Kilgore Trout as Kurt Vonneguts Alter Ego :: Biography Biographies Essays

Kilgore Trout as Kurt Vonneguts Alter Ego In 1922, two residents of atomic number 49polis, Indiana had a sonwho would later induce single of the premiere writers in 20thcentury American literature. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born to Edithand Kurt Sr. on November 11, 1922. He graduated from ShortridgeHigh School in 1940, attended Cornell University for a year, thenjoined the army. He fought in World War II and was captured bythe Germans in 1944. As a Prisoner of War, he lived through thefirebombing of Dresden, an event which inspired his acclaimednovel, Slaughterhouse-Five. After he returned from Europe inApril of 1945, he married Jane Marie Cox and spend several yearsstudying at the University of Chicago and sketching as a reporterfor the Chicago City News Bureau. In 1947, he went to work atGeneral Electric Corporation as a research laboratory publicist.He worked there for 3 years until he left to become a full timewriter in 1950. In the past 47 years, he has become one of themost acclaimed writers of our time. Kurt Vonneguts first novel was authorize Player Piano andwas published in 1952. Since then, he has written over a dozenother novels, collections of short stories, a collection ofessays and interviews, and a play, blessed Birthday Wanda June. Hespent 1965 in residence at the University of Iowa WritersWorkshop and taught writing at Harvard in 1970. He also wasawarded a M.A. degree from the University of Chicago. Vonnegut currently appears on the Barnes and Noble Booksellers bag and isfeatured on a Visa commercial in which he buys a copy of one ofhis own books. If one looks through Vonneguts works, one will find manyoccurrences of reoccurring characters, settings, and themes.Perhaps one of the most frequently occurring characters isKilgore Trout, an obscure science-fiction writer with a small but