, tempered by humanism. In the foreword to Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut wrote that as a child, he saw men with locomotor ataxia, and it struck him that these men walked like broken machines; it followed that healthy people were working machines, suggesting that humans are helpless prisoners of determinism. Vonnegut also explored this pessimistic theme in Slaughterhouse-Five, in which protagonist Billy Pilgrim "has come unstuck in time" and has so little control over his own life that he cannot even predict which part of it he will be living through from minute to minute.

Related Topics:
Kilgore Trout - Science fiction - Theodore Sturgeon - Breakfast of Champions - Locomotor ataxia - Determinism - Slaughterhouse-Five

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In 1974 Venus on the Half-Shell, a book by Philip José Farmer aping the style of Vonnegut and attributed to Kilgore Trout, was published. This action caused a falling out of the two friends and some confusion amongst readers.

Related Topics:
1974 - Venus on the Half-Shell - Philip José Farmer

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According to a 1996 online interview, Vonnegut said he had "sold the rights to Cat's Cradle outright and for all eternity to Hilly Elkins, who has never done anything with it and never will and won't sell it back. Cat's Cradle now lies at a crossroads with a stake through its heart. Jerry Garcia had the rights to Sirens of Titan for many years. When he died, we bought the rights back from his estate. Player Piano was bought outright by Ed Pressman quite a while ago. We've been talking to him, asking him to do something with it or let us have it back."

Related Topics:
Hilly Elkins - Jerry Garcia - Ed Pressman

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