title: Fyre Festival

text: Like other Bahamian suppliers, the caterer who worked on the event was not paid; in 2019 a crowdfunding appeal raised over $200,000 to compensate her. In 2020 the United States Marshals Service auctioned Fyre Festival-branded merchandise that McFarland had kept for future sale, with the proceeds to go to victims.


title: Fyre Festival

text: "Fyre Fraud", directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, premiered on Hulu on January 14, 2019. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 79% approval rating with an average rating of 6.41 out of 10, based on 28 reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 12 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Fyre Festival

text: "Fyre", directed by Chris Smith, was released by Netflix on January 18, 2019. Like "Fyre Fraud", the film received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 90% rating with an average rating of 7.54 out of 10, based on 73 reviews. On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 76 out of 100, based on 26 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Fyre Festival

text: In a 2017 tweet, Seth Rogen stated that The Lonely Island comedy trio were planning a movie about a failed music festival. In 2019, Jorma Taccone confirmed that the parody film was still in process.


title: Fyre Festival

text: In 2018, American punk band Alkaline Trio – whose singer and guitarist Matt Skiba also plays in Blink-182, who were among the first acts to cancel their planned performance at the festival – released the song "Goodbye Fire Island", which was inspired by Blink-182's involvement with the festival.


title: Fyre Festival

text: In 2019, Ryan Reynolds featured Andy King and his signature quote from the Fyre documentary in an advertisement for his gin brand.


title: Fyre Festival

text: In 2019, HBO's Silicon Valley depicted RussFest, a music event in the desert with similarities to the real-life Fyre Festival. A 2016 Silicon Valley episode from season 3 depicts a lavish Hawaiian-themed party on Alcatraz by a newly formed-company that goes bankrupt.


title: Fyre Festival

text: In 2019, All Elite Wrestling released a pay-per-view parodying the failed music festival called Fyter Fest. In the Buy-In pre-show, QT Marshall parodied Andy King's Évian story while Kenny Omega was told Blink-182 wasn't coming to perform, referencing their refusal to perform due to the failure of Fyre.


title: Fyre Festival

text: In the 2020 video game, Maneater, there are collectibles in the form of "landmarks" for the player to find. One of the landmarks, titled "Fyre Sale", parodies the failed festival, with the narrator (voiced by Chris Parnell) stating, "People paid over twelve thousand dollars to sleep [in tents] and listen to Swedish DJs for an entire weekend."


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Anjelica Huston ( ; born July 8, 1951) is an American actress and director. Known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters, she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and six Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2010, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: The daughter of director John Huston and granddaughter of actor Walter Huston, she reluctantly made her big screen debut in her father's "A Walk with Love and Death" (1969). Huston moved from London to New York City, where she worked as a model throughout the 1970s. She decided to actively pursue acting in the early 1980s, and subsequently, had her breakthrough with her performance as a mobster moll in "Prizzi's Honor" (1985), also directed by her father, for which she became the third generation of her family to receive an Academy Award, when she won Best Supporting Actress, joining both John and Walter Huston in this recognition. She achieved further critical and popular recognition for playing a mistress in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989), a long-vanished wife in "Enemies, A Love Story" (1989), a con artist in "The Grifters" (1990), the Grand High Witch in "The Witches" (1990), Morticia Addams in the "Addams Family" films (1991–93), and an adventurous writer in "Manhattan Murder Mystery" (1993).


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston directed the films "Bastard Out of Carolina" (1996) and "Agnes Browne" (1999); collaborated with director Wes Anderson in "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), and "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007); and lent her voice to several animated films, mainly the "Tinker Bell" franchise (2008–2015). Her other films include ' (1995), "Ever After" (1998), "Choke" (2008), "50/50" (2011) and "" (2019). She has also acted in the miniseries "Family Pictures" (1993), "Buffalo Girls" (1995), and ' (2001), as well as the series "Huff" (2006), "Medium" (2008–2009), and "Transparent" (2015–2016). She won a Golden Globe for playing Carrie Chapman Catt in the cable film "Iron Jawed Angels" (2004), and a Gracie Award for her portrayal of Eileen Rand in "Smash" (2012–2013). She has written the memoirs "A Story Lately Told" (2013) and "Watch Me" (2014).


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston was born at 6:29 P.M. on July 8, 1951, at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, in Los Angeles, to director and actor John Huston and prima ballerina and model Enrica Soma. According to Huston, "the news of my arrival was cabled promptly to the post office in the township of Butiaba, in Western Uganda [and two] days later, a barefoot runner bearing a telegram finally arrived at Murchison Falls", where her father was filming "The African Queen" (1951). Huston's paternal grandfather was Canadian-born actor Walter Huston. Huston has Scottish, Scots-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry from her father, and Italian from her mother.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: When Huston was 2 years old, her family relocated to Ireland, where she spent much of her childhood and which she still considers home. Her parents rented what Huston called the "Courtown House" —a tall stone Victorian manor in County Kildare— for three years, before John Huston bought St. Clerans, a 110-acre estate in County Galway, in 1954. She attended school at Kylemore Abbey, and later attended Holland Park School after relocating to England.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston has a complex family because of her parents' multiple marriages and extramarital affairs. She has an older brother, Tony, and an adopted older brother, Pablo. She has a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called "Legs", and a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston. She is the aunt of actor Jack Huston. She once described herself as a "lonely child", explaining: "My brother Tony and I were never very close, neither as children nor as adults, but I was tightly bound to him. We were forced to be together because we were really quite alone. We were in the middle of the Irish countryside ... and we didn't see many other kids. We were tutored. Our father was mostly away [for filming]".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Her father's film "A Walk with Love and Death" (1969), where Huston played the 16-year-old French noblewoman Claudia opposite Assi Dayan, marked her screen debut. She had been in the running to play Juliet in director Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" (1968), but Huston withdrew her from consideration when her father decided to cast her as Claudia in "A Walk With Love and Death". Huston felt that she was wrong for the role, and has commented on the experience that her father "miscast me first time out and I think he realized that. I was ready to act, but I wasn't ready to act for him ... I was difficult, I didn't want to act with no makeup, although I'd have done it for Franco." Father and daughter had a fractious relationship on set, with the young Anjelica having difficulty learning her lines and focusing, while her father grew more impatient and angry at directing her. Critics derided her performance.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston and her mother were photographed by Arnaud De Rosnay —whom she met at age 16 in Switzerland— in October 1968 for "Vogue".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Shortly afterwards, her mother died in a car accident, and the young Huston relocated to New York City as she "sort of fled London because of the memories; I didn't really know what to do with myself, and I wasn't quite sure what my father's intentions were for me —whether he was going to put me in a convent or launch me as an actress. Well, he'd already tried to do that, and we'd had a hard time on the making of that first film we did together". Inspired by models Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, Huston decided to pursue modelling, and through photographer Richard Avedon, a friend of her parents, she met Diana Vreeland who proposed to Huston her first American "Vogue" photoshoot, which took place in Ireland. She described it as "very innovative because they presaged the whole sort of Gypsy look".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston became a frequent subject of Bob Richardson, whom she lived with until 1973. She was signed to Ford Models and in the early 1970s, worked in Europe "for a couple of years". She walked the runway for brands such as Zandra Rhodes, Yamamoto, Armani and Valentino. Along with Pat Cleveland, Pat Ast, Elsa Peretti, Karen Bjornson and Alva Chinn, she became one of fashion designer Halston's favored troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: After breaking up with Richardson, Huston met actor Jack Nicholson and moved to California, to focus on acting. While she "didn't do much there for three years", she filmed a small role in "The Last Tycoon" (1976), based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name. Bob Rafelson's remake "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981), based on the novel by James M. Cain, featured Huston as the fling of a Depression-era drifter, played by Nicholson. She briefly appeared in the drama "Frances" (1982) and the mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984) before obtaining a larger role in the science fiction film "The Ice Pirates" (1984).


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Her father cast Huston as Maerose, the daughter of a New York Mafia clan head whose love is scorned by a hit man, in the film adaptation "Prizzi's Honor" (1985), which also starred Nicholson. She was paid the SAG-AFTRA scale rate of US$14,000 for her role. When her agent called up the movie's producer to request if she could be paid more, she was told "Go to hell. Be my guest — ask for more money. We don't even want her in this movie." Huston, who was not only John Huston's daughter but also Jack Nicholson's girlfriend at the time, wrote in her 2014 memoir "Watch Me" that she later overheard a production worker saying: "Her father is the director, her boyfriend's the star, and she has no talent." Nevertheless, Huston garnered positive notices for her performance. "The New York Times" described her part as a "wonderful character, far darker and more complex than is indicated by her self-deprecating wisecracks ("I'm a family scandal. I gotta reputation to keep up"). She's a riveting presence and if Miss Huston, the daughter of the director, doesn't get an Oscar nomination for this performance, I'll be very surprised." Indeed, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the third generation of her family to win an Oscar.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston starred opposite Michael Jackson in the 17-minute US$30 million 3D film "Captain EO", written by George Lucas and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which ran from 1986 at Disneyland and Epcot, and later at Tokyo Disneyland and Euro Disneyland. Coppola next cast her as the girlfriend of an army platoon sergeant in "Gardens of Stone" (1987), a film that dealt with the effect of the Vietnam War on the United States homefront. Film critic Roger Ebert praised her onscreen chemistry with co-star James Caan, remarking that "the romance between Caan and Huston is one of the great adult love stories in recent movies".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston starred in her father's last film, 1987's "The Dead", as the wife of an academic. According to her, her father remained a filmmaking virtuoso despite his ill health: "He was so sick, but he could literally do it with his eyes closed. He knew when we were going to get a take way long before the camera rolled. I mean the timing was so precise that he could tell everything, exactly how it was going to go." The pressures of filming and watching her father's health deteriorate had an adverse effect on Anjelica Huston's own health, developing Epstein-Barr syndrome during production. John died nearly four months before the film's release date, upon which it received two nominations at the 60th Academy Awards. For her performance, she won as Best Supporting Female at the 3rd Independent Spirit Awards.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 1988, Huston played the love interest of an engaging, multi-talented, middle-class Yale University graduate in "Mr. North", which was more of a family project, directed by half-brother Danny Huston, and made a cameo appearance in the film adaptation "A Handful of Dust". Despite her limited screen time, Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" praised her portrayal in the latter as the "single most stunning performance" but called the film "both too literal and devoid of real point."


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a flight attendant having an affair with a respected family guy in Woody Allen's dramedy "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989). The drama "Enemies, A Love Story", also released in 1989, featured her as the long-vanished wife of a Holocaust survivor. In a positive review for the film, Roger Ebert asserted: "Parts, especially the scenes with Huston, are heartwarming in a strange way, because they show one human being accepting the weaknesses of another". For her role, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In "The Witches" (1990), based on the 1983 book of the same name by Roald Dahl, Huston starred as the Grand High Witch, the all-powerful leader of the world's witches. She and the costume designer Marit Allen originally brought a different dress for the role, but the director Nicolas Roeg rejected it as "not sexy". Huston recalled: "That was the first time I'd imagined that this horrible creature in a children's movie should have sex appeal. It simply had not occurred to me. But of course, Nic was absolutely right. His vision was diabolical and dark and brilliantly funny. If a witch was to be at the center of this plot, she needed to be sexy to hold the eye." The character's monstrous version was prepared by Jim Henson's Creature Shop and "took over six hours to apply and almost as much time to remove at the end of the day." Despite a lackluster box office response, the film was applauded by critics and has obtained a cult following over the years; it has also remained one of Huston's favorite roles.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston next portrayed a veteran con artist in the neo-noir thriller "The Grifters" (also 1990). Director Stephen Frears first contacted her about playing Lilly in 1989 while she was filming "Crimes and Misdemeanors", but after reading the script, she was unsure. Although she was "transfixed" by the story and the character, the script alarmed her with its explicitness. A few months later, Frears contacted Huston again to see if she was still interested. Still wavering, Huston's talent agent Sue Mengers told her bluntly "Anjelica, if Stephen Frears tells you he wants you to shit in the corner, then that's what you must do." The next day Huston auditioned for the role in front of Frears at the Chateau Marmont. Frears' initial reluctance to cast Huston because she looked too much like "a lady", was resolved with the decision to cheapen her look with a bleached blond wig and "vulgar clothes." To research her part, she studied women dealers at card parlors in Los Angeles County, California. Her performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston obtained the part of Morticia Addams, the stern, aloof matriarch of the titular family, in "The Addams Family" (1991). She based aspects of her performance on her friend Jerry Hall to give the character more warmth, and in her 2014 memoir "Watch Me", she described the filming as "long and arduous." It was decided that the character of Morticia should have eyes which slanted upwards at the sides, an effect which was achieved by attaching an elastic strap to the back of Huston's head via fabric tabs glued at her temples, which pulled the corners of her eyes upwards. The bands caused extended discomfort to Huston, and would snap at the slightest turn of Huston's head, causing a grueling repair time. Eventually, she learned to pivot and turn on her feet without moving her upper body or head. "The Addams Family" was a commercial success, grossing over US$191 million worldwide, and prompted a sequel, "Addams Family Values" (1993). For both installments, Huston garnered Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Following a small role in the satire "The Player" (1992), Huston reunited with Woody Allen on "Manhattan Murder Mystery", in which she played the friend of a married couple investigating the death of their neighbor's wife, and also portrayed a mother struggling to parent her autistic child, in the ABC miniseries "Family Pictures". She received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for "Manhattan Murder Mystery", and a nomination for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film at the 51st Golden Globe Awards for "Family Pictures". In 1995, Huston portrayed a Cuban refuge attempting to stay in America in the comedy ' and the former wife of a tormented man (played by Jack Nicholson) in Sean Penn's sophomore directorial effort, the drama '. Her performance in the latter was praised, and she received nominations for Best Supporting Actress from the Hollywood Foreign Press and the Screen Actors Guild. Based on the 1990 novel of the same name, the CBS miniseries "Buffalo Girls" —in which she starred as frontierswoman Calamity Jane, opposite Melanie Griffith and Reba McEntire— earned Huston an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: After contemplating the idea of following in her father's footsteps, Huston started to put out "discreet feelers" and pursue material in Hollywood she felt attracted to direct. The studios' overall response was "swift and positive, with the usual blinders", according to Huston. "What they offered me had invariably something to do with my father. I didn't want to do a sequel to "Prizzi's Honor". "Prizzi" belongs to him. I wanted to do something that, succeed or fail, would be my own." She found it in the drama "Bastard Out of Carolina", based on a novel by Dorothy Allison, about an impoverished girl who endures physical and sexual abuse. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, and debuted as a television film on Showtime. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or a Special.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In "Ever After: A Cinderella Story" (1998), a modern, post-feminist interpretation of the Cinderella story alongside Drew Barrymore and Melanie Lynskey, Huston appeared as Baroness Rodmilla De Ghent, the new wife of Auguste de Barbarac, a wealthy widower. The film was acclaimed by critics and made a respectable US$98 million globally. Lisa Schwarzbaum from "Entertainment Weekly" praised her performance as a cruel stepmother: "Huston does a lot of eye narrowing and eyebrow raising while toddling around in an extraordinary selection of extreme headgear, accompanied by her two less-than-self-actualized daughters—the snooty, social-climbing, nasty Marguerite, and the dim, lumpy, secretly nice Jacqueline. "Nothing is final until you're dead", Mama instructs her girls at the dinner table, "and even then I'm sure God negotiates."


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 1998, Huston played a woman romantically involved with a compulsive gambler in the neo-noir "Phoenix", with Ray Liotta, as well as the mother of a troubled man in Vincent Gallo's independent dramedy "Buffalo '66", which starred Gallo as her son and reunited her with Christina Ricci. The director had difficulties working with his cast and crew, and reportedly did not get along with Huston on set. He claimed she caused the film to be turned down by the Cannes Film Festival.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Her next directorial effort, the Irish dramedy "Agnes Browne" (1999) —in which she also starred as the title character— was released to mixed reviews. "The New York Times" reviewer Stephen Holden found it "nothing more than a series of homey skits loosely woven into a portrait of a working-class saint." Nevertheless, the film won the Youth Jury Award at the 1999 San Sebastián International Film Festival and received a Grand Prix nomination at the Ghent International Film Festival the same year. Huston appeared as an affluent English woman, alongside James Fox, Nick Nolte, Kate Beckinsale, and Uma Thurman, in James Ivory's period drama "The Golden Bowl" (2000), based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), her first collaboration with director Wes Anderson, Huston took on the role the soft-spoken matriarch of an estranged family of former child prodigies, alongside Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson. During production, Anderson gave Huston photographs of his mother who, like Etheline, was an archaeologist. Huston said, "Wes would send pictures of his mother in aviator jackets or on archaeological digs, and he very specifically wanted me to wear a certain locket. Finally, I asked him, 'Wes, am I playing your mother?'" Anderson replied this was not the case. Anderson and Huston had a tense relationship with Hackman, who was not always amiable on set. On the first day Hackman and Huston appeared in a scene together, Huston had to slap him, and later said the slap was real and "I hit him a really good one. I saw the imprint of my hand on his cheek and I thought, he's going to kill me." During young Margot's birthday scene in the opening scenes, Huston's hair caught fire from a birthday candle. Anderson credited Kumar Pallana with extinguishing the blaze before Huston was seriously injured. A positive critical response greeted "The Royal Tenenbaums", which made US$71.4 million worldwide.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 2001, Huston starred as Viviane, Lady of the Lake, in the TNT miniseries "The Mists of Avalon", based on the 1983 novel of the same title by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The production was watched by more than 30 million "unduplicated viewers" during its premiere, making it the highest-rated original movie of the summer on basic cable, and earned Huston nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2002, she portrayed the doctor of an ex-FBI agent (Clint Eastwood) chasing a sadistic killer (Jeff Daniels) in the thriller "Blood Work", loosely based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly, as well as the longtime client of a man who runs an exclusive escort service in George Hickenlooper's black comedy "The Man from Elysian Fields", with Andy Garcia and Mick Jagger. Despite both films' lukewarm critical and commercial responses, Todd McCarthy of "Variety" felt that her character in "Elysian Fields" was "played with invigorating relish" by the actress, while Roger Ebert hailed the film as "one of the best films" of the year.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: "Daddy Day Care" (2003), co-starring Eddie Murphy, featured Huston as the ruthless head of an expensive and over-academic preschool. "Slant", in a critical review of the film, noted that Huston "brings embarrassing conviction to the role of stuffy day care proprietress ... "Daddy Day Care" seems to exist solely to sedate a theater-going public's offspring. And while the film's sense of sobriety should do the job, don't expect "The Witches"". Nevertheless, the release was a commercial success, grossing over US$160 million worldwide.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 2004, Huston took on the role of women's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt in the HBO film "Iron Jawed Angels", with Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor and Julia Ormond. For her role, she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie, and won the Golden Globe and the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. In "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), her second film with Wes Anderson, Huston portrayed the estranged wife of an eccentric oceanographer. Roger Ebert observed that the actress "seems privately amused, which is so much more intriguing than seeming publicly amused", but noted that he "can't recommend [the film], but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it". As a member of the cast, she garnered nominations for Best Ensemble from the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Critics' Choice Movie Awards.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston filmed her third directorial effort, the Hallmark Channel drama "Riding the Bus with My Sister" (2005), in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It was adapted from the 2002 memoir by Rachel Simon, and starred Rosie O’Donnell and Andie MacDowell. Unlike the book, the film received negative reviews from critics, who generally criticised the film's "egregious" portrayal of Down's Syndrome. However, she said: "I think the movie comes from a pretty direct point of view".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 2006, Huston was featured as an art teacher in the dramedy "Art School Confidential", the president of the United States in the made-for-CBS thriller "", a competing business owner in the comedy "Material Girls", a vanishing con artist in the revisionist Western "Seraphim Falls", and an ebullient patroness in the romantic drama "These Foolish Things". Excluding "Seraphim Falls", none of the aforementioned films performed well with critics nor audiences. This changed with her third Wes Anderson film, "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007), in which Huston starred as the mother of three brothers who becomes a nun and moves to a Christian convent in the Himalayas. Peter Travers, for "Rolling Stone" found her to be a "dynamite" in the film, which he deemed "the fullest blossoming yet of Anderson's talents as a total filmmaker".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: "Choke" (2008), a black comedy directed by Clark Gregg and based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, featured Huston as the hospitalized mother of a sex addict in Colonial America. Reviews for the film were mixed, but "Empire" critic Philip Wilding wrote: "Huston is magnetic as [the] ailing mother Ida, both as a fading invalid or vibrant and deranged in flashback. She is the hook on which her son hangs his hopes and anxieties". Meanwhile, Roger Ebert felt that her role "resembled the criminal character" she played in "The Grifters" (1990). In 2008, Huston also voiced Queen Clarion in "Tinker Bell", which was released on DVD to outstanding commercial results. She reprised the role in four sequels, a television special and a short film, all released between 2009 and 2015.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston took on significant roles in three 2011 live-action films. The first was that of Miss Battle-Axe, a strict, sadistic schoolteacher who talks with a Scottish accent, in the 3D children's musical adventure comedy "", directed by Nick Moore. She found her character to be "irresistible", explaining to "The Guardian": "It's very British material to me, and I've always been strangely attracted to these extreme characters". The film was panned by critics but was a commercial success in the UK. Her second performance of 2011 was that of a mother of a man with a malignant cancerous tumor in the drama "50/50", directed by Jonathan Levine and co-starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. The film was a critical and commercial darling upon its release. David Schmader, writing in the "Stranger", praised the "stellar" cast and felt that Huston "roars back to prominence with a twisty performance as Adam's barely contained mess of a mom". The unsuccessful "The Big Year", Huston's last live-action film of 2011, featured her as an "avid birder", who "captains ocean-going expeditions".


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston starred in the NBC television series "Smash" (2012–2013), as Broadway producer Eileen Rand. After her husband's death in 2008, Huston credited "Smash" —her first regular venture into series television— with coming at a "vital time" and finally filling a void in her life. The series aired for two seasons and was the subject of critical acclaim. Huston subsequently appeared in the second and third seasons of the Amazon Video series "Transparent", as Vic, a cisgender woman who forms a connection with Maura, a retired college professor of political science at UCLA. In the horror comedy "The Cleanse" (2016), Huston played the director of a secretive self-help program, alongside Johnny Galecki, Anna Friel and Oliver Platt.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 2017, Huston narrated the black comedy "Thirst Street", and starred with Bill Pullman as siblings feuding over possession of their father's estate in the comedy "Trouble". John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the latter film, on which Huston was an executive producer, writing that "the cast goes a long way here, turning "Trouble" at times into the kind of small-town hangout film that will please fest auds." Huston played the Director, a heavily bejeweled Russian ballet instructor, and what "Vulture" described as a "small but memorable role", in "" (2019), which made US$326 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston was a close friend of actor Gregory Peck, whom her father directed in "Moby Dick" (1956). The two first met on the set of the film when she was four years old while Peck was in costume as Captain Ahab. Decades later, after her father's death, Huston reunited with Peck and maintained a friendship that lasted until his death.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston was an inadvertent witness in the Roman Polanski sexual abuse case in March 1977, when she encountered Polanski and his 13-year old victim by chance in the home of her boyfriend Jack Nicholson. When authorities searched the house in connection to the accusations against Polanski, Huston was arrested for cocaine possession, but she was never charged because the search and seizure of her handbag had been illegal. Although she had witnessed no abuse, Huston was subsequently embroiled in the publicity surrounding Polanski's trial as a rumored witness for the prosecution, though she was not ultimately called.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 1969, at age 17, Huston began dating photographer Bob Richardson, then 41; they lived together from that year until March 1973. A month later, she met Jack Nicholson at his 36th birthday party, and the pair started an on-again, off-again relationship that lasted until 1990, when the media reported he had fathered a child with Rebecca Broussard. During a break from Nicholson in the late 1970s, Huston was involved with Ryan O'Neal, who allegedly assaulted her.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: On May 23, 1992, Huston married sculptor Robert Graham, following a courtship of almost two years. The couple lived in a three-story house, designed by Graham, at 69 Windward Avenue in Venice, California, until his death on December 27, 2008. She does not have any children, and stated in a Lifetime "Intimate Portrait" that she's tried to have a baby on several occasions.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In her memoirs, Huston confirmed romances with James Fox, David Bailey and Prince Albert of Monaco. She also acknowledged an affair during the shooting of "" (1998), with a married man known simply as Dolyn in the book.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston led a letter campaign organized by the U.S. Campaign for Burma and Human Rights Action Center in November 2007. The letter, signed by over twenty five high-profile individuals from the entertainment business, was addressed to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and urged him to "personally intervene" to secure the release of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: Huston currently sits on the advisory council of Save the Chimps, the largest chimp sanctuary and rescue in history. Huston has narrated the educational video Save the Chimps History exposing the cruelty of chimpanzee abuse by laboratories, entertainment and the NASA program Monkeys and apes in space, which sent primates into space often resulting in death by impact and explosion.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In 1995, Huston donated $500 to the Irish republican political party Sinn Féin. She has also attended Sinn Féin events and supported Martin McGuinness in his bid for the Presidency of Ireland in 2011.


title: Anjelica Huston

text: In December 2012, Huston recorded a public service announcement for PETA urging her colleagues in Hollywood to refrain from using great apes in television, films, and advertisements. The animal rights organization subsequently named her their "Person of the Year 2012". In 2018, she donated her fur coats to the homeless and animal shelters. She was the executive producer for "Breaking the Chain", a 2020 documentary about the PETA fieldworkers who try to help neglected animals.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir is a region administered by India as a union territory and consists of the southern portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947, and between India and China since 1962. The Line of Control separates Jammu and Kashmir from the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan in the west and north. It lies to the north of the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab and to the west of Ladakh, which is also subject to the dispute as a part of Kashmir, and administered by India as a union territory.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Provisions for the formation of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir were contained within the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which was passed by both houses of the Parliament of India in August 2019. The act re-constituted the former state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories, one being Jammu and Kashmir and the other being Ladakh, with effect from 31 October 2019.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir is named after the two regions it encompasses the Jammu region and the Kashmir Valley.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Government of Pakistan and Pakistani sources refer to Jammu and Kashmir as a part of "Indian-occupied Kashmir" ("IOK") or "Indian-held Kashmir" (IHK). The Government of India and Indian sources in turn, call the territory under Pakistan control "Pakistan-occupied Kashmir" ("POK") or "Pakistan-held Kashmir" ("PHK").


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The state of Jammu and Kashmir was accorded special status by Article 370 of the Constitution of India. In contrast to other states of India, Jammu and Kashmir had its own constitution, flag, and administrative autonomy. Indian citizens from other states were not allowed to purchase land or property in Jammu and Kashmir.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir had three distinct areas: Hindu-majority Jammu region, Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, and Buddhist-dominated Ladakh. Unrest and violence persisted in the Kashmiri Valley and, following a disputed state election in 1987, an insurgency persisted in protest over autonomy and rights.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in the 2014 Indian general election and five years later included in their 2019 election manifesto the revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, in order to bring Jammu and Kashmir to equal status with other states.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: A resolution to repeal Article 370 was passed by both the houses of the Parliament of India in August 2019. At the same time, a reorganisation act was also passed, which would reconstitute the state into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The reorganisation took effect from 31 October 2019.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: In September 2019, nearly 4,000 people, including two former Chief Ministers and hundreds of other politicians, were arrested by the Indian authorities in Kashmir; the state was put under a lockdown and communication and internet services were suspended.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir is home to several valleys such as the Kashmir Valley, Tawi Valley, Chenab Valley, Poonch Valley, Sind Valley, and Lidder Valley. The Kashmir valley is wide and in area. The Himalayas divide the Kashmir valley from the Tibetan plateau while the Pir Panjal range, which encloses the valley from the west and the south, separates it from the Punjab Plain of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Along the northeastern flank of the Valley runs the main range of the Himalayas. This valley has an average height of above sea-level, but the surrounding Pir Panjal range has an average elevation of . The Jhelum River is the major Himalayan river which flows through the Kashmir valley. The southern Jammu region is mostly mountainous, with the Shivaliks, the middle and the great Himalayas running parallel to each other in a southeast-northwest direction. A narrow southwestern strip constitutes fertile plains. The Chenab, Tawi and Ravi are important rivers flowing through the Jammu region.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The climate of Jammu and Kashmir varies with altitude and across regions. Southern and southwestern areas have a sub tropical climate, with hot summers and cool winters. This region receives most of its rainfall during the monsoon season. In the east and north, summers are usually pleasant. The effect of the monsoon diminishes in areas lying to the leeward side of the Pir Panjal, such as the Kashmir valley, and much of the rainfall happens in the spring season due to western disturbances. Winters are cold, with temperatures reaching sub-zero levels. Snowfall is common in the valley and the mountain areas.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir consists of two divisions: Jammu Division and Kashmir Division, and is further divided into 20 districts.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir has two major airports at the two capitals of the territory: Jammu Airport at Jammu and Sheikh ul Alam Airport at Srinagar, which is also the only international airport in the territory. These airports have regular flights to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh and other major cities of the country.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The under-construction Jammu-Baramulla line of the Northern Railways is the only railway line in the territory. Once complete, the line will connect the two regions of Jammu and Kashmir and will also provide a rail link to the Kashmir valley from other parts of the country.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, a segment of the NH44, is the main highway in the territory connecting the two capitals by road. National Highways 1, 144, 144A, 444, 501, 701 and 701A are the other NHs in the territory.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: As per the 2011 census, Jammu and Kashmir has a total population of 12,267,013. The sex ratio is 889 females per 1000 males. Around 924,485 (7.54%) of the population is scheduled caste and 1,275,106 (10.39%) belong to the scheduled tribes, mainly Gujjar, Bakerwal, and Gaddi. The SCs are mostly concentrated in the Jammu region.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Kashmir Division is predominantly Muslim (96.41%) with a small Hindu (2.45%) and Sikh (0.81%) population. Only 808 Kashmiri Hindu Pandit families remain in the valley after their forced displacement by Islamic militants. Shias are mostly concentrated in the Budgam district, where they form about 30-40% of the population.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Jammu Division is predominantly Hindu (66%) with a significant Muslim population (30%). The Muslims form a majority in the Rajouri (63%), Poonch (90%), Doda (54%), Kishtwar (58%) and Ramban (71%) districts of Jammu, while the Hindus form a majority in Kathua (88%), Samba (86%), Jammu (84%) and Udhampur (88%) districts. Reasi district has an almost equal number of Hindus and Muslims.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Kashmiri is the most-spoken language, is mainly spoken in the Kashmir Valley and in the upper reaches of the Chenab Valley, with a sizeable number of speakers in Jammu City. Dogri, related to Punjabi and Pahari, is spoken throughout the plains areas of Jammu division, as well as in parts of the hills. The hill people speak several languages. In the Pir Panjal Range, bordering Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the main language is Pahari-Pothwari, a western variety of Punjabi, as well as Gojri, the language of the Gujjar tribe. In the eastern hills of Jammu division are spoken various Western Pahari languages such as Siraji and Bhaderwahi, which merge with the dialects of western Himachal Pradesh. Urdu is also widely understood and spoken, particularly in the Kashmir region where it acts as the lingua franca alongside Kashmiri and also serves as a medium of instruction along with English, while Hindi is taught and understood in the southern areas of Jammu.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: According to the 2011 census, the literacy rate in Jammu and Kashmir was 67.17%, male literacy was 75%, while female literacy was at 56.43%.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Kashmir University located in Srinagar is the main university in the territory. Other universities include Jammu University, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Islamic University of Science & Technology, etc. Major institutions of higher education are NIT Srinagar, IIT Jammu, IIM Jammu, NIFT Srinagar and IHM Srinagar. Medical colleges include SKIMS, and the Government Medical College in Srinagar and AIIMS Vijaypur.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir is administered under the provisions of of the Constitution of India. Article 239A, originally formulated for the union territory of Puduchery, will also be applicable to Jammu and Kashmir.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: A Council of Ministers led by a Chief Minister is appointed by the Lieutenant Governor from the membership of the legislative assembly. Their role is to advise the Lieutenant Governor in the exercise of functions in matters under the jurisdiction of the legislative assembly. In other matters, the Lieutenant Governor is empowered to act in his own capacity.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The legislative branch of government is a unicameral legislative assembly, whose tenure is five years. The legislative assembly may make laws for any of the matters in the State List of the Constitution of India except "public order" and "police", which will remain the preserve of the central Government of India. The Lieutenant Governor also has the power to promulgate ordinances which have the same force as the acts of the legislative assembly.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Elections for the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly are to be held following the implementation of new constituency boundaries which is expected to be completed in 2021.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The union territory is under the jurisdiction of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, which also serves as the high court for Ladakh. Police services are provided by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The main political parties active in the region are the Bharatiya Janata Party (State President: Ravinder Raina), the Indian National Congress (State President: Ghulam Ahmad Mir), the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (President: Farooq Abdullah) and the Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party (President: Mehbooba Mufti). Other parties with a presence in the region include the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, the Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference, the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (President: Altaf Bukhari), the Jammu and Kashmir Workers Party (President: Mir Junaid) and Ikkjutt Jammu (President: Ankur Sharma).


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir sends five members (MPs) to the lower house of the Indian parliament (the Lok Sabha) and four members to the upper house (the Rajya Sabha).


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir's economy is primarily services-based and agriculture-oriented. The gross domestic product of Jammu and Kashmir was estimated at in 2020–21. Along with horticulture and agriculture, tourism is an important industry for Jammu and Kashmir, accounting for about 7% to its economy.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Kashmir Valley is known for its sericulture and cold-water fisheries. Wood from Kashmir is used to make high-quality cricket bats, popularly known as Kashmir Willow. Major agricultural exports from Jammu and Kashmir include apples, pears, cherries, plums, saffron and walnuts. The traditional Kashmiri handicrafts industry employs a large workforce of around 340 thousand artisans and has potential for producing export goods. Small-scale cottage industries include carpet weaving, silks, shawls, basketry, pottery, copper and silverware, papier-mâché and walnut wood. The horticulture sector is the next biggest source of income in the economy. The temperature of Jammu and Kashmir is also suited to floriculture and can support various species of flora.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Over 500 mineral blocks are present in Jammu and Kashmir, 261 of which are in the Kashmir Division alone. Kishtwar is known as the 'land of sapphire and saffron'. Resources such as timber, herbs and medicinal shrubs, edibles such as mushroom, chilgoza, black zeera, and saffron are available in the forests. The sapphire reserve mines of Machail, Paddar are a source of mineral wealth. Jammu and Kashmir is the only administrative unit in India with a large amount of borax and sapphire resources. It possesses 36 percent of the graphite, 21 percent marble and 14 percent of gypsum present in India. Coal, limestone and magnesite are found scattered among the different districts of the union territory.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Other minerals of significance that occur are bauxite, ball clay and china clay in Udhampur; bentonite in Jammu; diaspore in Rajouri and Udhampur; graphite in Baramulla; lignite and marble in Kupwara; quartz and silica sand in Anantnag, Doda and Udhampur; and quartzite in Anantnag district. In addition, the Department of Geology and Mining has determined the presence of minerals such as magnetite, dolomite, fuel mineral, decorative building stones, slate, and gemstones. All are materials with commercial and industrial uses in many products and factories.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: In the fiscal year 2019–20, total exports from Jammu and Kashmir amounted to . The Jammu & Kashmir Bank, which is listed as a NIFTY 500 conglomerate, is based in the union territory.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir is one of the largest recipients of grants from the central government annually. According to the Sustainable Development Goals Index 2021, 10.35 percent of the population of Jammu and Kashmir live below the national poverty line, the third-highest among union territories in the country.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regulates all major aspects pertaining to media and telecommunications in Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, the Jammu and Kashmir administration released their media policy in 2020 which enabled government officers to sanction journalists and media organisations for disseminating "fake news," and is valid for the next five years. The policy attracted criticism for allegedly reducing people to "passive recipients of the information the government intends to disseminate." The Press Council of India (PCI) expressed concern over the provisions of fake news in the policy, as it "interferes with the free functioning of the press."


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Major periodicals in Jammu and Kashmir include "Greater Kashmir", "Rising Kashmir", "Kashmir Times", "Daily Excelsior", "Elite Kashmir" and "Kashmir Monitor". DD Kashir is the state-owned television broadcaster. Popular private television channels are ETV Urdu and Gulistan News. In association with All India Radio, DD Kashir has established high power transmitters along the India–Pakistan border. Radio Sharda, a worldwide community radio service for Kashmiri Pandits, was started by Ramesh Hangloo. FM Tadka 95.0, BIG FM 92.7, Radio Mirchi and Red FM 93.5 are private FM radio stations.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Internet shutdowns are frequent in Jammu and Kashmir. As of February 2021, the region had 300 internet shutdowns since 2012. In 2020 alone, this number was 115, the highest of any year.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Sports tournaments in Jammu and Kashmir are organised by both the Indian army and police, as well as mainstream political parties and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. Sportspersons who represent India in tournaments face stigmatisation from separatists.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir has 18 stadiums, 23 training centres, three indoor sports complexes and 42 government-maintained playing fields. Srinagar is home to the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium, a stadium where international cricket matches have been played. The Maulana Azad Stadium in Jammu is one of the home venues for the Jammu and Kashmir cricket team. The Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar, named after Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, hosts football matches.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Institutions such as the Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports provides mountaineering, skiing and adventure courses. The Royal Springs Golf Course, Srinagar, located on the banks of Dal lake, is considered one of the best golf courses in India. Jammu and Kashmir was also host to the first Khelo India Winter Games, held in 2020 in Gulmarg. Jammu and Kashmir came first with the most gold medals at 26, followed by the Indian Army team with 8 gold medals. The second edition of the winter games were also held in Gulmarg in 2021, with Jammu and Kashmir coming first again.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Some major tourist attractions in Jammu and Kashmir are Srinagar, the Mughal Gardens, Gulmarg, Pahalgam, Patnitop and Jammu. Every year, thousands of Hindu pilgrims visit holy shrines of Vaishno Devi and Amarnath which has had significant impact on the state's economy.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: The Kashmir valley is one of the top tourist destinations in India. Gulmarg, one of the most popular ski resort destinations in India, is also home to the world's highest green golf course. The decrease in violence in the state has boosted the state's economy, specifically tourism.


title: Jammu and Kashmir (union territory)

text: Jammu and Kashmir is also famous for its scenic beauty, flower gardens, apple farms and more. It attracts tourists for its unique handicrafts and the world-famous Kashmiri Shawls.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the US Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) 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 was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He adopted his nephews after his sister died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago, while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut published his first novel, "Player Piano", in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful at the time. In the nearly 20 years that followed, he published several novels that were well regarded, two of which ("The Sirens of Titan" [1959] and "Cat's Cradle" [1963]) were nominated for the Hugo Award for best SF or fantasy novel of the year. He published a short-story collection titled "Welcome to the Monkey House" in 1968. His breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969). The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, "Slaughterhouse-Five" went to the top of "The New York Times" Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses around the country, and received many awards and honors.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essay and short-story collections, such as "Fates Worse Than Death" (1991) and "A Man Without a Country" (2005). After his death, he was hailed as one of the most important contemporary writers and a dark humor commentator on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his unpublished works, titled "Armageddon in Retrospect", in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published "Complete Stories", a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction, including five previously unpublished stories. "Complete Stories" was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and his wife Edith (née Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard (born 1914) and Alice (born 1917). He had descended from German immigrants who settled in the United States in the mid-19th century; his paternal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut, settled in Indianapolis and founded 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 high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among the wealthiest in the city with their fortune deriving from ownership of a successful brewery.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent German speakers, but the ill feeling toward Germany during and after World War I caused them to abandon German culture in order to show their American patriotism. Thus, they did not teach Vonnegut to speak German or introduce him to German literature and traditions, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless". Vonnegut later credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper during the first decade of his life, for raising him and giving him values; he said that she "gave [him] decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to [him]", and "was as great an influence on [him] as anybody". He described her as "humane and wise" and added that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts had once enjoyed were destroyed in a matter of years. The Liebers' brewery was closed 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 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 was "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid". She unsuccessfully tried to sell short stories she had written to "Collier's", "The Saturday Evening Post", and other magazines.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: After graduating from Shortridge in 1940, Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He wanted to study the humanities or become 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. 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 United States Army. Instead of waiting to be drafted, he enlisted in 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).


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In early 1944, the ASTP was canceled due to the Army's need for soldiers to support 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: On May 14, 1944, Vonnegut returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend to discover that his mother had committed suicide 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Three months after his mother's suicide, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with the 106th Infantry Division. In December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the final German offensive of the war. During the battle, the 106th Infantry Division, which had only recently reached the front and was assigned to a "quiet" sector due to its inexperience, was overrun by advancing German armored forces. Over 500 members of the division were killed, and over 6,000 were captured.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: On February 13, 1945, Dresden became the target of Allied forces. In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in an extermination firebombing of the city. The offensive subsided on February 15, with at least 35,000 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 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: The American POWs were evacuated on foot to the border of Saxony and Czechoslovakia after US General George S. Patton captured Leipzig. With the captives abandoned by their guards, Vonnegut reached a prisoner-of-war repatriation camp in Le Havre, France, before the end of May 1945, with the aid of the Soviets. He returned to the United States and continued to serve in the Army, 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, a Purple Heart for frost-bite." He was discharged from the US Army and returned to Indianapolis.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 relocated 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 a master's degree. There, he studied under anthropologist Robert Redfield, his "most famous professor". He augmented his income by working as a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago at night. Jane 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 the university without any degree (despite having completed his undergraduate education) when his master's thesis on the Ghost Dance religious movement was unanimously rejected by the department.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Shortly thereafter, General Electric (GE) hired Vonnegut as a technical writer, then publicist, for the company's Schenectady, New York, research laboratory. Although his work required a college degree, Vonnegut was hired after claiming to hold a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, contributing significantly to an iodine-based cloud seeding project.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In 1949, Kurt and Jane had 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. Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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. He satirizes 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 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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, 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: "The New York Times" writer and critic Granville Hicks gave "Player Piano" 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 repute of a science fiction writer, 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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 as well. In 1957, he and a partner opened a Saab automobile dealership on Cape Cod, but it went bankrupt by the end of the year.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In 1958, his sister, Alice, died of cancer two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Grappling with family challenges, Vonnegut continued to write, publishing novels vastly dissimilar in terms of plot. "The Sirens of Titan" (1959) features a Martian invasion of Earth, as experienced by a bored billionaire Malachi Constant. He meets Winston Rumfoord, an aristocratic space traveler, who is virtually omniscient but stuck in a time warp that allows 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 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Rumfoord, who 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: "Mother Night", published in 1961, received little attention at 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 the same cell block as Adolf Eichmann and later commits suicide. 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 a world of illusion".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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 and sinks, all of the surrounding water eventually becomes ice-nine. 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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 was going through at the time.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: After spending almost two years at 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. At the time of the bombing, Vonnegut had not appreciated the sheer scale of destruction in Dresden; his enlightenment came only slowly as information dribbled out, and based on early figures, he came to believe that 135,000 had died there.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut had been writing about his war experiences at Dresden ever since he returned from the war, but had never been able to write anything acceptable to himself or his publishers—chapter 1 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 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, he was also a correspondent in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: "Slaughterhouse-Five" received generally positive reviews, with Michael Crichton writing in "The New Republic":


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: After "Slaughterhouse-Five" was published, Vonnegut embraced the fame and financial security that attended its release. He was hailed as a hero of 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 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 the author said was "flawless".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Meanwhile, Vonnegut's personal life was disintegrating. His wife Jane had embraced Christianity, which was contrary to Vonnegut's atheistic beliefs, and with 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 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 marriage, he 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 the drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut's difficulties materialized in numerous ways; most distinctly though, was the painfully slow progress he was making on his next novel, the darkly comical "Breakfast of Champions". In 1971, Vonnegut 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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. 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 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In a 2006 "Rolling Stone" interview, Vonnegut sardonically stated that he would sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, 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."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut died in the Manhattan borough of New York City 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 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.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: 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 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".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut has inspired numerous posthumous tributes and works. In 2008, 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", the book portrays Vonnegut as distant, cruel and nasty. "Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes", said "The Daily Beast"s Wendy Smith. "Towards the end he was very feeble, very depressed and almost morose", said Jerome Klinkowitz of the University of Northern Iowa, who has examined Vonnegut in depth.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut's works have evoked ire on several occasions. His most prominent novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five", has been objected to or removed at various institutions in at least 18 instances. In the case of "Island Trees School District v. Pico", the United States Supreme Court ruled that a school district's ban on "Slaughterhouse-Five"—which the board had called "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy"—and eight other novels was unconstitutional. When a school board in Republic, Missouri, decided to withdraw Vonnegut's novel from its libraries, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library offered a free copy to all the students of the district.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Tally, writing in 2013, suggests that Vonnegut has only recently become the subject of serious study rather than fan adulation, and much is yet to be written about him. "The time for scholars to say 'Here's why Vonnegut is worth reading' has definitively ended, thank goodness. We know he's worth reading. Now tell us things we don't know." Todd F. Davis notes that Vonnegut's work is kept alive by his loyal readers, who have "significant influence as they continue to purchase Vonnegut's work, passing it on to subsequent generations and keeping his entire canon in print—an impressive list of more than twenty books that [Dell Publishing] has continued to refurbish and hawk with new cover designs." Donald E. Morse notes that Vonnegut "is now firmly, if somewhat controversially, ensconced in the American and world literary canon as well as in high school, college and graduate curricula". Tally writes of Vonnegut's work:


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Vonnegut posthumously in 2015. The asteroid 25399 Vonnegut is named in his honor. A crater on the planet Mercury has also been named in his honor. In 2021, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis was designated a Literary Landmark by the Literary Landmarks Association. In 1986, the University of Evansville library located in Evansville, Indiana was named after Vonnegut, where he spoke during the dedication ceremony.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In the introduction to "Slaughterhouse-Five", Vonnegut recounts meeting the film producer Harrison Starr at a party, who asked him whether his forthcoming book was an anti-war novel—"I guess", replied Vonnegut. Starr responded: "Why don't you write an anti-glacier novel?" This underlined Vonnegut's belief that wars were, unfortunately, inevitable, but that it was important to ensure the wars one fought were just wars.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In 2011, NPR wrote: "Kurt Vonnegut's blend of anti-war sentiment and satire made him one of the most popular writers of the 1960s." Vonnegut stated in a 1987 interview: "my own feeling is that civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from that", and that he wanted to write war-focused works without glamorizing war itself. Vonnegut had not intended to publish again, but his anger against the George W. Bush administration led him to write "A Man Without a Country".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the Vonnegut novel best known for its antiwar themes, but the author expressed his beliefs in ways beyond the depiction of the destruction of Dresden. One character, Mary O'Hare, opines that "wars were partly encouraged by books and movies", starring "Frank Sinatra or John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men". Vonnegut made a number of comparisons between Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and wrote in "Palm Sunday" (1991): "I learned how vile that religion of mine could be when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Nuclear war, or at least deployed nuclear arms, is mentioned in almost all of Vonnegut's novels. In "Player Piano", the computer EPICAC is given control of the nuclear arsenal and is charged with deciding whether to use high-explosive or nuclear arms. In "Cat's Cradle", John's original purpose in setting pen to paper was to write an account of what prominent Americans had been doing as Hiroshima was bombed.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut was an atheist, a humanist and a freethinker, serving as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. In an interview for "Playboy", he stated that his forebears who came to the United States did not believe in God, and he learned his atheism from his parents. He did not, however, disdain those who seek the comfort of religion, hailing church associations as a type of extended family. He occasionally attended a Unitarian church, but with little consistency. In his autobiographical work "Palm Sunday", Vonnegut says that he is a "Christ-worshipping agnostic"; in a speech to the Unitarian Universalist Association, he called himself a "Christ-loving atheist". However, he was keen to stress that he was not a Christian.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut was an admirer of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, particularly the Beatitudes, and incorporated it into his own doctrines. He also referred to it in many of his works. In his 1991 book "Fates Worse than Death", Vonnegut suggests that during the Reagan administration, "anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American". In "Palm Sunday", he wrote that "the Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade". However, Vonnegut had a deep dislike for certain aspects of Christianity, often reminding his readers of the bloody history of the Crusades and other religion-inspired violence. He despised the televangelists of the late 20th century, feeling that their thinking was narrow-minded.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Religion features frequently in Vonnegut's work, both in his novels and elsewhere. He laced a number of his speeches with religion-focused rhetoric and was prone to using such expressions as "God forbid" and "thank God". He once wrote his own version of the Requiem Mass, which he then had translated into Latin and set to music. In "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian", Vonnegut goes to heaven after he is euthanized by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Once in heaven, he interviews 21 deceased celebrities, including Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare, and Kilgore Trout—the last a fictional character from several of his novels. Vonnegut's works are filled with characters founding new faiths, and religion often serves as a major plot device, for example, in "Player Piano", "The Sirens of Titan" and "Cat's Cradle". In "The Sirens of Titan", Rumfoord proclaims The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. "Slaughterhouse-Five" sees Billy Pilgrim, lacking religion himself, nevertheless become a chaplain's assistant in the military and display a large crucifix on his bedroom wall. In "Cat's Cradle", Vonnegut invented the religion of Bokononism.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut's thoughts on politics were shaped in large part by Robert Redfield, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, co-founder of the Committee on Social Thought, and one of Vonnegut's professors during his time at the university. In a commencement address, Vonnegut remarked that "Dr. Redfield's theory of the Folk Society ... has been the starting point for my politics, such as they are". Vonnegut did not particularly sympathize with liberalism or conservatism and mused on the specious simplicity of American politics, saying facetiously: "If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other ... you're a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative. What could be simpler?" Regarding political parties, Vonnegut said: "The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut disregarded more mainstream American political ideologies in favor of socialism, which he thought could provide a valuable substitute for what he saw as social Darwinism and a spirit of "survival of the fittest" in American society, believing that "socialism would be a good for the common man". Vonnegut would often return to a quote by socialist and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Vonnegut expressed disappointment that communism and socialism seemed to be unsavory topics to the average American and believed that they offered beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut's writing was inspired by an eclectic mix of sources. When he was younger, Vonnegut stated that he read works of pulp fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure. He also read the classics, such as the plays of Aristophanes—like Vonnegut's works, humorous critiques of contemporary society. Vonnegut's life and work also share similarities with that of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" writer Mark Twain. Both shared pessimistic outlooks on humanity and a skeptical take on religion and, as Vonnegut put it, were both "associated with the enemy in a major war", as Twain briefly enlisted in the South's cause during the American Civil War, and Vonnegut's German name and ancestry connected him with the United States' enemy in both world wars. He also cited Ambrose Bierce as an influence, calling "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" the greatest American short story and deeming any who disagreed or had not read the story "twerps".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell. "I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity", Vonnegut said. Vonnegut also said that Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley heavily influenced his debut novel, "Player Piano", in 1952. Vonnegut commented that Robert Louis Stevenson's stories were emblems of thoughtfully put together works that he tried to mimic in his own compositions. Vonnegut also hailed playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw as "a hero of [his]" and an "enormous influence". Within his own family, Vonnegut stated that his mother, Edith, had the greatest influence on him. "[My] mother thought she might make a new fortune by writing for the slick magazines. She took short-story courses at night. She studied writers the way gamblers study horses."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Early on in his career, Vonnegut decided to model his style after Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child, allowing Thoreau's works to be more widely comprehensible. Using a youthful narrative voice allowed Vonnegut to deliver concepts in a modest and straightforward way. Other influences on Vonnegut include "The War of the Worlds" author H. G. Wells and satirist Jonathan Swift. Vonnegut credited American journalist and critic H. L. Mencken for inspiring him to become a journalist.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: The book "Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style" by Kurt Vonnegut and his longtime friend and former student Suzanne McConnell, published posthumously by Rosetta Books and Seven Stories Press in 2019, delves into the style, humor, and methodologism employed by Vonnegut, including his belief that one should "Write like a human being. Write like a writer."


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In his book "Popular Contemporary Writers", Michael D. Sharp describes Vonnegut's linguistic style as straightforward; his sentences concise, his language simple, his paragraphs brief, and his ordinary tone conversational. Vonnegut uses this style to convey normally complex subject matter in a way that is intelligible to a large audience. He credited his time as a journalist for his ability, pointing to his work with the Chicago City News Bureau, which required him to convey stories in telephone conversations. Vonnegut's compositions are also laced with distinct references to his own life, notably in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Slapstick".


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: Vonnegut believed that ideas, and the convincing communication of those ideas to the reader, were vital to literary art. He did not always sugarcoat his points: much of "Player Piano" leads up to the moment when Paul, on trial and hooked up to a lie detector, is asked to tell a falsehood, and states: "every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good thing for humanity". Robert T. Tally Jr., in his volume on Vonnegut's novels, wrote: "rather than tearing down and destroying the icons of twentieth-century, middle-class American life, Vonnegut gently reveals their basic flimsiness". Vonnegut did not simply propose utopian solutions to the ills of American society, but showed how such schemes would not allow ordinary people to live lives free from want and anxiety. The large artificial families that the US population is formed into in "Slapstick" soon serve as an excuse for tribalism, with people giving no help to those not part of their group, and with the extended family's place in the social hierarchy becoming vital.


title: Kurt Vonnegut

text: In the introduction to their essay "Kurt Vonnegut and Humor", Tally and Peter C. Kunze suggest that Vonnegut was not a "black humorist", but a "frustrated idealist" who used "comic parables" to teach the reader absurd, bitter or hopeless truths, with his grim witticisms serving to make the reader laugh rather than cry. "Vonnegut makes sense through humor, which is, in the author's view, as valid a means of mapping this crazy world as any other strategies." Vonnegut resented being called a black humorist, feeling that, as with many literary labels, it allows readers to disregard aspects of a writer's work that do not fit the label's stereotype.