Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Newsweek, April, 2007 by David Gates

It's hard to imagine why Kurt Vonnegut was called a "pessimist" or a "cynic." He lived through three quarters of the worst century ever, and saw enough of this one to get the picture. He didn't just read about the madness and horror: as an airman in World War II, he was in a German POW camp in Dresden when American planes firebombed the city. And he responded to his times appropriately--with anger, with despair, with stoicism--and still managed to laugh, and to recommend and practice human kindness. Isn't the expression something more like "role model"?

After the war, Vonnegut knocked around as a police reporter, a PR man for General Electric and a Saab dealer. But he was also writing satirical fiction. His first novel, "Player Piano" (1952), was a surreal spoof of the...

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