Its the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., born in Indianapolis, Indiana (1922). He joined the Army, and in December of 1944, he was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was imprisoned in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. On the night of February 13, 1945, British and American bombers attacked Dresden, igniting a firestorm that killed almost all the citys inhabitants in two hours. Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners only survived because they slept in a meat locker three stories below the ground. In 1967, he published Slaughterhouse-Five , about a man named Billy Pilgrim who experiences the bombing of Dresden and loses his mind, believing he has traveled to an alien planet where time does not exist. Vonnegut said: [I knew] after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didnt have to write at all anymore if I didnt want to [...] I suppose that flowers, when theyre through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Slaughterhouse-Five was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and the book made Vonnegut a hero among the war protesters. Vonnegut said it was an anti-war book. But he also said, Anti-war books are as likely to stop war as anti-glacier books are to stop glaciers. Kurt Vonnegut also wrote Cats Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), and many other books. He once came up with a list of eight rules for writing a short story. Rule number one: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Other rules include Start as close to the end as possible and Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 09:11:27 +0000
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