How did kurt vonnegut die

4 interesting facts about kurt vonnegut

New York: Facts on File Press, As a result, Vonnegut attended public schools even though his older siblings had received private school educations. After graduating from high school in , Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a biochemistry major. Despite joining a fraternity, he disliked Cornell and did not feel that he fit in well until he joined the staff of the college newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, where he found a home.

But his grades remained low, and Vonnegut ended up withdrawing from Cornell his junior year after coming down with a severe case of pneumonia. Having enlisted in the U. Army in November of , a few months before he actually left Cornell, Vonnegut was sent to basic training in During his army training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Technical Institute and the University of Tennessee.

Vonnegut was later stationed at Camp Atturbury, just south of Indianapolis, close enough to home for weekend visits. Vonnegut, along with the five other battalion scouts in his unit and about fifty other American soldiers, was captured by the German Army in December of during the Battle of the Bulge, the last main German offensive of the war.

Arriving back home in Indianapolis in May of as a twenty-two year old war veteran with a Purple Heart, Vonnegut soon married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox. During his time as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Vonnegut also worked as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau.

Kurt vonnegut family background

The young family moved to Schenectady, New York in , when Vonnegut was offered a job in the public relations department at General Electric. He taught at a school for learning disabled children for a brief period and even operated a Saab auto dealership on Cape Cod. A much younger brother, Peter, a baby at the time, was eventually adopted by a first cousin of his father, who lived in Birmingham, Alabama.

Vonnegut continued to write in the midst of family turmoil, turning back to the form of the novel at the end of the decade, and soon publishing as paperback originals two wildly different novels: Sirens of Titan in and Mother Night in Although Vonnegut was now established as a published writer, sales of his books were small and he remained largely unknown.