Vonnegut's College Paper Lauds Him

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During his three years at Cornell -- Vonnegut never graduated, having been drafted into the U.S. Army -- the Sun was his salvation. "I spent the whole time I was here working on the Cornell Sun, and that's how I got my liberal arts education," Vonnegut once said. "I never made a systematic study of literature, so I don't have the usual vocabulary for discussing it." The great writer also remembered making the gaffe of a tyro editor: He spelled Ethel Barrymore "Ethyl" in a Sun headline.
Kurt Vonnegut yearbook photo
The Cornellian
In this 1943 yearbook photo, part of a group photo of Delta Upsilon fraternity, then junior Kurt Vonnegut is in the center at right. Copyright © Cornell University

"Cornell was a boozy dream," Vonnegut once remembered, "partly because of the booze itself, and partly because I was enrolled in courses I had no talent for." He later elaborated: "Being drunk was utterly acceptable. That's when I first decided this country was crazy."

In 1983 Vonnegut told his Cornell audience that there are two kinds of writers: those who build on existing literature and those who respond to life itself. "I'm in the latter category," he said. "That's probably why I'm always uneasy in the presence of other novelists. There's no evidence I'm building on the past at all."