Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis. Vonnegut studied chemistry at Cornell University from 1940 to 1943. After graduating from college he enrolled in the US Army and was given the opportunity to study engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. A year later, Vonnegut was sent to Europe and was captured as a prisoner of war by the Germans during the Battle of Bulge. Vonnegut was living as a prisoner in Dresden when the city was bombed. He managed to survive the bombing because he was working in an underground meat locker. “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the novel many people consider to be Vonnegut’s masterpiece, is based on his experiences during the war. After the war, Vonnegut attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology. There he submitted his novel “Cat’s Cradle” as his thesis project. Vonnegut is known for his blend of satire, science fiction, and humor.
I sure hope those of you who are preachers took the time to read all of these.
“Where is home? I’ve wondered where home is, and I realized, it’s not Mars or someplace like that, it’s Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there’s no way I can get there again.”
– as quoted in “The World According to Kurt” in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Oct. 11, 2005
That is wonderful stuff.
I should also mention that I do not remember ever noticing that Mr Vonnegut was a chemistry major. Speaking as one myself, you can never tell what such folk will end up doing.