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95-619: Broad Ripple Village is one of seven areas designated as cultural districts in Indianapolis , Indiana . Located in Washington Township, Marion County, Indiana , about six miles (ten kilometers) north of downtown Indianapolis , Broad Ripple was first platted in 1837, became incorporated as the Town of Broad Ripple in 1894, and was annexed to the City of Indianapolis in 1922. The neighborhood has

190-523: A master's degree . There, he studied under anthropologist Robert Redfield , his "most famous professor". He also worked as a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago . Jane, who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore, accepted a scholarship from the university to study Russian literature as a graduate student. Jane dropped out of the program after becoming pregnant with the couple's first child, Mark (born May 1947), while Kurt also left

285-500: A volunteer fire department and by giving away money to those in trouble or need. Stress from a battle for control of his charitable foundation pushes him over the edge, and he is placed in a mental hospital. He recovers and ends the financial battle by declaring the children of his county to be his heirs. Allen deemed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater more "a cry from the heart than a novel under its author's full intellectual control", that reflected family and emotional stresses Vonnegut

380-409: A Martian invasion of Earth, as experienced by a bored billionaire Malachi Constant. He meets Winston Niles Rumfoord, an aristocratic space traveler, who is virtually omniscient but stuck in a time warp that causes him to appear on Earth every 59 days. The billionaire learns that his actions and the events of all of history are determined by a race of robotic aliens from the planet Tralfamadore , who need

475-588: A Purple Heart for frost-bite ." He was discharged from the U.S. Army and returned to Indianapolis. After he returned to the United States, 22-year-old Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high-school girlfriend and classmate since kindergarten, on September 1, 1945. The pair moved to Chicago; there, Vonnegut enrolled in the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill , as an anthropology student in an unusual five-year joint undergraduate/graduate program that conferred

570-617: A boat ramp. In 1987, Lillian R. Barcio founded and served as the editor in chief of Broad Ripple's first dedicated monthly newspaper, The Village Sampler . The first issue was published in June 1987. The paper ceased publication in December 1998. In 2004 a free biweekly newspaper, The Broad Ripple Gazette , was created by Broad Ripple native Alan Hague. Broad Ripple is connected to downtown Indianapolis on public bus rapid transit via IndyGo's Red Line (Route 90) . The Red Line's Broad Ripple Station

665-556: A collection of Vonnegut's short fiction. Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis , on November 11, 1922, the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. (1884–1956) and his wife Edith (1888–1944; née Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard (1914–1997) and Alice (1917–1958). He descended from a long line of German Americans whose immigrant ancestors settled in the United States in the mid-19th century; his paternal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut , settled in Indianapolis and founded

760-458: A commercial artery that mainly served the surrounding residential area. Mass Ave gained popularity as service-oriented businesses sprung up with the development of streetcar lines, with continued growth between 1870 and 1930. Bernard Vonnegut, grandfather of author Kurt Vonnegut , and Arthur Bohn designed Athenæum (Das Deutsche Haus) in 1893 as a home for German societies in Indianapolis to gather. Both were American-born sons of German immigrants,

855-552: A culture that had a strong influence in the area around this time. Following these many years of good fortune and commercial growth, this area and all of Downtown fell into economic decline following World War II once Indianapolis lost its importance as a railroad hub. Gentrification in the 1990s propelled the area from squalor to one of the city's more fashionable addresses. Currently, redevelopment of Mass Ave focuses on fostering locally owned shops, theaters, and restaurants. The once destined-for-demolition Athenaeum building now houses

950-470: A cynic, but there was something tender in his nature that he could never quite suppress; he could have become a bore, but even at his most despairing he had an endless willingness to entertain his readers: with drawings, jokes, sex, bizarre plot twists, science fiction, whatever it took. In a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, Vonnegut sardonically stated that he would sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company,

1045-527: A daughter named Edith . Still working for GE, Vonnegut had his first piece, titled " Report on the Barnhouse Effect ", published in the February 11, 1950, issue of Collier's , for which he received $ 750. The story concerned a scientist who fears that his invention will be used as a weapon, much as Bernard was fearing at the time about his cloudseeding work. Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by

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1140-403: A genre held in disdain by writers at that time. He defended the genre and deplored a perceived sentiment that "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works". After Player Piano , Vonnegut continued to sell short stories to various magazines. Contracted to produce a second novel (which eventually became Cat's Cradle ), he struggled to complete it, and

1235-461: A home in Barnstable . In 1952, Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano , was published by Scribner's . The novel has a post-Third World War setting, in which factory workers have been replaced by machines. Player Piano draws upon Vonnegut's experience as an employee at GE. The novel is set at a General Electric-like company and includes many scenes based on things Vonnegut saw there. He satirizes

1330-447: A joint GE- U.S. Army Signal Corps program, Project Cirrus. In The Brothers Vonnegut , Ginger Strand draws connections between many real events at General Electric, including Bernard's work, and Vonnegut's early stories, which were regularly being rejected everywhere he sent them. Throughout this period, Jane Vonnegut encouraged him, editing his stories, strategizing about submissions and buoying his spirits. In 1949, Kurt and Jane had

1425-534: A machine-smashing, museum-burning revolution. Player Piano expresses Vonnegut's opposition to McCarthyism , something made clear when the Ghost Shirts, the revolutionary organization Paul penetrates and eventually leads, is referred to by one character as " fellow travelers ". In Player Piano , Vonnegut originates many of the techniques he would use in his later works. The comic, heavy-drinking Shah of Bratpuhr, an outsider to this dystopian corporate United States,

1520-470: A matter of years. The Liebers' brewery closed down in 1921 after the advent of prohibition . When the Great Depression hit, few people could afford to build, causing clients at Kurt Sr.'s architectural firm to become scarce. Vonnegut's brother and sister had finished their primary and secondary educations in private schools, but Vonnegut was placed in a public school called Public School No. 43 (now

1615-515: A pedestrian crossing that links park attractions. Points of interest in the district include: In 1870, more African Americans were calling Indiana Avenue home as the original Irish and German populations began to move outward. The population had risen to 974 residents, more than one-third of the city's total African American population. The first African American businesses appeared on the 500 block of Indiana Avenue as early as 1865: Samuel G. Smother's grocery store; William Franklin's peddler shop; and

1710-506: A place at the university's independent newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun , first serving as a staff writer , then as an editor. By the end of his first year, he was writing a column titled "Innocents Abroad", which reused jokes from other publications. He later penned a piece "Well All Right" focusing on pacifism , a cause he strongly supported, arguing against US intervention in World War ;II. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought

1805-483: A positive review, favorably comparing it to Aldous Huxley 's Brave New World . Hicks called Vonnegut a "sharp-eyed satirist". None of the reviewers considered the novel particularly important. Several editions were printed—one by Bantam with the title Utopia 14 , and another by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club —whereby Vonnegut gained the reputation as a writer of science fiction ,

1900-537: A prolific writer in the 1980s, Vonnegut struggled with depression and attempted suicide in 1984. Two years later, Vonnegut was seen by a younger generation when he played himself in Rodney Dangerfield 's film Back to School . The last of Vonnegut's fourteen novels, Timequake (1997), was, as University of Detroit history professor and Vonnegut biographer Gregory Sumner said, "a reflection of an aging man facing mortality and testimony to an embattled faith in

1995-525: A replacement part that can only be produced by an advanced civilization in order to repair their spaceship and return home—human history has been manipulated to produce it. Some human structures, such as the Kremlin , are coded signals from the aliens to their ship as to how long it may expect to wait for the repair to take place. Reviewers were uncertain what to think of the book, with one comparing it to Offenbach 's opera The Tales of Hoffmann . Rumfoord, who

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2090-400: A reputation for being socially, economically, and ethnically diverse. The public school system dates back to at least 1843, when Washington Township School Number Five was built. Washington Township School Number Fourteen was built in 1854. A newer, four-room brick school, "built to accommodate the advanced pupils of the entire township", opened in 1884. Broad Ripple High School originated as

2185-476: A two-year program in 1886, becoming a three-year program in 1887 and a four-year program sometime between 1893 and 1895. The grade school and high school shared buildings, including the newer 1914 building, until 1926. Broad Ripple High School became the fourth high school in Indianapolis Public Schools in autumn 1923 after Broad Ripple was annexed to Indianapolis. The high school closed at the end of

2280-409: A world of illusion". Also published in 1961 was Vonnegut's short story " Harrison Bergeron ", set in a dystopic future where all are equal, even if that means disfiguring beautiful people and forcing the strong or intelligent to wear devices that negate their advantages. Fourteen-year-old Harrison is a genius and athlete forced to wear record-level "handicaps" and imprisoned for attempting to overthrow

2375-509: Is able to ask many questions that an insider would not think to ask, or would cause offense by doing so. For example, when taken to see the artificially intelligent supercomputer EPICAC, the Shah asks it "what are people for?" and receives no answer. Speaking for Vonnegut, he dismisses it as a "false god". This type of alien visitor would recur throughout Vonnegut's literature. The New York Times writer and critic Granville Hicks gave Player Piano

2470-575: Is based on Franklin D. Roosevelt , also physically resembles the former president. Rumfoord is described this way: he "put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up." William Rodney Allen , in his guide to Vonnegut's works, stated that Rumfoord foreshadowed the fictional political figures who would play major roles in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Jailbird . Mother Night , published in 1961, received little attention at

2565-833: Is bounded by Delaware Street on the west, New York Street on the north, East Street on the east, and the Indianapolis Union Railway on the south. Points of interest in the district include: Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut ( / ˈ v ɒ n ə ɡ ə t / VON -ə-gət ; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death. Born and raised in Indianapolis , Vonnegut attended Cornell University , but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in

2660-553: Is located in the median of College Avenue and is accessed from College's intersection with Broad Ripple Avenue and Westfield Boulevard. Other IndyGo traditional bus routes also run through the village, connecting it to additional neighborhoods in Indianapolis. Indiana Pacers Bikeshare launched in the neighborhood on September 5, 2019, with two of the system's 50 docking stations located in Broad Ripple. Indianapolis Cultural Districts Indianapolis's cultural district program

2755-407: Is undergoing a period of rebirth and restoration, and is an emerging arts center for Indianapolis. In the nineteenth century, the area was a huge working apple orchard. As the city population swelled, the apple trees were cut down and houses were built. The neighborhood was economically strong for many decades, but had suffered from a high unemployment rate and increasing crime and drug problems. In

2850-682: The 106th Infantry Division . In December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge , one of the last German offensives of the war. On December 22, Vonnegut was captured with about 50 other American soldiers. Vonnegut was taken by boxcar to a prison camp south of Dresden , in the German province of Saxony . During the journey, the Royal Air Force mistakenly attacked the trains carrying Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners of war , killing about 150 of them. Vonnegut

2945-573: The Echo allowed him to write for a large audience—his fellow students—rather than for a teacher, an experience, he said, was "fun and easy". "It just turned out that I could write better than a lot of other people", Vonnegut observed. "Each person has something he can do easily and can't imagine why everybody else has so much trouble doing it." After graduating from Shortridge in 1940, Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York . He wanted to study

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3040-560: The Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel of the year. His short-story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House , was published in 1968. Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Its anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amid the Vietnam War , and its reviews were generally positive. It rose to

3135-548: The Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. Today, while no longer a blighted area, Indiana Avenue's legacy consists of few historic buildings and a plaque. Points of interest in the district include: Market East is the most-recently designated cultural district in Indianapolis, having received that designation in April 2014. The district is on the east side of downtown and

3230-547: The James Whitcomb Riley School). He was bothered by the Great Depression, and both his parents were affected deeply by their economic misfortune. His father withdrew from normal life and became what Vonnegut called a "dreamy artist". His mother became depressed, withdrawn, bitter, and abusive. She labored to regain the family's wealth and status, and Vonnegut said that she expressed hatred for her husband that

3325-509: The Monon Trail , Broad Ripple is also popular with recreational trail users, including bicyclists and runners. Points of interest in the district include: Massachusetts Avenue, or more commonly referred to as Mass Ave, offers some of the city's most visible theaters and art galleries. Located just a few blocks northeast of Monument Circle , Massachusetts Avenue was designed in 1821 as one of Downtown's four original diagonal streets and began as

3420-462: The National Institute of Arts and Letters and given honorary degrees by, among others, Indiana University and Bennington College . Vonnegut also wrote a play called Happy Birthday, Wanda June , which opened on October 7, 1970, at New York's Theatre de Lys . Receiving mixed reviews, it closed on March 14, 1971. In 1972, Universal Pictures adapted Slaughterhouse-Five into a film , which

3515-670: The U.S. Army . As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee . He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge . He was interned in Dresden , where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he

3610-702: The Vonnegut Hardware Company . His father and grandfather Bernard were architects; the architecture firm under Kurt Sr. designed such buildings as Das Deutsche Haus (now called "The Athenæum"), the Indiana headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company , and the Fletcher Trust Building . Vonnegut's mother was born into Indianapolis's Gilded Age high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among

3705-465: The 1970s, Interstate 65 was constructed through Indianapolis, severing Fountain Square from Downtown's neighborhoods, resulting in a period of decline. Currently, there are a number of neighborhood development corporations and community groups working to revitalize the area with increasing success. Points of interest in the district include: Around the turn of the century Downtown Indianapolis had one of

3800-520: The 2017–2018 school year. Broad Ripple was annexed to the city of Indianapolis in June 1922, after previous failed attempts in 1906, 1909, and 1913, and several other times. Broad Ripple Park is a 62-acre (25 ha) park bordering the White River and located just to the northeast of the village. It features an outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, baseball diamond, athletic fields, playground, picnic shelters, dog park, wooded preserve, fitness path, and

3895-482: The American Cabaret Theatre, Rathskeller Restaurant and downtown YMCA location. Points of interest in the district include: Fountain Square is a neighborhood located approximately 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles (2.4 km) southeast of Downtown Indianapolis , centered at the intersection of Virginia Avenue, Prospect, and Shelby streets. A center of commerce for more than 100 years, the historic community

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3990-641: The Army and in March 1943 reported to Fort Bragg , North Carolina, for basic training. Vonnegut was trained to fire and maintain howitzers and later received instruction in mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee as part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). In early 1944, the ASTP was canceled due to the Army's need for soldiers to support

4085-710: The Canal is now home to a burgeoning life science campus connected with the Indiana University School of Medicine . An extension of the Canal into the heart of the White River State Park was completed in 1996. The extension was part of a $ 20 million infrastructure improvement project that included renovation of the Old Washington Street Bridge, built in 1916 as part of the National Road , into

4180-511: The D-Day invasion , and Vonnegut was ordered to an infantry battalion at Camp Atterbury , south of Indianapolis in Edinburgh, Indiana , where he trained as a scout. He lived so close to his home that he was "able to sleep in [his] own bedroom and use the family car on weekends". On May 14, 1944, Vonnegut returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend to discover that his mother had committed suicide

4275-826: The Kurt Vonnegut Society was established, and in November 2010, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library was opened in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis. The Library of America published a compendium of Vonnegut's compositions between 1963 and 1973 the following April, and another compendium of his earlier works in 2012. Late 2011 saw the release of two Vonnegut biographies: Gregory Sumner's Unstuck in Time and Charles J. Shields 's And So It Goes . Shields's biography of Vonnegut created some controversy. According to The Guardian ,

4370-523: The United States into WWII . Vonnegut was a member of Reserve Officers' Training Corps , but poor grades and a satirical article in Cornell's newspaper cost him his place there. He was placed on academic probation in May 1942 and dropped out the following January. No longer eligible for a deferment as a member of ROTC, he faced likely conscription into the U.S. Army . Instead of waiting to be drafted, he enlisted in

4465-399: The antiwar message of Slaughterhouse-Five resonated with a generation marked by the Vietnam War . He later stated that the loss of confidence in government that Vietnam caused finally allowed an honest conversation regarding events like Dresden. After Slaughterhouse-Five was published, Vonnegut embraced the fame and financial security that attended its release. He was hailed as a hero of

4560-468: The area and few businesses remained. Points of interest in the district include: The long defunct Indiana Central Canal in Downtown Indianapolis was refurbished and reopened as a city recreational area in the early 1990s. This new incarnation was inspired by Venetian canals. Cultural attractions, residential, and commercial developments were built along both sides of the Canal. The north end of

4655-467: The author said was "flawless". When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here. Vonnegut's difficulties in his personal life thereafter materialized in numerous ways, including the painfully slow progress made on his next novel,

4750-469: The burgeoning anti-war movement in the United States, was invited to speak at numerous rallies, and gave college commencement addresses around the country. In addition to briefly teaching at Harvard University as a lecturer in creative writing in 1970, Vonnegut taught at the City College of New York as a distinguished professor during the 1973–1974 academic year. He was later elected vice president of

4845-510: The captives abandoned by their guards, Vonnegut reached a prisoner-of-war repatriation camp in Le Havre , France, in May 1945, with the aid of the Soviets. Sent back to the United States, he was stationed at Fort Riley , Kansas , typing discharge papers for other soldiers. Soon after, he was awarded a Purple Heart , about which he remarked: "I myself was awarded my country's second-lowest decoration,

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4940-426: The city was gone ... They burnt the whole damn town down." Vonnegut and other American prisoners were put to work immediately after the bombing, excavating bodies from the rubble. He described the activity as a "terribly elaborate Easter-egg hunt". The American POWs were evacuated on foot to the border of Saxony and Czechoslovakia after U.S. General George S. Patton 's 3rd Army captured Leipzig . With

5035-600: The city's first African American-owned newspaper, the Indianapolis Leader in 1879. The Great Migration resulted in the settlement of a sizable African American community along the Avenue. In 1927, the Madam C. J. Walker Building opened. The building and the theater within is named for Madam C. J. Walker , an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist who began her beauty empire in Indianapolis. Indiana Avenue

5130-453: The darkly comical Breakfast of Champions . In 1971, he stopped writing the novel altogether. When it was finally released in 1973, it was panned critically. In Thomas S. Hischak's book American Literature on Stage and Screen , Breakfast of Champions was called "funny and outlandish", but reviewers noted that it "lacks substance and seems to be an exercise in literary playfulness". Vonnegut's 1976 novel Slapstick , which meditates on

5225-437: The disagreements "painful" and said that the resulting split was a "terrible, unavoidable accident that we were ill-equipped to understand". The couple divorced but remained friends until Jane's death in late 1986. Beyond his failed marriage, Vonnegut was deeply affected when his son Mark suffered a mental breakdown in 1972, which exacerbated Vonnegut's chronic depression and led him to take Ritalin . When he stopped taking

5320-482: The drive to climb the corporate ladder, one that in Player Piano is rapidly disappearing as automation increases, putting even executives out of work. His central character, Paul Proteus, has an ambitious wife, a backstabbing assistant, and a feeling of empathy for the poor. Sent by his boss, Kroner, as a double agent among the poor (who have all the material goods they want, but little sense of purpose), he leads them in

5415-423: The drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly. In 1979, Vonnegut married Jill Krementz , a photographer whom he met while she was working on a series about writers in the early 1970s. With Jill, he adopted a daughter, Lily, when the baby was three days old. They remained married until his death. Vonnegut's sincerity, his willingness to scoff at received wisdom, is such that reading his work for

5510-535: The fiction editor at Collier's , Knox Burger, and again sold it to the magazine, this time for $ 950. While Burger supported Vonnegut's writing, he was shocked when Vonnegut quit GE as of January 1, 1951, later stating: "I never said he should give up his job and devote himself to fiction. I don't trust the freelancer's life, it's tough." Nevertheless, in early 1951 Vonnegut moved with his family to Cape Cod, Massachusetts , to write full time, leaving GE behind. He initially moved to Osterville , but he ended up purchasing

5605-500: The fictional fathers of the atomic bomb, seeking to cover the scientist's human side. Hoenikker, in addition to the bomb, has developed another threat to mankind, "ice-nine", solid water stable at room temperature, but more dense than liquid water. If a particle of ice-nine is dropped in water, all of the surrounding water becomes ice-nine. Felix Hoenikker is based on Bernard Vonnegut's boss at the GE Research Lab, Irving Langmuir , and

5700-476: The first decade of his life, for raising him and giving him values; he said, "she gave me decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to me", and "was as great an influence on me as anybody". He described her as "humane and wise" and added that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her. The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts had once enjoyed were destroyed in

5795-402: The first time gives one the sense that everything else is rank hypocrisy. His opinion of human nature was low, and that low opinion applied to his heroes and his villains alike—he was endlessly disappointed in humanity and in himself, and he expressed that disappointment in a mixture of tar-black humor and deep despair. He could easily have become a crank, but he was too smart; he could have become

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5890-461: The goods for a commission fee. The Wholesale District was of primary importance in the transformation of Indianapolis from small town to big city. No longer did shoppers have to rely on retailers who sold finished goods shipped from Louisville or Cincinnati. They could now go to a central location and buy the same items at wholesale prices. With Union Station nearby, wholesalers could ship goods more cheaply and more easily. The Great Depression devastated

5985-464: The government. He escapes to a television studio, tears away his handicaps, and frees a ballerina from her lead weights. As they dance, they are killed by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Vonnegut, in a later letter, suggested that "Harrison Bergeron" might have sprung from his envy and self-pity as a high-school misfit. In his 1976 biography of Vonnegut, Stanley Schatt suggested that

6080-519: The humanities and had aspirations of becoming an architect like his father, but his father and brother Bernard, an atmospheric scientist, urged him to study a "useful" discipline. As a result, Vonnegut majored in biochemistry , but he had little proficiency in the area and was indifferent towards his studies. As his father had been a member at MIT , Vonnegut was entitled to join the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and did. He overcame stiff competition for

6175-632: The largest networks of railroads in the nation and hundreds of trains passed through Union Station daily. Streets adjacent to the station were lined with businesses, hotels, warehouses, retail shops and more. Wholesale grocers sold fresh goods daily before the advent of the modern grocery store. The district had many such grocers, but also wholesalers who sold dry and finished goods. The House of Crane, whose facade remains part of Circle Centre, sold cigars; Hanson, VanCamp & Co. sold hardware. In addition, South Delaware Street became known as Commission Row, where farmers brought their produce to merchants who sold

6270-530: The late-1950s, the African-American middle class had begun to leave Indiana Avenue. The Walker Manufacturing Company remained in operation in the Walker Building in 1965, but the majority of the building was shut down, removing a vital economic anchor for the area. By the early-1970s, Indiana Avenue was suffering from severe urban blight , with much of the area's building stock cleared for the development of

6365-534: The maker of the Pall Mall -branded cigarettes he had been smoking since he was around 12 or 14 years old, for false advertising: "And do you know why? Because I'm 83 years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me." Vonnegut died in Manhattan on the night of April 11, 2007, as a result of brain injuries incurred several weeks prior, from a fall at his brownstone home. His death

6460-419: The most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. No one else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelists. The book went immediately to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list . Vonnegut's earlier works had appealed strongly to many college students, and

6555-431: The narrative. The ease with which he writes is sheerly masterly, Mozartian." Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez said that the author will "rightly be remembered as a darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture ", and Dinitia Smith of The New York Times dubbed Vonnegut the "counterculture's novelist". Vonnegut has inspired numerous posthumous tributes and works. In 2008,

6650-498: The oceans are converted to ice-nine, wiping out most of humankind, John wanders the frozen surface, seeking to save himself and to make sure that his story survives. Vonnegut based the title character of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964) on an accountant he knew on Cape Cod, who specialized in clients in trouble and often had to comfort them. Eliot Rosewater, the wealthy son of a Republican senator, seeks to atone for his wartime killing of noncombatant firefighters by serving in

6745-567: The planet Tralfamadore nine years earlier, and the execution of Billy's friend Edgar Derby in the ashes of Dresden for stealing a teapot—disclosed in the story's first pages. In 1970, Vonnegut was also a correspondent in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War . Slaughterhouse-Five received generally positive reviews, with Michael Crichton writing in The New Republic : he writes about

6840-429: The previous night by overdosing on sleeping pills . Possible factors that contributed to Edith Vonnegut's suicide include the family's loss of wealth and status, Vonnegut's forthcoming deployment overseas, and her own lack of success as a writer. She was inebriated at the time and under the influence of prescription drugs. Three months after his mother's suicide, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with

6935-640: The relationship between him and his sister (Alice), met a similar fate. In The New York Times 's review of Slapstick , Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said that Vonnegut "seems to be putting less effort into [storytelling] than ever before" and that "it still seems as if he has given up storytelling after all". At times, Vonnegut was disgruntled by the personal nature of his detractors' complaints. In subsequent years, his popularity resurged as he published several satirical books, including Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990). Although he remained

7030-587: The resilience of human awareness and agency". Vonnegut's final book, a collection of essays entitled A Man Without a Country (2005), became a bestseller. Vonnegut married his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, in 1945. She later embraced Christianity, which was contrary to Vonnegut's atheistic beliefs, and after five of their six children having left home, Vonnegut said that the two were forced to find "other sorts of seemingly important work to do". The couple battled over their differing beliefs until Vonnegut moved from their Cape Cod home to New York in 1971. Vonnegut called

7125-432: The same cell block as Adolf Eichmann . Vonnegut wrote in a foreword to a later edition: "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be". Literary critic Lawrence Berkove considered the novel, like Mark Twain 's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , to illustrate the tendency for "impersonators to get carried away by their impersonations, to become what they impersonate and therefore to live in

7220-464: The short story shows "in any leveling process, what really is lost, according to Vonnegut, is beauty, grace, and wisdom". Darryl Hattenhauer, in his 1998 journal article on "Harrison Bergeron", theorized that the story was a satire on American Cold War understandings of communism and socialism. With Cat's Cradle (1963), Allen wrote, "Vonnegut hit full stride for the first time". The narrator, John, intends to write of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of

7315-573: The target of Allied forces . In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in a firebombing of the city . The offensive subsided on February 15, with about 25,000 civilians killed in the bombing. Vonnegut marveled at the level of both the destruction in Dresden and the secrecy that attended it. He had survived by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground. "It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around", Vonnegut said. "When we came up

7410-609: The time of its publication. Howard W. Campbell Jr., Vonnegut's protagonist, is an American who is raised in Germany from age 11 and joins the Nazi party during the war as a double agent for the US Office of Strategic Services , rising to the regime's highest ranks as a radio propagandist. After the war, the spy agency refuses to clear his name, and he is eventually imprisoned by the Israelis in

7505-534: The top of The New York Times Best Seller list and made Vonnegut famous. Later in his career, Vonnegut published autobiographical essays and short-story collections such as Fates Worse Than Death (1991) and A Man Without a Country (2005). He has been hailed for his darkly humorous commentary on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his work, Armageddon in Retrospect , in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories ,

7600-429: The university accepted his novel Cat's Cradle in lieu of his master's thesis. Shortly thereafter, General Electric (GE) hired Vonnegut as a technical writer, then publicist, for the company's Schenectady, New York , News Bureau, a publicity department that operated like a newsroom. His brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, focusing mainly on a silver-iodide-based cloud seeding project that quickly became

7695-455: The university without any degree (despite having completed his undergraduate education). Vonnegut failed to write a dissertation, as his ideas had all been rejected. One abandoned topic was about the Ghost Dance and Cubist movements. A later topic, rejected "unanimously", had to do with the shapes of stories. Vonnegut received his graduate degree in anthropology 25 years after he left, when

7790-452: The war, but unable to write anything that was acceptable to himself or his publishers; chapter one of Slaughterhouse-Five tells of his difficulties. Released in 1969, the novel rocketed Vonnegut to fame. It tells of the life of Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnegut was born in 1922 and survives the bombing of Dresden. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, with many of the story's climaxes—Billy's death in 1976, his kidnapping by aliens from

7885-406: The way ice-nine is described in the novel is reminiscent of how Bernard Vonnegut explained his own invention, silver-iodide cloudseeding, to Kurt. Much of the second half of the book is spent on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, where John explores a religion called Bokononism , whose holy books (excerpts from which are quoted) give the novel the moral core science does not supply. After

7980-673: The wealthiest in the city based on a fortune deriving from a successful brewery. Both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent speakers of the German language , but pervasive anti-German sentiment during and after World War I caused them to abandon German culture ; many German Americans were told at the time that this was a precondition for American patriotism . Thus, they did not teach Vonnegut to speak German or introduce him to German literature , cuisine , or traditions, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless". Vonnegut later credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper during

8075-594: The work languished for years. In 1954, the couple had a third child, Nanette. With a growing family and no financially successful novels yet, Vonnegut's short stories helped to sustain the family, though he frequently needed to find additional sources of income. In 1957, he and a partner opened a Saab automobile dealership on Cape Cod, but it went bankrupt by the end of the year. He designed a World War II–themed board game called "GHQ" (General Headquarters), but publishers did not buy it. In 1958, his sister, Alice, died of cancer two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams,

8170-505: The writer's workshop at the University of Iowa , teaching one course each term, Vonnegut was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Germany. By the time he won it, in March 1967, he was becoming a well-known writer. He used the funds to travel in Eastern Europe, including to Dresden, where he found many prominent buildings still in ruins. Vonnegut had been writing about his war experiences at Dresden ever since he returned from

8265-510: Was "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid ". She often tried in vain to sell short stories she had written to Collier's , The Saturday Evening Post , and other magazines. Vonnegut enrolled at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1936. While there, he played clarinet in the school band and became a co-editor (along with Madelyn Pugh ) for the Tuesday edition of the school newspaper, The Shortridge Echo . Vonnegut said that his tenure with

8360-427: Was annexed by the City of Indianapolis in 1922. Present-day Broad Ripple retains much of its pre-annexation character. It currently hosts an active social scene, fueled by the student population of nearby Butler University . A large number of private art galleries, bars, and independently owned restaurants line the district's streets. There are various venues for eating, drinking, entertainment, and shopping. Located on

8455-550: Was established as an economic development initiative of the Bart Peterson administration to promote public art and market the city as a cultural destination. Peterson formed the Indianapolis Cultural Development Commission whose steering committee selected the initial five cultural districts in 2003. Originally established as independent municipality on a meander of the White River , Broad Ripple

8550-549: Was going through at the time. In the mid-1960s, Vonnegut contemplated abandoning his writing career. In 1999, he wrote in The New York Times : "I had gone broke, was out of print and had a lot of kids..." But then, on the recommendation of an admirer, he received a surprise offer of a teaching job at the Iowa Writers' Workshop , employment that he likened to the rescue of a drowning man. After spending almost two years at

8645-461: Was home to a notable jazz scene from the 1920s through the 1960s, producing greats such as David Baker , Slide Hampton , Freddie Hubbard , J. J. Johnson , James Spaulding , and the Montgomery Brothers ( Buddy , Monk , and Wes ). Wes Montgomery is considered one of the most influential jazz guitarists of all time, and is credited with popularizing the "Naptown Sound." However, by

8740-477: Was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau . Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano , in 1952. It received positive reviews yet sold poorly. In the nearly 20 years that followed, several well regarded novels were published, including The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963), both of which were nominated for

8835-553: Was killed in a train accident . The Vonneguts took in three of the Adams' young sons—James, Steven , and Kurt, aged 14, 11, and 9, respectively. A fourth Adams son, Peter (2), also stayed with the Vonneguts for about a year before being given to the care of a paternal relative in Georgia. Grappling with family challenges, Vonnegut continued to write, publishing novels vastly dissimilar in terms of plot. The Sirens of Titan (1959) features

8930-586: Was reported by his wife Jill. He was 84 years old. At the time of his death, he had written fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction books. A book composed of his unpublished pieces, Armageddon in Retrospect , was compiled and posthumously published by his son Mark in 2008. When asked about the impact Vonnegut had on his work, author Josip Novakovich stated that he has "much to learn from Vonnegut—how to compress things and yet not compromise them, how to digress into history, quote from various historical accounts, and not stifle

9025-489: Was sent to Dresden, the "first fancy city [he had] ever seen". He lived in a slaughterhouse when he got to the city, and worked in a factory that made malt syrup for pregnant women. Vonnegut recalled the sirens going off whenever another city was bombed. The Germans did not expect Dresden to be bombed, Vonnegut said. "There were very few air-raid shelters in town and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories." On February 13, 1945, Dresden became

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