What was Kurt Vonnegut's Net Worth?
Kurt Vonnegut was an American who had a net worth of $5 million at the time of his death in 2007. Kurt Vonnegut was a writer and humorist known for his darkly satirical novels, including "Player Piano," "Cat's Cradle," and "Slaughterhouse-Five." He also published various short-story collections, plays, and non-fiction works. Following his passing in 2007, Vonnegut was widely lauded as one of the most important and influential of all contemporary writers.
Early Life and Education
Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana as the youngest of three children of well-to-do parents Edith and Kurt Sr. His siblings were Bernard and Alice. Although Vonnegut's parents descended from German immigrants and were fluent German speakers, they abandoned the culture during World War I and embraced American patriotism. Vonnegut would later credit his family's African-American housekeeper, Ida Young, with raising him and instilling him with moral values.
As a youth, Vonnegut attended Public School No. 43 and then Shortridge High School. During this time, the Great Depression took a severe economic toll on his family. After graduating from high school, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, where he studied biochemistry and edited the university's independent newspaper the Cornell Daily Sun. In early 1943, he withdrew from the school and enlisted in the US Army. As part of his training, Vonnegut studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. After the war, he attended the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill.
World War II
In early 1944, Vonnegut was ordered to an infantry battalion at Camp Atterbury. When he returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend, he found that his mother had killed herself the previous night by overdosing on sleeping pills. Three months later, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with the 106th Infantry Division. At the end of 1944, while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, he and around 50 other American soldiers were captured by the Germans. Vonnegut was interned in Dresden, where he survived the 1945 Allied bombing of the city by hiding in an underground meat locker in the slaughterhouse where he was being held. After the war, he continued serving in the Army in the United States and was awarded a Purple Heart for his service. He was eventually discharged.
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Novels
In 1952, Vonnegut published his first novel, "Player Piano." A dystopian book about factory workers being replaced by machines, it earned positive reviews from critics but was not commercially successful at the time. Vonnegut went on to sell short stories to various magazines. In 1959, he published his second novel, "The Sirens of Titan," about a Martian invasion of Earth as experienced by a bored billionaire. Vonnegut followed that in 1962 with "Mother Night." The next year, he published one of his most lauded novels, "Cat's Cradle," which satirizes various aspects of science, technology, and religion with black humor. Vonnegut went on to publish "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" in 1965.
Vonnegut was launched to widespread fame in 1969 with his sixth novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five." Based on Vonnegut's own experiences as a POW in Dresden during World War II, the book follows the life of Billy Pilgrim as he endures the war and occasionally travels through time. The anti-war sentiment of "Slaughterhouse-Five" resonated strongly with readers amid the ongoing Vietnam War, and the book went on to top the New York Times Best Seller list. Vonnegut continued his success with his next novel, 1973's "Breakfast of Champions." He followed that with "Slapstick" (1976) and "Jailbird" (1979). Vonnegut wrote five more novels during his life: "Deadeye Dick" (1982), "Galápagos" (1985), "Bluebeard" (1987), "Hocus Pocus" (1990), and "Timequake" (1997).
Other Written Works
Beyond his novels, Vonnegut published some short-story collections, starting with 1961's "Canary in a Cat House." Other collections include "Welcome to the Monkey House" and "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian." There were later a number of collections published posthumously, such as "Look at the Birdie" (2009) and "Complete Stories" (2017). During his lifetime, Vonnegut also penned plays and non-fiction works. His plays included "The First Christmas Morning," "Fortitude," "Between Time and Timbuktu," and "Make Up Your Mind." Meanwhile, Vonnegut's non-fiction works included "Palm Sunday," "Fates Worse Than Death," and "A Man Without a Country." His non-fiction works often feature essays, speeches, letters, and short stories, sometimes in combination.
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Marriages and Family
After returning to the United States after the war, Vonnegut married his high school sweetheart Jane Cox. The pair relocated to Chicago, where they both attended the University of Chicago. Cox ended up dropping out of her program when she became pregnant with the couple's first child, Mark. They had their second child, Edith, in 1949. In the early 1950s, the family moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Vonnegut and Cox had their third child, Nanette, in 1954. Four years later, the couple took in three sons of Vonnegut's sister and brother-in-law, who had died within days of each other. Vonnegut continued writing prolifically, but struggled to find success. When he finally achieved his commercial breakthrough with "Slaughterhouse-Five," he found his marriage with Cox disintegrating. The pair battled bitterly over their differing views, and divorced in 1971. At the end of the decade, Vonnegut married photographer Jill Krementz, with whom he adopted a daughter named Lily.
Death and Legacy
On April 11, 2007, Vonnegut passed away from brain injuries he suffered several weeks earlier when he fell at his home in New York City. He was 84 years of age. Following his death, critics lauded him as one of the most important and influential contemporary writers, and one of the key novelists of the counterculture.
In 2011, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis was opened. Later, in 2015, Vonnegut was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Washington. A documentary film about his life and work, "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time," was released in 2021.
