Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922–2007) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the youngest of three children in a prominent German-American family of architects and brewers whose fortunes were ruined by Prohibition, the Depression, and anti-German prejudice during the First World War. His mother, Edith Lieber Vonnegut, suffered from depression and died of an overdose of sleeping pills on Mother’s Day 1944 — a suicide that haunted her son throughout his life. “So it goes,” the refrain of Slaughterhouse-Five, was not merely a literary device; it was a survival mechanism.

Life and Career

Vonnegut studied chemistry at Cornell (1940–1943), enlisted in the Army, was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and survived the firebombing of Dresden on 13 February 1945 — a catastrophe that killed an estimated 25,000 people — by sheltering in an underground meat locker in Slaughterhouse Five, a building designation that would give his greatest novel its title. After the war he studied anthropology at the University of Chicago (his thesis was rejected), worked as a publicist for General Electric in Schenectady, and began writing short stories for the slick magazines.

His first novel, Player Piano (1952), a dystopian satire of automation and technocracy, was published by Scribner’s and categorised (to Vonnegut’s lasting irritation) as science fiction. The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1961), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) followed in rapid succession, each developing Vonnegut’s characteristic blend of science-fiction premises, moral seriousness, and deadpan comedy. These books sold modestly and were published in paperback originals — a commercial category that literary critics routinely ignored.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969) changed everything. The novel — in which Billy Pilgrim, an American POW, becomes “unstuck in time” and is kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore — was Vonnegut’s long-delayed confrontation with the Dresden firebombing. It was published by Delacorte Press, became a bestseller, and made Vonnegut a countercultural hero on the scale of Heller, Kesey, and Thompson.

The post-Slaughterhouse career was prolific: Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990), and Timequake (1997). He also published essay collections, plays, and a body of drawing and graphic work that reflected his lifelong engagement with visual art. He died on 11 April 2007, in Manhattan, from brain injuries sustained in a fall. He was eighty-four.

Major Works and Themes

Vonnegut’s fiction is animated by a small number of persistent concerns: the absurdity and cruelty of war; the moral bankruptcy of technology divorced from humanism; the indifference of the universe to human suffering; the possibility of kindness in the face of meaninglessness; and the obligation of the artist to tell the truth, especially when the truth is unbearable.

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is his masterpiece. Its fragmented, time-jumping structure — Billy Pilgrim is simultaneously a POW in Dresden, a middle-aged optometrist in Ilium, New York, and a specimen in a Tralfamadorian zoo — mirrors the experience of trauma. The novel’s refusal to describe the Dresden firebombing in conventional realist terms (Vonnegut tried for twenty years and failed) is itself the point: some horrors can only be approached obliquely.

Cat’s Cradle (1963) is a satire of science, religion, and the capacity of well-intentioned genius to destroy the world — centred on “ice-nine,” a substance that freezes all water on contact. Breakfast of Champions (1973) is the most metafictional of his novels, in which Vonnegut-as-character meets his own creation, Kilgore Trout, and sets him free.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Vonnegut’s critical reception was always complicated by the science-fiction label and by the accessibility of his prose. The literary establishment was slow to take him seriously; academic recognition came mainly after Slaughterhouse-Five, and even then some critics dismissed his work as simplistic. Today that judgment has been comprehensively reversed. Vonnegut is now regarded as one of the essential American voices of the second half of the twentieth century — a moralist in satirist’s clothing whose influence runs through writers from George Saunders to Dave Eggers to Charlie Kaufman.

Key Works

• Player Piano (1952)
• The Sirens of Titan (1959)
• Mother Night (1961)
• Cat’s Cradle (1963)
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
• Breakfast of Champions (1973)
• Slapstick (1976)
• Jailbird (1979)
• Galápagos (1985)
• Bluebeard (1987)
• Timequake (1997)

Collecting Vonnegut

Vonnegut is one of the most actively collected American authors of the post-war era. The market is interesting because his early novels were mostly paperback originals — hardcover first editions of the 1950s and early 1960s titles are far scarcer than their modest literary reputation at the time would suggest.

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969, Delacorte Press) is the primary target. The first edition is identified by the Delacorte imprint, “First Printing” on the copyright page, and the price of $5.95. Fine copies in the original blue and flame jacket are sought after at $3,000–$10,000. Signed copies are available — Vonnegut was an extremely generous signer in his later decades — and command $5,000–$15,000.

Player Piano (1952, Scribner’s) is the sleeper title. As Vonnegut’s first novel, published in a small run by a mainstream house, it is genuinely scarce in hardcover. Fine copies in the original jacket can command $5,000–$15,000.

Cat’s Cradle (1963, Holt, Rinehart and Winston) was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback. The hardcover first edition in jacket is uncommon and brings $2,000–$6,000. The Sirens of Titan (1959, Dell) was a paperback original; the first hardcover edition (Gollancz, 1962, London) is the collectible version.

Breakfast of Champions (1973, Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence) is more widely available — it was a bestseller — but signed copies with Vonnegut’s characteristic self-portrait drawings command strong premiums.

Vonnegut was one of the most prolific and accessible signers among major American authors. In his later years, he signed at virtually every public appearance and often added drawings — his trademark asterisk (which he called his “asshole”) and self-portraits are prized by collectors. Signed copies of his major novels are widely available; the value lies in the quality and elaborateness of the inscription or drawing.