Klinkowitz, Jerome

Evory, Ann (ed.) Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series, Volume 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1981. pp. 342-343. May, Hal and Deborah A. Straub. Contemporary Authors. New Revisions Series, Volume 25. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1989. pp. 464-474.

English professor and writer Jerome Klinkowitz was born December 24, 1943, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Marquette University in 1966 and 1967, respectively. In 1969 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Klinkowitz has served on the English faculties of Northern Illinois University (1969-1972) and the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls (1972- ).

Klinkowitz has written or co-authored numerous critical works and bibliographies: Innovative Fiction (1972), The Vonnegut Statement (1973), Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1974), Literary Disruptions (1975), The Life of Fiction (1977), Vonnegut in America (1977), Donald Barthelme (1977), Writing Under Fire: stories of the Vietnam War (1978), The Diaries of Willard Motley (1979), and Hawthorne's Day to the Present (1980), The New American Novel of Manners (1986), Kurt Vonnegut: a comprehensive bibliography (1987), and Structuring the Void (1992).

American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Between 1940 and 1947, Vonnegut attended classes at several universities, including Cornell University (1940–1942), Carnegie Institute of Technology (1943), and the University of Chicago (1945–1947). He received a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1971.

During World War II, Vonnegut was an infantryman in the U.S. Army, who was subsequently captured and held as a prisoner of war in Dresden. He survived the February 13, 1945, firebombing of Dresden by the Allied forces, which took the lives of 135,000 German civilians. The story of Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, is based on Vonnegut's Dresden experience.

Since his first novel, Player Piano, published by Scribner in 1952, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has written twelve novels, including The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), Slaughterhouse Five (1969), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976), Jailbird (1979), Dead-Eye Dick (1982), Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990).

In addition to his novels, Vonnegut has written plays, including Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1960) and Between Time and Timbutktu (1972); short fiction, collected in Canary in a Cathouse (1961) and Welcome to the Monkey House (1968); as well as essays, juvenile literature, and autobiographies. His two autobiographical “collages” (his subtitle for each) are titled Palm Sunday (1981) and Fates Worse than Death (1991).

A number of Vonnegut’s novels have been produced as plays or films; of these, the most widely known is Universal’s 1972 film version of Slaughterhouse Five .

In the 1990s Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. continues to write and to lecture at universities, churches, and national conferences. He is an outspoken opponent of censorship and war.

From the guide to the Jerome Klinkowitz papers relating to Kurt Vonnegut, 1969–1978, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)