Vonnegut << VON uh guht, >> Kurt (1922-2007), was an American author who used many devices of science fiction writing in his works, including space travel and fantastic inventions. Although the tone of his fiction is often playful, he was admittedly a moralizing writer with a gloomy view of humanity.
Vonnegut portrayed a universe that is essentially without purpose in such novels as Player Piano (1952), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). In these works, all absolute systems for organizing human activity—whether political, religious, or scientific—are inevitably destructive. Vonnegut’s moralizing consists of advice to be kind, to have pity, to seek companionship, and to enjoy the simple human pleasures.
Vonnegut’s experiences in World War II (1939-1945) particularly affected his attitudes. While serving in the United States Army, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in Dresden, Germany. He saw that city’s destruction by British and American bombing in 1945. His response to that event is reflected throughout his fiction, but dealt with directly only in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), generally considered his most significant work. In that novel, he confronted and accepted what he saw as humanity’s tendency to inflict catastrophe on itself. He suggested that our only hope for survival lies in a despairingly comic awareness of human folly.
Vonnegut’s other novels include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), Slapstick (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990). Vonnegut blended fiction and nonfiction in Timequake (1997).
Several of Vonnegut’s short stories were collected in Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), Bagombo Snuff Box (1999), and Look at the Birdie (published in 2009, after his death). Complete Stories (2017) collects 97 stories written from 1941 through 2007. More than half of them have never been previously published. From 2011 through 2016, the Library of America published four volumes of Vonnegut’s stories and complete novels, written from 1950 to 1997. Many of his nonfiction pieces were collected in Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974), Palm Sunday (1981), Fates Worse Than Death (1991), and A Man Without a Country (2005). Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He died on April 11, 2007.
