Printed chronologies

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1848 Clemens Vonnegut, Sr. immigrates to North America.

1913 November 22. Kurt Vonnegut and Edith Lieber, the parents of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., marry in Indianapolis, IN.

1914 Bernard Vonnegut, brother, born.

1917 Alice Vonnegut, sister, born.

1922 November 11. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. born in Indianapolis.

1928-1936 Attends Orchard School, Indianapolis.

1936-1940 Attends Shortridge High School. Contributes to the Shortridge Daily Echo, a student daily newspaper as reporter, columnist, and editor.

1940 Enrolls at Cornell University as a biochemistry major. Contributes to the Cornell Sun as managing editor and columnist.

1943 March. Enlists in United States Army. Sent to Carnegie Institute and University of Tennessee for training in mechanical engineering.

1944 May 14. Edith Lieber Vonnegut, mother, commits suicide.

1944 December 22. Vonnegut captured during the Battle of the Bulge while a battalion scout with the 106 Infantry Division.

1945 February 13. Dresden, Germany bombed killing 135,000 citizens. Vonnegut and fellow Allied POWs take shelter in an underground meatlocker, the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five.

1945 April. Soviet troops occupy Dresden.

1945 May 22. Vonnegut released to return to the U.S. Awarded the Purple Heart.

1945 August 6. U.S. bombs Hiroshima with the planet's first display of atomic weapons killing 71,379 people.

1945 September 1. Marries high school classmate Jane Marie Cox whom he first met in kindergarten.

1945 December. Enrolls in University of Chicago's M.A. program in anthropology. Works as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau.

1946 M.A. thesis "On the Fluctuations between Good and Evil in Simple Tales" is unanimously rejected by the anthropology faculty.

1947 Takes job at the General Electric Company Research Laboratory, Schenectady, NY, as a public relations writer. Brother Bernard is a G.E. research scientist. Son Mark born.

1949 Daughter Edith born.

1950 February 11. First short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" published in Collier's.

1951 Quits G.E. and moves to Provincetown, MA (later West Barnstable, MA) to write full-time

1952 First novel, Player Piano, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Published in Canada by S.J. Reginald Sauners, Toronto.

1953 First book club selection when Player Piano is distributed by Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club. The novel is first published outside North America by Macmillan, London.

1954 First reprint when Player Piano is reissued as Utopia 14. Attempts a variety of jobs to bolster family income including teaching at Hopefield School, writing advertising copy and opening the second Saab dealership in the U.S. Daughter Nanette born.

1957 October 1. Kurt Vonnegut, Sr dies.

1958 Alice Vonnegut succumbs to cancer within 24 hours of her husband John Adams being killed in a train crash. Kurt and Jane Vonnegut adopt three of John and Alice's children (Tiger, Jim, and Steven).

1958 October 5. "Auf Wiedersehen," a television drama based on Vonnegut's "D.P.," broadcast by CBS.

1959 The Siren of Titans is published in paperback by Dell.

1961 A number of previously printed short stories are collected and published by Fawcett as Canary in a Cat House. The Sirens of Titan reissued in hardcover.

1962 Mother Night published in paperback by Fawcett. The Sirens of Titan translated into French by Monique Theis. Published by DeNoël, Paris as Les Sirène de Titan.

1963 Cat's Cradle published in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart & Winston. The book is quietly admired by a small number of influential writers. It is reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and the Spectator.

1964 Player Piano translated into German by Wulf H. Bergner as Das Höllische System. Published by Heyne, Munich.

1965 March. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, his first widely reviewed book, is published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Accepts appointment in the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. Writes first review for New York Times. The Sirens of Titan translated into Italian by Roberta Rambelli. Published by Piacenza, Rome as Le Sirene di Titano.

1966 New Republic publishes C.D.B. Bryan's survey Vonnegut texts. Though factually flawed, the piece captured Vonnegut's prior, largely unnoticed writings, for a national readership arguing they were the work of a serious young writer. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater translated into Spanish by Amparo García Burgos. Published by Grijalbo, Barcelona as Dios Le Bendiga, Mr. Rosewater.

1967 Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship allowing time in Dresden to research Slaughterhouse-Five. Signs three book contract with Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. The publisher reprints novels in hardcover. First academic study of Vonnegut in the chapter "Fabulation and Satire" by Robert Scholes published in The Fabulators. Player Piano translated into Russian by M. Bruhnov. Published by Molodaya gvardiya, Moscow as Utopija 14.

1968 August. Welcome to the Monkey House, a collection of previously published short fiction, published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence. Cat's Cradle translated into Japanese by Itô Norio. Published by Hayakawa Shobô as Neko No Yurikago.

1969 March. Slaughterhouse-Five, published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, catapults Vonnegut to national prominence. Hits number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

1970 January. Travels to Biafra just before its collapse in a Nigerian civil war. Awarded a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant. Appointed to teach creative writing, Harvard University.

1970 October 7. Happy Birthday, Wanda June opens in New York running through March 14, 1971. Published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence.

1971 Awarded M.A. by the University of Chicago in recognition for Cat's Cradle's contribution to the field of cultural anthropology. Separates from Jane Marie Vonnegut. Moves alone to New York.

1972 March 13. Between Time & Timbuktu broadcast on PBS. George Roy Hill's feature film "Slaughterhouse-Five" released nationwide. Elected Vice President of P.E.N. American Center. Elected member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. First academic book-length study of Vonnegut published as Peter J. Reed's Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Son Mark suffers emotional collapse.

1973 May. Breakfast of Champions published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence. Wildly successful as a commercial release the novel's critical reviewers are largely disappointed. Awarded honorary LHD by Indiana University. Succeeds Anthony Burgess as Distinguished Professor of English Prose at City University of New York.

1974 February 22. Resigns position at City University of New York. Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, a collection of essays, reviews, and such, is published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence. Receives honorary Litt.D by Hobart and William Smith College.

1975 Elected Vice President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Mark Vonnegut's Eden Express published by Praeger Publishers.

1976 Slapstick; or Lonesome No More, published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, is widely reviewed with hostility. Begins to identify himself as simply "Kurt Vonnegut."

1977 First grandchild, Zachary, born to Mark's family.

1979 Jailbird published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence.

1979 October 11. Edith Vonnegut's production of the musical adaptation of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" premieres at New York's Entermedia Theatre.

1979 November 24. Marries author and photographer Jill Krementz.

1980 Sun Moon Star, a children's Christmas story with illustrations by Ivan Chermayeff, published by Harper & Row.

1981 Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, a collection of essays, reviews, and such with connective commentary, is published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence.

1982 Deadeye Dick is published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence.

1982 February 2. "Who Am I This Time?" adapted from the Vonnegut short story televised nationally on American Playhouse.

1982 December 15. Lily Vonnegut born.

1985 Galápagos published by Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence. Attempts suicide by a combination of sleeping pills and alcohol.

1987 Bluebeard published by Delacorte. Many major publications including Newsweek, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement choose not to review it. Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky's Angels without Wings published by Houghton Mifflin.

1990 Hocus Pocus published by Putnam.

1991 Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980's published by Putnam.

1991 May 12. Showtime broadcasts "Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House," adaptations of his short stories.

1991 June. Vonnegut and Krementz file for divorce. The petition is later withdrawn.

1996 Robert Weide's adaptation of "Mother Night" is released nationwide by Fine Line Features. Adapted for stage, "Slaughterhouse-Five," premieres at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company

1997 Timequake published by Putnam.

1997 April 25. Brother Bernard Vonnegut dies.

1999 The film "Breakfast of Champions" is distributed in limited release.

©: http://www.duke.edu/~crh4/vonnegut/chronology.html

Born. November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, IN; son of Kurt (architect) and Edith (Lieber) Vonnegut.

Brothers and sister: Siblings. Bernard, Alice.

Married. Jane Marie Cox, September 1, 1945 (divorced, 1979); married Jill Krementz (a photographer), November 1979.

Children. (first marriage) Mark, Edith, Nanette; (adopted deceased sister's children) James, Steven, and Kurt Adams; (second marriage) Lili (adopted).

Other Notable Vonneguts. Great-grandfather Clemens Vonnegut, uncle Alex Vonnegut.

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1940-1942. Cornell. Attended Cornell University.

1943. Carnegie Tech. Now Carnegie-Mellon University.

1945-47. Chicago. Attended University of Chicago,. M.A., 1971.

1947. Vonnegut's M.A. thesis, Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales, was rejected unanimously by the anthropology department.

Vonnegut: "I left Chicago without writing a dissertation - and without a degree. All my ideas for dissertations had been rejected, and I was broke, so I took a job as a P.R. man for General Electric in Schenectady. Twenty years later, I got a letter from a new dean at Chicago, who had been looking through my dossier. Under the rules of the university, he said, a published work of high quality could be substituted for a dissertation, so I was entitled to an M.A. He had shown Cat's Cradle to the Anthropology Department, and they had said it was half-way decent anthropology, so they were mailing me my degree. I'm class of 1972 or so." Paris Review, Spring, 1979; quoted in Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by William Rodney Allen (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 182.

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1942-45. U.S. Army, Infantry; POW; received Purple Heart

1946. Chicago City News Burea, Chicago, IL; police reporter

1947-50. General Electric Co., Schenectady, NY; public relations

1950-present. Freelance writer

1965. Hopfield School, Sandwich, MA; teacher

1965-67. University of Iowa Writers Workshop; lecturer

1970-71. Harvard University; lecturer

1973-74. City College of New York; Distinguished Professor of English Prose

1986. National Coalition against Censorship briefing for the Attorney General's Commision on Pornography hearing; speaker

1996. Advertisement for the Discover Card

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