We celebrate our 58th anniversary with a presentation from The Pacifica Radio Archives as we also salute Kurt Vonnegut by presenting a talk by Vonnegut in 1970 to New York University students. We also present an excerpt of Slaughterhouse Five as read by actor Donald Southerland in 1970. Kurt Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana to German American parents. Vonnegut died at the age of 84 on April 11th, 2007.
Vonnegut worked on the nation’s first daily high school newspaper, The Daily Echo and although he never completed college, did attend Cornell University studying chemistry and serving as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the student newspaper, the Cornell Sun He briefly attended Carnegie Institute of Technology before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II.
In December of 1944 Vonnegut was captured by German troops. This experience as one of just seven American prisoners of war to survive in Dresden was the source of possibly his most famous novel Slaughterhouse Five.