Wonderful item in Des Moines paper

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Carlson: 'Slaughterhouse' man returned to quiet D.M. life

By JOHN CARLSON • REGISTER COLUMNIST • January 18, 2008

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There's a reference in Kurt Vonnegut's classic book "Slaughterhouse-Five" to some American soldiers loading a fellow prisoner of war into a wheelbarrow and hauling him through the streets of Dresden, Germany.

They manage to convince German guards the man is sick. In truth, "he got into a lot of wine" and was drunk. Their deception saves the man from almost certain execution.

Vonnegut's book was a work of fiction based on fact. The author, who died in April, was one of the American soldiers being held in Dresden in 1945. They were "green," mostly untrained and were captured during the Battle of the Bulge.
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Held with Vonnegut was Bob Allen, the man pushing the wheelbarrow, who lived most of his life in Des Moines with little fame or acknowledgment of his military service.

"A lot of people who knew Dad for years really didn't know about what happened and that he was part of that book," said Bob's son, Jerry Allen of Minneapolis. "He was like so many other veterans of World War II. They went through terrible times in the war, came home, raised their families and never talked about the experience."

Jerry thinks people in Iowa should know about his dad.

"He died on Jan. 4 at the age of 91," Jerry said. "He didn't open up and say much for probably 40 years. I was amazed at what I heard."

A good part of Bob's story came out eight years ago, when Jerry, and his wife and daughter joined Bob on a trip to Dresden. It was the old soldier's first and only time to revisit the scene of the horror.

Historians still argue about the February 1945 Allied bombing raids that burned much of Dresden. Critics say the city was of no military value and there was no need for the three days and nights of what was known as a firebombing. Defenders say it was necessary to convince German leaders their cause was hopeless.

Tens of thousands of civilians died. Among them were hundreds of American prisoners of war.

Bob, Vonnegut and the other prisoners were held deep in the underground meat locker of a livestock slaughtering facility - Slaughterhouse Five. The fact they were so far below ground is likely why they survived the relentless bombing that incinerated much of the center of the city.

It wasn't long before some of the soldiers wondered if it might have been better to have died in the fires.

The starving men were forced by their guards to crawl through the rubble and remove the charred bodies.

Bob Hays of Truro, commander of Amvets Post 2 in Des Moines where Bob Allen was a member, said he heard the stories.

"Bob talked about how the American soldiers had to go into the buildings and bring out the dead and stack them up," Hays said.

"They'd stack them up in piles of 500 and then burn them. There was nothing else to do with all the bodies. Bob told me he couldn't get the image out of his head, and he couldn't talk about it for a very long time."

Said Jerry: "The stories Dad told were gruesome. Almost indescribable. I know it was hard for him. He weighed about 190 pounds when he enlisted. He weighed about 130 when he got out of Dresden."

Bob came home to Iowa, raised his family in a one-story house at 56th and University and worked as a truck driver and freight manager at H&W Motor Express. He talked to his pals at the Amvets post and loved playing cribbage. In fact, he was runner-up in the cribbage tournament at the Iowa State Fair at the age of 88.

The Allen family trip to Dresden in 2000 brought back more memories. The horror, certainly. A guard who showed a kindness. That Christmas in 1944 when Bob's only gift was a single cigarette. Saving the life of the drunken soldier in the wheelbarrow.

"Dad was animated on that trip and really opened up," Jerry said. "He talked about knowing Kurt Vonnegut and seeing him at reunions over the years. The funny thing is, I don't know that he ever read 'Slaughterhouse-Five.' Maybe he couldn't bring himself to do it."

O'Hare's dad's diary: http://lehighvalleyramblings.blogspot.com/

This is marvelous, if sad, reading:

But for one week, my father chronicled his post-release experiences in amazing detail. Just twenty-two at the time, he was a pretty good writer himself. Occasionally, he mentions Vonnegut, who was just a "minor being" at the time. For the next few days, I'll share my dad's thoughts with you, day by day.

5/17/45

Our mangy but well-fed crew left DiHille's at noon today. We proceeded over the Elbe to Russian headquarters in the city and after much confusion - due to our ignorance of the Russian language and vice versa - we were directed to the Hitler Caserne on Konigsbage Strasse. Here we find ourselves confronted with the perpetual situation of no one knowing anything about anything. However, we are being looked after like pet children by the Russians. We have been here only four hours at the most and have already been fed twice, showered, de-loused and billeted. As near as we can gather from speaking to the limeys and G.I.'s here, we are to stay put until our troops come seeking us. Except for the anxiety that we all have concerning our parents and families, we don't give a damn how long it takes them to root us out.

I heard my first radio program since I was captured. Dannine and I went across the compound and fell in with a few Tommies who have a wireless set in their flat. We heard an A.M.G. broadcast from Hamburg. That American music certainly sounded good. The Tommies surprised us before the evening was over with a meal of spuds, meat and beans. We rejoined our crew with a full stomach and a highly satisfied mien. I don't believe I'll ever get up out of bed again. Goot nacht.

2 of 2


In a public radio interview, Vonnegut speaks of a conversation he had with my father, some twenty years later.

"What did you learn?" Vonnegut asks.

"I will never believe my government again."

Churchill, who had advocated the firebombing, was knighted.

5/18/45

We moved over to the other compound today. That seems to be the chief benefit accruing to those who have been deloused. The rooms here are much cleaner and better equipped. We eat three times per day restaurant style and the shilly (chile?) is both good and thick - a happy set of circumstances not found readily in Germany. We spent most of the day getting our loot in order and this afternoon learned to our gratification that we were scheduled to move out. About an hour later a sergeant from the 1st Rangers division put in an appearance and announced that trucks were on their way to bring us either to Riesa or Leipzig where there are concentrations of former P.O.W.'s. I had no idea the sight of a G.I. would be so sensational. Needless to say, the limeys hogged him before any of his own countrymen had a chance to learn much from him concerning the good old U.S.A. Well, the trucks finally arrived and after the normal red tape we piled into them and took off. Approximately two hours later we found ourselves in Riesa. Temporary quarters were provided for us in some Jerry barracks. We are supposed to move in the morning to some other place in town where there are more G.I.'s. Our present barracks aren't at all bad except for the lack of anything soft upon which to lay our weary bones. There are some limeys here who have been waiting to get out for almost a month. It seems that Stalag W-B was liberated by the Russians on April 23.

Bernard V. O'Hare III releases Vonnegut letter

So It Went

By Kurt Vonnegut
December 24, 2007 (Blog published in Allentown paper)



It became 'Slaughterhouse Five'

What follows is a letter that the writer Kurt Vonnegut sent to family and friends in 1945. It was made available to The Morning Call by Bernard V. O'Hare III of Nazareth, who first posted it on his blog, lehighvallyramblings.blogspot.com.

O'Hare's father, the late Bernard V. O'Hare Jr., was imprisoned with Vonnegut in a German POW camp. He went on to have a law practice and serve as district attorney in Northampton County. His family kept in touch with Vonnegut until his death on April 11 of this year.

The younger O'Hare said his ''packrat'' brother found the letter after a biographer asked the O'Hares for information about the friendship between the former soldiers. Vonnegut had sent it to his family not long after he and O'Hare were released at the end of World War II. The younger Mr. O'Hare noted, ''In many ways, this three-page letter is his first draft of 'Slaughterhouse Five.' (Vonnegut's 1969 novel and his best-known.) Vonnegut sent my family a copy of that letter, apparently as a Christmas present, in 1996.''

Dear people:

I'm told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than 'missing in action.'' Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do -- in precis: I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out. We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight -- so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, un-heated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood.

We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve, the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: One boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to ... the Checkoslovakian (sic) border. There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P-39s) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me.

Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We've since been flown to Le Havre.

I'm writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I'm being wonderfully well fed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I'll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I'll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and -- get this -- sixty (60) days furlough!

I've too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait. I can't receive mail here so don't write.

May 29, 1945

Kurt--a charming program

And I’m Shirley Griffith with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Kurt Vonnegut, a writer and thinker who shook up the country with his unusual writing style and subjects. He helped energize huge numbers of young people to protest the Vietnam War and to always question the powers that be.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

It took Kurt Vonnegut about twenty-five years to write his most famous book, “Slaughterhouse-Five.” It was published in nineteen sixty-nine. The book remains required reading in high school and college English classes across the country. It includes this description of the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces during World War Two, as witnessed by a soldier named Billy Pilgrim:

READER:

“There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn.

It wasn’t safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.

So it goes.”

VOICE TWO:

Kurt Vonnegut, a prisoner of war like Pilgrim, witnessed the bombing of Dresden. The waste of human life and other treasures greatly angered him. His novels contain some of that anger. But Vonnegut always balanced his work with humor and the use of wildly unlikely events presented as normal.
''Slaughterhouse-Five''

For example, in "Slaughterhouse-Five," Billy Pilgrim visits the make-believe planet Tralfamadore. He and a beautiful movie star named Montana Wildhack fall in love there in a clear ball of a house. They are studied by the Tralfamadorians and find happiness.

Kurt Vonnegut compared the science fiction in “Slaughterhouse-Five” to the clowns in the plays of sixteenth century English writer William Shakespeare. Vonnegut believed such literary devices give the reader a rest before the story gets serious again.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Kurt Vonnegut’s own life was also filled with tragedy and laughter. He was born in nineteen twenty-two in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was a building designer. His mother was from an extremely wealthy family. She suffered from mental illness and unhappiness as a failed writer. Vonnegut said his mother would have periods of madness where she would emotionally abuse his father. Vonnegut said his father was the gentlest man on the planet. Edith Vonnegut killed herself on Mother’s Day, in nineteen forty-four. The act affected her son his whole life.

In nineteen fifty-eight, Kurt Vonnegut’s sister and her husband died within two days of each other. Vonnegut and his wife at the time adopted the couple’s three children.

VOICE TWO:

Kurt Vonnegut was interested in writing from at least his teenage years. He worked on his high school’s newspaper. Later he studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and became an editor of that school’s newspaper. Vonnegut studied biochemistry. He followed in the footsteps of his older brother, Bernard, who was a scientist. However, Kurt Vonnegut was not a very good student. He left Cornell in nineteen forty-three and joined the army during World War Two. German forces captured him during the Battle of the Bulge in Western Europe.

Vonnegut’s experiences as a soldier and the bombing of Dresden were among the major influences in his life. He was a pacifist, someone who opposes war and violence for settling conflict. He once said: “You can teach people savagery. They may need savagery, but it’s bad for the neighbors. I prefer to teach gentleness.”

He was not always gentle on himself, however. He battled depression for most of his life. In nineteen eighty-four, he tried to kill himself by taking too much sleep medicine. He said later that children of a parent who committed suicide will naturally think of death as a sensible solution to any problem.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

After World War Two, Vonnegut married a childhood friend, Jane Cox. They moved to Chicago, Illinois in nineteen forty-five. They had three children. Vonnegut studied anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a reporter.

Kurt Vonnegut also began writing short stories. They were published in literary magazines. In nineteen fifty-two he wrote his first novel. “Player Piano” was influenced by Vonnegut’s work at the power company, General Electric. Vonnegut said it was there that he got the idea of everything being controlled by computers. He told Playboy Magazine in nineteen seventy-three that it made perfect sense to have little clicking boxes, as he called them, make all the decisions for humans. But he said it was not good for human workers to be replaced by machines.

Vonnegut said that he wrote science fiction because General Electric was science fiction to him. “Player Piano” describes a place called Ileum where the humans have surrendered to a computer.

Writers of science fiction are often considered less serious than writers of other kinds of fiction. As a result, Vonnegut’s work was published in paperback and ignored by critics for several years.

VOICE TWO:

But people started listening more closely to Kurt Vonnegut’s literary voice in the nineteen sixties. There was great public anger and protest over American military action in Vietnam. Distrust for the United States government was growing. Young people and minorities especially were speaking up against America’s leaders and cultural restrictions.

Vonnegut’s statements about America, its people and its leaders mixed perfectly with that atmosphere. His novels became favorites of many people involved in the anti-establishment, politically progressive movement of that time.

“Cat’s Cradle,” published in nineteen sixty-three, is one example. It tells the story of a fictional scientist who helped invent the atomic bomb and something even more dangerous – a substance called ice-nine. “Cat’s Cradle” is an extremely funny condemnation of many things. These include the arms race at the time -- efforts by countries to increase their nuclear weapons. It also makes jokes about organized religion and the United States government.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen sixty-four, “Cat’s Cradle” won a Hugo Award for science fiction. Also that year, Kurt Vonnegut began teaching at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He was a professor for many years and taught English at several universities and colleges. He wrote at least fifteen more books, including non-fiction.

''Breakfast of Champions''
One of those books was “Breakfast of Champions,” published in nineteen seventy-three. Vonnegut tells the story of a wealthy and crazy car salesman named Dwayne Hoover. Hoover reads science fiction books written by a man named Kilgore Trout. Hoover becomes more and more sure that the books are not fiction but reality.

Here Kurt Vonnegut reads from an early version of “Breakfast of Champions.” The reading took place in New York City in nineteen seventy.

KURT VONNEGUT:

"My name is Dwayne Hoover and I am an experiment by the creator of the universe. I am the only creature in the entire universe who has free will. I am the only creature who has to figure out what to do next and why. Everybody else is a robot.

I am pooped. I wish I were a robot too. It is perfectly exhausting having to reason all the time in a universe I never made."

VOICE TWO:

Kurt Vonnegut and his wife Jane separated in nineteen seventy. Vonnegut married photographer Jill Krementz nine years later. They adopted a daughter.

Vonnegut continued to be politically outspoken. He used the American political crime called the Watergate scandal in his novel “Jailbird.” He was also an early environmental activist. He spoke often and loudly about the long-term dangers of fossil fuel use, pollution and waste of natural resources. Vonnegut also condemned the Bush administration and the war in Iraq that began in two thousand three.

VOICE ONE:

Kurt Vonnegut published his last book in two thousand five. “A Man Without A Country” is a collection of his opinions of many subjects, including issues in modern American society.

He died in two thousand seven after suffering brain injuries from a fall in his home. He was eighty-four. Kurt Vonnegut’s children placed notes of thanks to his fans on the Vonnegut Web site. His daughter Nanny wrote: “I am so sorry for your loss as well as mine.”

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Our program was written and produced by Caty Weaver. Jim Tedder read the "Slaughterhouse Five" passage. I'm Steve Ember with Shirley Griffith. You can learn about other famous Americans at voaspecialengish.com. And join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Vonnegut recollection

Sunday, June 17, 2007
Wish he had said more

Would have loved to hear more about Vonnegut on this Cornell Sun post:

It was gorges. My first summer in Ithaca was the summer of '78. I was a 16 year old football recruit preparing for the hotel school.
I was two years younger than most of my teammates. I was intimidated by the reputation of the school. I found solace and accreditation while lying in the cold flow of the stream under the bridge.
I was fortunate to have a great roommate, Dave Kimichek, great floormates in our U-Hall and great brothers a Delta Upsilon. I was priviledged to study with great chefs, Carl Sagan, and meet my fraternity brother Kurt Vonnegut.
What a summer, fall, winter, spring that year of 1978 was.

By Jim Gibbons at June 17, 2007 - 1:31pm | reply

Posted by Hank Nuwer at 7:15 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 14, 2007
Vonnegut on Broadway

Simonson's Slaughterhouse-Five Adaptation Aiming for NYC's 59E59 Theaters

By Kenneth Jones
14 Jun 2007

Slaughterhouse-Five, Eric Simonson's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's anti-war novel, which was based on the author's experiences in World War II, is expected to make its New York City premiere in the next year.

Godlight Theatre Company will present the new production, aiming for 59E59 Theaters. Dates in September-October 2007 were released prematurely (an incorrect item appeared in the New York Times June 14). Future dates are being explored for a run at the Off-Broadway venue, but not in fall 2007, a spokesperson for 59E59 told Playbill.com.

Godlight artistic director Joe Tantalo will direct the play, subtitled or: The Children's Crusade. The text was adapted for a production that was seen at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

According to Godlight, the creative team will include production designer Maruti Evans, composer and sound designer Andrew Recinos, fight choreographer Josh Renfree and movement director and choreographer Hachi Yu.

The Godlight cast will feature Daniel Ball, David Bartlett, Katherine Boynton, Alisa Burket, Enid Cortes, Darren Curley, Lawrence Jansen, Gregory Konow, Deanna McGovern, Nick Paglino, Aaron Paternoster, Mike Roche, Cyrus Roxas, Michael Shimkin, Michael Tranzilli and Sam Whitten. If the staging is bumped to 2008, this list may change.

According to Godlight notes, "Part history, part time-traveling science-fiction, Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a naïve American optometrist from Illium, New York, who survives the firebombing of Dresden, Germany by American and British troops during World War II. Back home, Pilgrim is kidnapped by aliens who instruct him in the nature of the fourth dimension, where time is an eternal present, and he brings this knowledge back to earth."

Simonson, a writer and director, received an Oscar for Best Documentary Short for his film "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" in 2006. He was Tony-nominated for his direction of Steppenwolf's The Song of Jacob Zulu, with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He subsequently directed an Oscar-nominated documentary about the acclaimed South African singing group. He directed and adapted Steppenwolf's Slaughterhouse-Five as well as the plays Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, Moby Dick and Carter's Way.

59E59 Theaters is at 59 East 59th Street (between Madison and Park).

Visit www.59e59.org for further information.

Vonnegut course in Indianapolis

Note: I've seen Jim speak years ago. He's bright, energetic, and entertaining. Should be a great class. Hank Nuwer

from the Indy Star
The early works of a notable Hoosier are featured in a class called Discovering Kurt Vonnegut.

Taught by Jim Powell, the class will cover "Welcome to the Monkey House" (1968), "Cat's Cradle" (1963) and "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969).
It's from 7 to 9 p.m. July 10, 17 and 24 at the Writers' Center of Indiana, 812 E. 67th St.
Cost is $75 for members and $90 for nonmembers.

Hoosier literary links
Speaking of Vonnegut, writer Susan Neville recalls a late-night phone conversation when she helped him recall the words to "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away."
Neville recounts that incident, calling it her "most important contribution to American literature," in "Sailing the Inland Sea" (Quarry Books, $19.95), a new collection of essays, lectures and interviews.

Obituary of Kurt Vonnegut by Ed Beitiks

The only reason I caught this is that I like reading columns by CW Nevius. Here he offers an obit written long before KV's death. Ironically, the obit writer died before Vonnegut died. Here's the link.

The Best Vonnegut Obit You Haven't Read

Just for a moment of proof that the good men do lives after them, Chronicle copy editor Allen Johnson rescued this obituary of Kurt Vonnegut written many years ago by the late Examiner writer Ed Beitiks. (Obituaries of famous people are often written long in advance of their death.) Beitiks was a fine writer, a very nice man, and someone who passed away much too soon.

Allen sent this to members of the Chronicle staff, but it seemed a shame not to let more people read it.

By Edvins Beitiks

Of the Examiner Staff

In July of 1982, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. rejected attempts by his hometown of Indianapolis to honor him. He refused to attend the ceremonies, saying from his New York City home, ""I personally find it embarrassing. It seems to me this is the kind of thing you do for an author after he's dead.''

In the years since, Vonnegut has played the role of cantankerous jester, outspoken conscience of America, a voice supporting the oddness of this country while warning, ""The system promotes to the top those who don't care about the planet.''

Vonnegut's voice was stilled overnight on Wednesday several weeks after a fall that left him with permanent brain damage, his wife, Jill Krementz, told the New York Times on Thursday.

If there was a quality separating Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from the other World War II vets who turned their talents to the novel, it was a tongue-in-cheekness, a continually raised eyebrow, an inability to believe that all this crazy stuff was really happening. Even Joseph Heller, whose ""Catch-22'' set the tone for postwar insanity, tried to find a plumb line for his world, working it out with each successive book.

But Vonnegut wrote books that threw up their hands at the goings-on, delving into sci-fi when the down-to-earth wasn't enough, or turning to the reader and simply asking, ""Do you know what's going on? Because I'm having problems.''

>Vonnegut wrote 24 books, selling more than 10 million copies, and all 14 of his novels are still in print. His success started with ""Player Piano'' in 1952, followed by ""The Sirens of Titan,'' ""Mother Night,'' ""Cat's Cradle,'' and his most successful book, ""Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade,'' written in 1969. ""Timequake,'' the last of Vonnegut's novels, was written in 1997 to mixed reviews. His last work, "A Man Without a Country," a collection of essays written in reaction to George W. Bush's presidency, was published in 2005.

""Slaughterhouse-Five'' was a remembrance of the firebombing of Dresden on Feb. 13, 1945, seen through the eyes of the narrator, Billy Pilgrim. Vonnegut himself, taken prisoner of war in the Battle of the Bulge, lived through that firebombing, hiding underground below a Dresden slaughterhouse. The war colored his writings, as it did with other WWII vets such as Heller, Norman Mailer, James Jones and Irwin Shaw, but Vonnegut seemed to take it more in stride.

His postwar life was filled with other attacks and tragedies. Vonnegut's older sister, Alice, died of cancer when she was 40, two days after her husband died in a train crash. His son was diagnosed as a schizophrenic.

In 1971, ""Slaughterhouse-Five'' was outlawed in Oakland County, Mich., for its language and its ""degradation of the person of Christ,'' and in 1973 copies of the book were burned by the Drake School Board in South Dakota, a playing-out of Ray Bradbury's fears in ""Fahrenheit 451,'' the temperature at which a book bursts into flame.

Vonnegut, once a public relations man for General Electirc, took a light-hearted look at the world outside as he lazed in the general comfort of postwar America. But by the time ""Bagombo Snuff Box'' was put together he was writing, ""You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away. General Electric itself was made to feel like a buggy whip factory for a time, as Bell Labs and others cornered patents on transistors and their uses, while GE was still shunting electrons this way and that with vaccum tubes ... Too big to fail, though, as I was not, GE recovered sufficiently to lay off thousands and poison the Hudson River with PCBs.'' The short stories in ""Bagombo Snuff Box,'' written from 1949-63, during some of the strongest years for corporate America, are smilingly described by Vonnegut as ""a bunch of Buddhist catnaps.''

Vonnegut, a fourth-generation German-American born in Indianapolis on Nov. 11, 1922, sometimes took delight in the irony of being born on the fourth anniversary of Veterans Day, which ended the First World War. He said he owed his scientific bent to his father, an architect, and his politics to his family's New Leftism, which distrusted all ""granfallons, political or theological.'' After graduation from Shortridge High School in 1940, Vonnegut studied chemistry at Cornell and the Carnegie Institute of Technology before being drated into the Army.

Captured at the Bulge, he wound up in Dresden during the firebombing, which killed 135,000 civilians -- more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined -- a firebombing carried out, according to some historians, as a naked demonstration of Allied air power to Russians moving toward Berlin. When he came out of the Dresden bomb shelter, Vonnegut wrote, ""Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out.''

On Sept. 1, 1945, Vonnegut married a childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox, and the couple had three children, Mark, Edith and Nanette. The family also included three adopted nephews, the children of Vonnegut's deceased sister.

After the war Vonnegut studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, worked as a police reporter for the city news bureau, then became a PR man for GE in Schenectady, N.Y., a job he quit in 1950 to turn to full-time freelance writing that included short stories for magazines like Galaxy, Fantasy, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post.

The stories inspired ""Player Piano,'' ""The Sirens of Titan'' (1959) and ""Mother Night'' (1961). After ""Cat's Cradle'' in 1963 came ""Slaughterhouse-Five,'' leading New York Times' critic C.D.B. Bryan to compare Vonnegut to a mix of H.G. Wells and Mark Twain, saying the two messages he found in Vonnegut were ""Be kind'' and ""God doesn't care whether you are or not.''

In 1986, Vonnegut appeared before a Senate subcommittee to argue for repeal of the McCarran- Warren Act, which allowed the State Department to bar foreign visitors whose views were unacceptable to the government. ""All citizens are entitled to hear absolutely any idea anyone from anywhere may care to express,'' he said. ""And where did I get the notion there was such an incredible entitlement? I got it from the junior civics course that was given in the seventh grade at Public School 35 in Indianapolis.''

Vonnegut called censorship ""a disease that's been around a long, long time, like Legionnaires' disease, maybe, or Altzheimer's.'' That same year he appeared at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza to join demonstrations against South African apartheid, and soon after he flew to Mozambique as part of a relief mission.

At the height of his popularity, Time magazine insisted that a sign hanging in his home -- ""God damn it, you got to be kind'' -- ""lies at the heart of Vonnegut's work.'' Vonnegut also kept a self-signed report card on one wall that gave him an A for ""Slaughterhouse-Five'' and ""Cat's Cradle'' and lower marks for later work, including a D for ""Slapstick.''

Time defended Vonnegut's books against those claiming the works were anti-religious, saying his ""satiric forays are really an appeal for a return to Christlike behavior. For Vonnegut, man's worst folly is a persistent attempt to adjust, smoothly, rationally, to the unthinkable, the unbearable.''

In a Life magazine piece, Wilfred Sheed wrote, ""What he is, most profoundly, is an American humorist. He even walks like one, in a diffident bloodhound lope. And when he laughs, it is with a wild glee that stops just this sound of coughing.'' Vonnegut backed that up with ruminations of his own, including, ""Most of us are made up of basketball hoops and old cars.''

Over the years Vonnegut taught literature at Harvard, City College of New York and the University of Iowa writers workshop. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, receiving their Literary Award in 1970, as well as receiving a Guggenheim grant.

Life changed for Vonnegut across the years. He created an alter-ego sci-fi writer, Kilgore Trout, wrote some mediocre novels, drew Geraldo Rivera as a son-in-law, took part in periodic demonstrations and made periodic commencement speeches. One bogus speech credited to him made the rounds of the Internet -- a commencement at MIT in which he supposedly advised, ""Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of 1997: Wear sunscreen.''

In 1979, Vonnegut married photographer Jill Krementz and together they had a daughter, Lily, both of whom were at the family's brownstone on East 48th Street in New York in January, when a fire broke out in a rear bedroom and Vonnegut had to be rushed to the hospital with smoke inhalation. Vonnegut, a lifelong smoker already ill with emphysema, was pronounced in critical but stable condition in the intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Faced with his sudden mortality, the literary world began searching through its files to put together a suitable Vonnegut obituary. No matter how long people looked, though, there wasn't going to be a much better epitaph for Vonnegut than novelist Jay McInerney's description of the man as ""a cynic who wants to believe ... a moralist with a whoopee cushion.''