He had a unique style of writing. It was deceptively simple, yet there was no shortage of very serious thoughts and questions that he worked in there. He was very humorous, but within that humor often were piercing questions.
Vonnegut was born on this day in 1922.
He grew up in Indiana of a family of German extraction, at a time when many such families were trying to distance themselves from Germany, as hostilities with that nation had made anything German rather unpopular. He wrote some about his background in some of his books and interviews, although he was ultimately best known for his works of fiction. He is most famous for the breakout novel, "Slaughterhouse-5", although that was not his first novel.
Vonnegut had fought in World War II, and been taken prisoner by the Germans early in 1945. He was taken to Dresden, which at the time, was considered an open city. That is to say, that it had not been bombed, because it did not possess military value.
But while Vonnegut and the other POW's were staying in Dresden, all of that changed. The city was not only bombed, but firebombed to such a degree that, for all intents and purposed, it was destroyed. Vonnegut and the other POW's, as well as those Germans that were guarding, managed to survive because there temporary abode, Slaughterhouse-5, was underground, and provided them surprisingly strong shelter. So, they survived a firebombing that killed well over 100,000 people, which Vonnegut mentioned was the single biggest overnight massacre in human history - even bigger than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
This incident obviously haunted him, and influenced the duration of his life. That is not surprising, since it was such a huge event in world history. There were a lot of question marks left off after this incident. Yes, Germany had done some horrific things in the lead-up to, and obviously during, the Second World War. But were indiscriminate mass bombings like these on the part of the Allies justified as a result? Among those killed in Dresden on that February day in 1945, as Germany was clearly losing the war, and the end was in site, were women, children, and the elderly. Americans and the British traditionally waved any criticism off, claiming that these were necessary for saving the lives of Allied troops. Also, again, given the nature of the crimes committed by Germans during the war, these kinds of bombings (which were also common in Japan) were seen as more or less just retribution for the excesses that the Germans and Japanese were responsible for. Yet, some people question such bombings to this day, and there are questions lingering that may suggest that examination of these incidents, and the moral dilemmas that they seem to create, will surely be reexamined in the future.
For Vonnegut, it took many years for him to even attempt to make sense of these things. This particular bombing in Dresden, and the aftermath, which saw Vonnegut and the other POW's forced to try and clean up the destruction, including pulling corpses from the bombed out city, would become a major influence in his writings - particularly in his breakout book, and the one that he remains best known for - Slaughterhouse-5, which was named after the shelter that he and the other POW's were housed in, and which ultimately saved their lives when an entire city all around them burned.
Vonnegut wrote some other incredible, and highly influential books, some of which became movies. His first book was Player Piano, which was published in 1952. That was the work about a not so distant future, where technological inventions had so impressed people, that they hardly cared about their own deteriorating quality of life. Then, he wrote Sirens of Titan, which was about time travel through space. Some of his other well known works include Cat's Cradle, which had both a made up religion (Bokonism) as well as a fictional ultimate weapon that would be irresponsibly used as a political football and would irreversibly change the world. Vonnegut also wrote God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Mother Night, which was made into a powerful movie starring Nick Nolte, where he played an American spy who posed as a rabid anti-Semite broadcasting in Nazi Germany. But only a few people knew who he actually was, and these people died off or disappeared following the war, making him question just how much of his actions were just an act, and how much he may personally have been responsible for the crimes committed in the name of anti-Semitism during the Holocaust.
Ironically, this anniversary of his birthday also happens to coincide with the anniversary of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-5, being burned in North Dakota.
It was on this day in 1922 that Kurt Vonnegut was born, and today, I honor him, and his contributions in the literary field, and to humanity in general!
Early picture of Kurt Vonnegut during his US Army days. Image taken from Wikepedia.
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