Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Created | Updated Nov 24, 2002
A RELATIVELY BREIF SUMMARY OF KURTS LIFE
Kurt Vonnegut Jr is a highly influential American Black Humorist. He was born November 11, 1922 to Kurt Vonnegut Sr and Edith Leiber, both children of German immigrants. Kurt lived through the Great Depression, which influenced his writing and personal philosophy a great deal. He went through public school even though his brother and sister didn't, due to his parents lack of funds, where he began his writing skills as a reporter for his school paper.
In 1943 Kurt enlisted in the US army to fight his fellow Germans. While he was over seas, his mother commited suicide, another contributing factor to his wry sense of humor.
On December 22 1944, he was captured during the Battle of the Bulge when he was a battalion scout in the 106 infantry division. He was sent to Dresden Germany as a POW (prisoner of war) where he survived allied fire bombing that killed 135,000 citizens, this becomes the basis of his book Slaughterhouse Five. He was released by the Russians and awarded the purple heart.
Kurt got married to his high school sweetheart Jane Marie Cox and then goes to college to get a degree in anthropology, where his thesis "On the Fluctuations between Good and Evil in Simple Tales" was rejected unanimisly by the abthropology board. He then went and got a job at GE (General Electric) as a public relations writer. While working at GE he wrote and published his first short story "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" in Colliers', then a very influential magazine in the way of short story writers.
In 1951 Kurt quit GE after he decided to write full time. He then proceeded to write his first novel "Player Piano."
In 1958 Kurts sister Allie passes away because of cancer not even a full day after her husband, John Adams, was killed in a train wreck. All three of their children are adopted by Kurt.
He wrote alot of good books for a little while.
In 1971 Kurt was awarded An M.A. in anthropology by the University of Chicago because of his book "Cats Cradle"
In 1973 he suceeded Anthony Burgess, the author of "A Clockwork Orange", as Distinguished Professor of English Prose at City University of New York. He resigned one year later.
In 1975 he was elected Vice President of The National Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 2000 he was named state author of New York.
THE WORKS OF VONNEGUT WITH A BRIEF SUMMARY OF EACH
1952 Player Piano
A main director of a factory manned by robots feels guilty about anyone who isn't smart enough for a good job and can only join the army or a city improvement and maintance team. He decides to start a revolution.
1959 The Sirens of Titan
A man and his dog travel into space, get trapped in an odd anomaly that disperces them through time and space, which the man uses to create a new world religion through the exploitation of another man who was born rich, then became brainwashed as a martian soldier, then gets trapped under the Venutian surface, and finnally ends up on a moon of Jupiter named Titan.
1961 Mother Night
A Nazi war criminal, who was actually an American spy working as a radio propagandist, writes his confession from an Isreali jail where he is awaiting punishment.
1961 Canary in a Cathouse
A collection of short strories that are all included in "Welcome to the Monkey House" all except "Hal Irwins Magic Lamp" which was included much later in "Bagombo Snuff Box." This book is very rare to find.
1963 Cats Cradle
An unnamed narrator starts off writing a book about the day that Hiroshima was hit with an Atomic Bomb, then ends up tangled in a web involving a most potant form of ice and a religion based on lies.
1965 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Eliot Rosewater is a rich man who happens to be slightly crazy and is obsessed with science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. He wanders around giving anyone who makes a good case money and trading all of his good suits to firemen and other common men for the clothes on their back.
1968 Welcome to the Monkey House
A collection of short stories gathered from magazines.
1969 Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim starts off dying during WWII in the snow then starts living his life out of order. He walks in a door in 1950 and on the other side he could end up somewhere completely different in 1973. He also spends some time on the planet Tralfamadore in a zoo making love to a movie star and learning how to cope with his time jumps.
1970 Happy Birthday, Wanda June
A play that I regret to say that I have no idea what it is about. Anyone who knows, feel free to let me know.
1972 Between Time and Timbuktu
Another play that I know nothing about.
1973 Breakfast of Champions
Dwayne Hoover is a used salesman with bad chemicals running around in his brain, but to go truly insane he needs bad ideas too, this is where Kilgore Trout steps in. A number of Vonneguts charecters reemerge in this book such as Kilgore and Eliot Rosewater, and others are created that come up later, such as Francine Pefko and Rabo Karabekian.
1974 Wampeters, Foma and, Granfaloons
A collection of essays
1976 Slapstick
Freakish brother and sister are raised in isolation, but when they combine their intelligence they become a single genius. The brother goes on to become president of a dying USA and the Chinese shrink to microscopic sizes that when injested become a disease.
1979 Jailbird
Reading it now, I will update later.
1981 Palm Sunday
An autobiography
1982 Deadeye Dick
The eunich son of a millionaire who is freinds with Hitler, accidently kills two people at once earning his nickname "Deadeye Dick" and then goes on to be be a crappy writer.
1985 Galapagos
Written from one million years in the future, Kilgore Trouts son, Leon, discusses how man on the Galapagos islands evolved into fur covered sea faring creatures with small brains after the rest of humanity goes extinct.
1987 Bluebeard
Rabo Karabekian writes the story of his life as a talented artist who utterly fails when his paintings fall apart, yet he ammases the largest collection of abstract art in the world.
1990 Hocus Pocus
Written by a Prisoner who has killed as many people that he has slept with, which is a whole lot. He explains why he is there and why his life has been horrible.
1991 Fates Worse Than Death
Another one I have no Knowledge of
1997 Timequake
The universe shrinks a little then starts to grow again causing everyone in the world to live ten years of their life over in a sense of de jah vu. Also a reflection of Kurts life that is supposedly his last novel
1999 Bagombo Snuff Box
A collection of priovously unreleased material and "Hal Irwins Magic Lamp"
1999 God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
A short book based on experiences Kurt had when temporarily dead, thanks to Jack Kevorkian. He discusses conversations he had with unknowns, Issac Newton, and Hitler.
WHO IS KILGORE TROUT?
Kilgore Trout is Kurt Vonneguts alter-ego. Vonnegut claims, yet doesn't claim, that he wrote the stories written by Kilgore Trout. Trout was born in 1907 from American parents in Bermuda and from there lived an uneventful life moving from place to place doing random menial jobs and ended up as a science fiction writer that can only get published in pornography. Vonnegut attributes any short story he thinks of to Trout and gives a summary in a novel. An example of a Trout story goes like this...
"The Dancing Fool" from Breakfast of Champions
A creature from another planet has the answer and cure for everything, but can only communicate by farting and tap dancing. He lands on earth to spread knowledge and sees a house that is on fire. He storms into the house farting and tap dancing only to get debrained by a golf club.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr is a highly influential American Black Humorist. He was born November 11, 1922 to Kurt Vonnegut Sr and Edith Leiber, both children of German immigrants. Kurt lived through the Great Depression, which influenced his writing and personal philosophy a great deal. He went through public school even though his brother and sister didn't, due to his parents lack of funds, where he began his writing skills as a reporter for his school paper.
In 1943 Kurt enlisted in the US army to fight his fellow Germans. While he was over seas, his mother commited suicide, another contributing factor to his wry sense of humor.
On December 22 1944, he was captured during the Battle of the Bulge when he was a battalion scout in the 106 infantry division. He was sent to Dresden Germany as a POW (prisoner of war) where he survived allied fire bombing that killed 135,000 citizens, this becomes the basis of his book Slaughterhouse Five. He was released by the Russians and awarded the purple heart.
Kurt got married to his high school sweetheart Jane Marie Cox and then goes to college to get a degree in anthropology, where his thesis "On the Fluctuations between Good and Evil in Simple Tales" was rejected unanimisly by the abthropology board. He then went and got a job at GE (General Electric) as a public relations writer. While working at GE he wrote and published his first short story "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" in Colliers', then a very influential magazine in the way of short story writers.
In 1951 Kurt quit GE after he decided to write full time. He then proceeded to write his first novel "Player Piano."
In 1958 Kurts sister Allie passes away because of cancer not even a full day after her husband, John Adams, was killed in a train wreck. All three of their children are adopted by Kurt.
He wrote alot of good books for a little while.
In 1971 Kurt was awarded An M.A. in anthropology by the University of Chicago because of his book "Cats Cradle"
In 1973 he suceeded Anthony Burgess, the author of "A Clockwork Orange", as Distinguished Professor of English Prose at City University of New York. He resigned one year later.
In 1975 he was elected Vice President of The National Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 2000 he was named state author of New York.
THE WORKS OF VONNEGUT WITH A BRIEF SUMMARY OF EACH
1952 Player Piano
A main director of a factory manned by robots feels guilty about anyone who isn't smart enough for a good job and can only join the army or a city improvement and maintance team. He decides to start a revolution.
1959 The Sirens of Titan
A man and his dog travel into space, get trapped in an odd anomaly that disperces them through time and space, which the man uses to create a new world religion through the exploitation of another man who was born rich, then became brainwashed as a martian soldier, then gets trapped under the Venutian surface, and finnally ends up on a moon of Jupiter named Titan.
1961 Mother Night
A Nazi war criminal, who was actually an American spy working as a radio propagandist, writes his confession from an Isreali jail where he is awaiting punishment.
1961 Canary in a Cathouse
A collection of short strories that are all included in "Welcome to the Monkey House" all except "Hal Irwins Magic Lamp" which was included much later in "Bagombo Snuff Box." This book is very rare to find.
1963 Cats Cradle
An unnamed narrator starts off writing a book about the day that Hiroshima was hit with an Atomic Bomb, then ends up tangled in a web involving a most potant form of ice and a religion based on lies.
1965 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Eliot Rosewater is a rich man who happens to be slightly crazy and is obsessed with science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. He wanders around giving anyone who makes a good case money and trading all of his good suits to firemen and other common men for the clothes on their back.
1968 Welcome to the Monkey House
A collection of short stories gathered from magazines.
1969 Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim starts off dying during WWII in the snow then starts living his life out of order. He walks in a door in 1950 and on the other side he could end up somewhere completely different in 1973. He also spends some time on the planet Tralfamadore in a zoo making love to a movie star and learning how to cope with his time jumps.
1970 Happy Birthday, Wanda June
A play that I regret to say that I have no idea what it is about. Anyone who knows, feel free to let me know.
1972 Between Time and Timbuktu
Another play that I know nothing about.
1973 Breakfast of Champions
Dwayne Hoover is a used salesman with bad chemicals running around in his brain, but to go truly insane he needs bad ideas too, this is where Kilgore Trout steps in. A number of Vonneguts charecters reemerge in this book such as Kilgore and Eliot Rosewater, and others are created that come up later, such as Francine Pefko and Rabo Karabekian.
1974 Wampeters, Foma and, Granfaloons
A collection of essays
1976 Slapstick
Freakish brother and sister are raised in isolation, but when they combine their intelligence they become a single genius. The brother goes on to become president of a dying USA and the Chinese shrink to microscopic sizes that when injested become a disease.
1979 Jailbird
Reading it now, I will update later.
1981 Palm Sunday
An autobiography
1982 Deadeye Dick
The eunich son of a millionaire who is freinds with Hitler, accidently kills two people at once earning his nickname "Deadeye Dick" and then goes on to be be a crappy writer.
1985 Galapagos
Written from one million years in the future, Kilgore Trouts son, Leon, discusses how man on the Galapagos islands evolved into fur covered sea faring creatures with small brains after the rest of humanity goes extinct.
1987 Bluebeard
Rabo Karabekian writes the story of his life as a talented artist who utterly fails when his paintings fall apart, yet he ammases the largest collection of abstract art in the world.
1990 Hocus Pocus
Written by a Prisoner who has killed as many people that he has slept with, which is a whole lot. He explains why he is there and why his life has been horrible.
1991 Fates Worse Than Death
Another one I have no Knowledge of
1997 Timequake
The universe shrinks a little then starts to grow again causing everyone in the world to live ten years of their life over in a sense of de jah vu. Also a reflection of Kurts life that is supposedly his last novel
1999 Bagombo Snuff Box
A collection of priovously unreleased material and "Hal Irwins Magic Lamp"
1999 God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
A short book based on experiences Kurt had when temporarily dead, thanks to Jack Kevorkian. He discusses conversations he had with unknowns, Issac Newton, and Hitler.
WHO IS KILGORE TROUT?
Kilgore Trout is Kurt Vonneguts alter-ego. Vonnegut claims, yet doesn't claim, that he wrote the stories written by Kilgore Trout. Trout was born in 1907 from American parents in Bermuda and from there lived an uneventful life moving from place to place doing random menial jobs and ended up as a science fiction writer that can only get published in pornography. Vonnegut attributes any short story he thinks of to Trout and gives a summary in a novel. An example of a Trout story goes like this...
"The Dancing Fool" from Breakfast of Champions
A creature from another planet has the answer and cure for everything, but can only communicate by farting and tap dancing. He lands on earth to spread knowledge and sees a house that is on fire. He storms into the house farting and tap dancing only to get debrained by a golf club.
