Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron
Kurt Vonnegut

Context

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1922. He edited his high school newspaper and attended Cornell University, where he studied chemistry and wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun for about two years. Then Vonnegut joined the army, where he served with the U.S. 106th Infantry Division during World War II and earned a Purple Heart. He was taken captive and, as a prisoner of war, saw the bombing of Dresden in Germany. After the war ended, Vonnegut earned an advanced degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, where he worked as a police reporter. He eventually left Chicago for Schenectady, New York, to work for General Electric in the public relations department. In 1951, he left his job to devote himself to writing.

Vonnegut published his first short story, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” in 1950. Numerous works of fiction followed, most of which are equal parts satire and science fiction. Some of his best-known works include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has lived through the bombing of Dresden and become a time traveler. Breakfast of Champions (1973), another well-known novel, features an experimental form and the introduction of the author as a character. Vonnegut has produced many other novels as well as short story collections and plays and written essays about many subjects, including suicide. His mother killed herself when he was a young man, and Vonnegut attempted suicide himself in 1985. After the publication of Timequake (1996), Vonnegut said that he was through writing fiction. Since then, he has written essays for the magazine In These Times. He has taught at Smith College, the City College of New York, Harvard University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

A fervent liberal, Vonnegut is a lifetime member of the ACLU... [continues]

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