Vonnegut cuts quickly to the issue, actions are reported succinctly, and the prose is geared toward moving the story along and holding the reader's attention. His style, conspicuous for its short sentences and paragraphs, owes much to his background in journalism. As a satirist he acknowledges his debt to Voltaire and Jonathan Swift, while his brand of humor is influenced by Mark Twain and comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, and Bob and Ray. Vonnegut's enduring themes — social injustice, economic inequality, environmental exploitation, and militaristic barbarity — spring from his experiences growing up in the Depression and surviving World War II. Through his usually damaged, faltering antiheroes his stories search for what gives life meaning in a society bereft of cultural certainties.
Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 11 November 1922. His forebears came to the United States as part of the heavy wave of German immigration of the mid nineteenth century, two of his great-grandfathers — Clemens Vonnegut Sr. and Peter Lieber — arriving in 1848. They both eventually found their way to Indianapolis, where Lieber bought into a brewery in the 1860s and with a combination of business acumen and political awareness made his fortune.
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