Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (born 1922) is acknowledged as a major voice in American literature and applauded for his pungent satirical depictions of modern society. Emphasizing the comic absurdity of the human condition, he frequently depicts characters who...

[This entry was updated by Peter J. Reed (University of Minnesota) from his entry in DLB 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series.] Though Kurt Vonnegut had been a widely read short-story writer throughout the 1950s and though his...

As of 1987 Kurt Vonnegut's work includes twelve novels, a play and a television play, two collections of short stories, two collections of essays, and a miscellany of uncollected shorter pieces of fiction and nonfiction. He is himself the subject of a...

Having come to prominence only with his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a rare example of an author who has been equally important to popular audiences and avant-garde critics. His fiction and public spokesmanship spans...

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11 1922 – April 11 2007) (pronounced /ˈvɒnəgət/) was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's...

Like his friend Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut was a hero to baby boomers _ though he was raised in an earlier time. The president he mourned was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not John F. Kennedy. His war was World War II, not Vietnam.Nearly 40 when the...

Famous Last Words have been the object of fascination ever since famous people started uttering them. Caesar said “And you, Brutus?” Oscar Wilde made the joke about the ugly curtains. To the disappointment of the many who held Kurt Vonnegut in similar esteem, the writer...

Within the past year, three of the most famous authors to emerge after World War II have died: Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron. Their deaths all resulted in front-page stories, lengthy appreciations and ongoing discussions about their place in American letters.No writer was...

Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking...

In the following essay, Kaufman contends that the divide between Kurt Vonnegut's comic persona and his cultural aims is obvious in many of his works, including Slapstick, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle.

In the following essay, Trachtenberg discusses the emergence of a dark comic mode in American fiction during the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on common themes in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.

In the following essay, Barnes provides several definitions of black humor, placing it in social and historical context, with special emphasis on the work of Kurt Vonnegut.