Kurt Vonnegut, an American cultural hero celebrated for his wry, loonily imaginative commentary on war, apocalypse, technology, materialism and other afflictions in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and other novels, has died. He was 84.
One of the last of a generation of great American novelists of World War II, Vonnegut died Wednesday night in New York City.
Vonnegut suffered brain injuries in a fall several weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz. He had homes in Manhattan and Sagaponack, N.Y.
Kurt Vonnegut photos: In the obituary of author Kurt Vonnegut in some editions of Thursday's Section A, two of the photos were incorrectly credited. The photo of Vonnegut sitting on a park bench was taken by Jennifer S. Altman for The Times, not by Diane Bondareff of the Associated Press; the photo of the author with his wife was taken by Bondareff, not by Altman.
Vonnegut obituary: In the obituary of novelist Kurt Vonnegut that appeared in Thursday's Section A, the last name of novelist Jay McInerney was misspelled as MacInerny.
"There was never a kinder and, at the same time, wittier writer to be with personally," author Tom Wolfe, a friend and admirer of Vonnegut's, told The Times. "He was just a gem in that respect. And as a writer, I guess he's the closest thing we had to a Voltaire. He could be extremely funny, but there was a vein of iron always underneath it, which made him quite remarkable.
"He was never funny just to be funny," Wolfe added.
An obscure science fiction writer for two decades before earning mainstream acclaim in 1969 with "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut was an American original, often compared to Mark Twain for a vision that combined social criticism, wildly black humor and a call to basic human decency. He was, novelist Jay MacInerny once said, "a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion."
Although he was disdained by some critics who thought his work was too popular and accessible, his fiction inspired volumes of scholarly comment as well as websites maintained by young fans who have helped keep all 14 of his novels in print over a 50-year career. Five of his novels have made the leap into films.
He is "together with John Hawkes and Gunter Grass
His novels, which include "The Sirens of Titan," "Cat's Cradle," "Mother Night" and "Breakfast of Champions," introduced a revolving cast of odd characters, from the downtrodden visionary Billy Pilgrim to Kilgore Trout, the unsuccessful writer who was Vonnegut's alter ego.
Vonnegut was also an essayist, playwright and short-story writer, whose shorter pieces were collected in such volumes as "Welcome to the Monkey House" (1968), "Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons" (1974) and "Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s" (1991).
"Slaughterhouse-Five" was a book he tried but failed to write for 25 years. An agile mix of fantasy and Vonnegut's World War II experiences, it features time traveler Pilgrim who, like Vonnegut, survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden.
- Vonnegut gets hometown tribute Apr 14, 2007
- Vonnegut Hospitalized After Fire at His Home Jan 31, 2000
- Seymour Lawrence; Published 4 Nobel Laureates Jan 13, 1994
