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NEW YORK (CNN) -- CBS has canceled Don Imus' radio show, effective immediately, after uproar over his racist and sexist comments about Rutgers women's basketball team.
"From the outset, I believe all of us have been deeply upset and revulsed by the statements that were made on our air about the young women who represented Rutgers University in the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship with such class, energy and talent," said CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, in announcing the decision.
The decision by CBS came a day after NBC Universal decided to part ways with Imus, thus canceling the simulcast of his show on MSNBC.
Amid the outcry over his on-air racial slur last week, shock jock Imus said Thursday that he had "apologized enough" and that he will not go on "some talk show tour."
"I'm not going to go talk to Larry King or Barbara Walters or anyone else," Imus said on his flagship station in New York, WFAN-AM, which is owned by CBS Corp. and distributes "Imus in the Morning" nationally.
"The only other people I want to talk to are these young women at the team, and then that's it," Imus said.
He was referring to the members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team, whom he described as "nappy-headed hos" the day after the team lost the NCAA championship to the University of Tennessee. (Gallery: Other controversial comments aired on Imus show)
He has repeatedly apologized for those remarks. Team members have agreed to meet with him privately, but so far no meeting has taken place.
"It gets said. Kids get hurt," he said. "At some point -- I'm not sure when -- I'm going to go talk to the team and that's all I'm interested in doing."
NBC News President Steve Capus, appearing on CNN, said Imus' comments had "touched a nerve" within the organization and firing him was "the only action we could take." (Your e-mails on Imus)
Despite being dropped by NBC, Imus hosted his show from the MSNBC studios in New Jersey. He did not appear on TV.
"As you know, MSNBC folded up yesterday, so we're just on the radio," he said.
Imus was broadcasting his 18th annual radio charity fundraiser, which has pulled in $50 million since 1990. It ends Friday.
"This may be our last radiothon, so we need to raise $100 million dollars," Imus said, chuckling.
According to The Associated Press, Imus raised $1 million in the first five hours of Thursday's fundraiser.
The disparaging remark prompted eight companies to pull their ads from Imus' show: Staples, General Motors, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, PetMed Express, American Express and Bigelow Tea.
Bruce Gordon, a member of CBS Corp.'s board of directors, had called for Imus' firing from WFAN.
Speaking Thursday on CNN's "American Morning," Gordon said that, speaking "as an African-American man in this country, Don Imus violated our community. He attacked beautiful, talented, classy women and when those women showed themselves to the country, I think that those words matched with those images made it clear to America that Don Imus was wrong."
Gordon is a former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
At a rally outside CBS's New York offices Thursday, civil rights activist Al Sharpton pressured the network to cancel Imus' morning show.
Rain cut attendance at the rally -- another has been scheduled for Saturday afternoon -- but Sharpton, joined by the father of a player on the team, spoke to the media.
"NBC has done in our judgment what is right," he said, and CBS must not be "the dam holding back the waters of insensitivity."
Sharpton said he had met with several NBC leaders and planned to meet with CBS leaders later in the day.
Linzell Vaughn, the father of sophomore center Kia Vaughn, said Imus' comments were "like a slap in the face."
"Do not disrespect our children," he said. (Players talk of hurt, seeking understanding)
Sharpton said the airways should not be used to "call children hard-core hos, nappy-headed hos. ... None of us have the right to use the public airways to express our bigotry."
Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson also spoke on Thursday afternoon outside CBS' offices and called for Imus' firing.
"This is not the first time this has happened on this show," he said, and spoke of previous Imus comments that Jackson characterized as racist and sexist.
"'Three strikes you're out' ought to apply to this position," he said.
Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Craiglist Largest Use Is For Erotic Services - Sfgate and Complete
It's no secret that Craiglist is widely used to locate many goods and services, but it seems the best use is for erotic services. This is what Compete.com reports:
"It’s no wonder that Craigslist is champion of the online classifieds revolution; Compete reports just under 17 million people visiting per month. The site boasts quick accessibility, a straight-forward interface, and a posting registry ranging from video games and community events to furniture and real estate. But as it turns out, many visitors to craigslist.org are looking for something more risqué than that lamp with the red velvet fringe.
Analysis of eight major American cities shows erotic services consistently garners the highest number of individual visitors for February – almost always twice as many as the next ranking category, averaging 265,000 people per city. Equally racy lists that consistently score high visitor volume are the section for casual encounters as well as personals for women seeking men. The most commonly frequented venue outside of this virtual red-light district? Cars for sale."
"It’s no wonder that Craigslist is champion of the online classifieds revolution; Compete reports just under 17 million people visiting per month. The site boasts quick accessibility, a straight-forward interface, and a posting registry ranging from video games and community events to furniture and real estate. But as it turns out, many visitors to craigslist.org are looking for something more risqué than that lamp with the red velvet fringe.
Analysis of eight major American cities shows erotic services consistently garners the highest number of individual visitors for February – almost always twice as many as the next ranking category, averaging 265,000 people per city. Equally racy lists that consistently score high visitor volume are the section for casual encounters as well as personals for women seeking men. The most commonly frequented venue outside of this virtual red-light district? Cars for sale."
Drew Bledsoe retires
QB Drew Bledsoe Retires After 14 Years
By BARRY WILNER
AP Football Writer
Drew Bledsoe retired Wednesday, ending a 14-year career in which he made two Super Bowls.
The top overall pick by New England in the 1993 draft out of Washington State, the four-time Pro Bowl quarterback played for the Patriots, Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys. He was a starter for all three teams, but ended up as a backup with the Cowboys.
Bledsoe threw for 44,611 yards and 251 touchdown passes in his career.
"I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans," he said. "I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life."
The 35-year-old Bledsoe lost his starting job to Tom Brady in New England in 2001 when Bledsoe got hurt in the second game of the season, and to Tony Romo in Dallas after Game 6 of last season.
He also asked for his release from the Bills after the 2004 season, when the team informed him it was going with J.P. Losman as the starter the next year. Bledsoe didn't want to be a backup there after he led the Bills to the brink of the playoffs.
He then signed with the Cowboys and was their starter for all of 2005 and part of '06.
In 1996, Bledsoe guided the Patriots to the AFC championship. They lost to Green Bay in the Super Bowl.
He remained the Patriots' starter until he was tackled by the Jets' Mo Lewis in the second game of the 2001 season and injured his chest. Brady took over, although Bledsoe got New England into the Super Bowl in place of the injured Brady by beating Pittsburgh in the AFC title game.
Brady then was the MVP of the Super Bowl win over St. Louis.
The Bills acquired Bledsoe during the 2002 NFL draft by dealing their first-round pick in 2003 to New England. Bledsoe had strong first season in Buffalo, setting 10 team passing records, including single-season marks with 4,359 yards and 375 completions.
His numbers, however, began to decline drastically. In his final 30 games with Buffalo, Bledsoe never finished with more than 296 yards passing, while throwing 29 touchdowns and 27 interceptions during that stretch.
He finishes seventh all-time in yards passing, 13th in touchdown passes and fifth in completions (3,839).
___
AP Sports Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo contributed to this story.
By BARRY WILNER
AP Football Writer
Drew Bledsoe retired Wednesday, ending a 14-year career in which he made two Super Bowls.
The top overall pick by New England in the 1993 draft out of Washington State, the four-time Pro Bowl quarterback played for the Patriots, Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys. He was a starter for all three teams, but ended up as a backup with the Cowboys.
Bledsoe threw for 44,611 yards and 251 touchdown passes in his career.
"I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans," he said. "I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life."
The 35-year-old Bledsoe lost his starting job to Tom Brady in New England in 2001 when Bledsoe got hurt in the second game of the season, and to Tony Romo in Dallas after Game 6 of last season.
He also asked for his release from the Bills after the 2004 season, when the team informed him it was going with J.P. Losman as the starter the next year. Bledsoe didn't want to be a backup there after he led the Bills to the brink of the playoffs.
He then signed with the Cowboys and was their starter for all of 2005 and part of '06.
In 1996, Bledsoe guided the Patriots to the AFC championship. They lost to Green Bay in the Super Bowl.
He remained the Patriots' starter until he was tackled by the Jets' Mo Lewis in the second game of the 2001 season and injured his chest. Brady took over, although Bledsoe got New England into the Super Bowl in place of the injured Brady by beating Pittsburgh in the AFC title game.
Brady then was the MVP of the Super Bowl win over St. Louis.
The Bills acquired Bledsoe during the 2002 NFL draft by dealing their first-round pick in 2003 to New England. Bledsoe had strong first season in Buffalo, setting 10 team passing records, including single-season marks with 4,359 yards and 375 completions.
His numbers, however, began to decline drastically. In his final 30 games with Buffalo, Bledsoe never finished with more than 296 yards passing, while throwing 29 touchdowns and 27 interceptions during that stretch.
He finishes seventh all-time in yards passing, 13th in touchdown passes and fifth in completions (3,839).
___
AP Sports Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo contributed to this story.
Oakland Raiders Wanted Falcons QB Matt Schaub Now Uncertain About #1 Pick - ProFootballWeekly.com
From ProFootballWeekly.com
Raiders upset they couldn’t land Schaub, still unsure how to spend No. 1 pick
Oakland
Of all the rumors coming out of Oakland in the weeks leading up to the draft, two things are certain: The Raiders remain undecided as to which direction they will go with the first overall pick, and they were very disappointed in their inability to acquire Falcons QB Matt Schaub, who was traded to the Texans in March.
Schaub had worked with new Raiders offensive coordinator Gregg Knapp in Atlanta, and they had high hopes for building around him right away. One factor that could play a major role in which direction they go with the first pick is the potential trade of WR Randy Moss, which could net them a veteran quarterback or at least put them on the lookout for one, as well as have them suddenly leaning toward Georgia Tech WR Calvin Johnson.
Without a Moss trade, however, the decision would come down between Russell, who has the big arm that owner Al Davis covets, and Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn, who is viewed as more NFL-ready than Russell and has a better work ethic. Quinn’s dedication and experience in a pro-style system should bode well in the eyes of new head coach Lane Kiffin, who tutored Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC, but according to insiders, Russell had a slight edge as of this writing.
Raiders upset they couldn’t land Schaub, still unsure how to spend No. 1 pick
Oakland
Of all the rumors coming out of Oakland in the weeks leading up to the draft, two things are certain: The Raiders remain undecided as to which direction they will go with the first overall pick, and they were very disappointed in their inability to acquire Falcons QB Matt Schaub, who was traded to the Texans in March.
Schaub had worked with new Raiders offensive coordinator Gregg Knapp in Atlanta, and they had high hopes for building around him right away. One factor that could play a major role in which direction they go with the first pick is the potential trade of WR Randy Moss, which could net them a veteran quarterback or at least put them on the lookout for one, as well as have them suddenly leaning toward Georgia Tech WR Calvin Johnson.
Without a Moss trade, however, the decision would come down between Russell, who has the big arm that owner Al Davis covets, and Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn, who is viewed as more NFL-ready than Russell and has a better work ethic. Quinn’s dedication and experience in a pro-style system should bode well in the eyes of new head coach Lane Kiffin, who tutored Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC, but according to insiders, Russell had a slight edge as of this writing.
Drew Bledsoe Retires From Pro Football
Bledsoe retires, ends 14-year career
By Michael Smith
ESPN.com
Rather than spend a 15th season standing on a sideline as a backup, quarterback Drew Bledsoe has decided to walk away from pro football.
Bledsoe, 35, retires fifth in NFL history in pass attempts (6,717) and completions (3,839), seventh in passing yards (44,611), and 13th in touchdown passes (251).
The No. 1 overall selection in 1993 by the New England Patriots out of Washington State, Bledsoe spent his first nine seasons with the Patriots, the next three with the Buffalo Bills, and his last two with the Dallas Cowboys.
"I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans," Bledsoe said in a statement released through his representatives at Athletes First. "I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life."
A four-time Pro Bowler, Bledsoe backed up Tony Romo for the Cowboys' final 11½ games last season and had no interest in continuing his career in that role. Cincinnati and Seattle are said to have had interest in Bledsoe as a backup to Carson Palmer and Matt Hasselbeck, respectively.
"This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while," Bledsoe said last night from his home in Bend, Oregon. "I felt like this was the way I was going to go late in the season. I wanted to spend some time with it and not make a rash decision."
Being benched at halftime of Dallas' sixth game -- the third time Bledsoe lost his starting job though the first time he'd been outright replaced during the season -- did not rob Bledsoe of his confidence. He says he isn't leaving the game because he feels he's finished. As a matter of fact he says he feels as good as he did a decade ago.
Elias Says
Drew Bledsoe averaged 34.6 passes per game in his career, the highest average for any player in NFL history. Next-highest (minimum: 100 games): Dan Marino (34.5), Brett Favre (34.1).
• Read more Elias Says.
"The reason for the decision is not because I don't want to play anymore," he said. "The reason is there's a lot of other stuff I'm excited about doing. The positives of retiring outweighed the positives of returning and my desire to still play."
Bledsoe, who led New England to an appearance in Super Bowl XXXI and earned his lone championship ring with the Patriots in 2001, listed among his proudest accomplishments the respectable manner in which he carried himself on and off the field and the fact that he never literally had to be carried off the playing field.
"Looking back, I wish some things had gone differently," Bledsoe said, "but throughout 14 years in a very high-profile position in some high-profile places that I represented myself and my family well in terms of how I conducted myself on the field and off."
Though he took plenty of hits and sacks, Bledsoe, a prototypical pocket passer, almost always got up. He started all 16 games nine times.
"Nobody ever had to come and get me off the field," he said. "Even in New England [in '01 after Mo Lewis of the Jets leveled him with a hit that sheered a blood vessel] I went back out there and they had to tell me to stay out. I never once stayed down."
Bledsoe was unable to regain his starting job from Tom Brady -- he did, however, get a relief win in the AFC title game -- and the following offseason the Patriots dealt him to Buffalo. Three years later his run with the Bills ended when the team decided to hand the starting job over to first-round pick J.P. Losman.
His signing with the Cowboys prior to 2005 reunited him with Bill Parcells, the coach who drafted him in New England. With Dallas headed toward a disappointing 3-3 start, Parcells benched Bledsoe in favor of Tony Romo at halftime of a nationally-televised game against the Giants. The Cowboys released Bledsoe in March.
Bledsoe, however, says he harbors no ill will toward Parcells, Belichick, the Bills, anyone.
"I'm not leaving the game with any hard feelings," he said. "I had a great career and I enjoyed all of it, with the exception of losing. I enjoyed the time I had with all the teams I played for. I played with a ton of great players and a ton of great people.
"[Last season] was hard. Very hard. Nobody said life was fair but that was a tough pill to swallow. I'm happy for Tony who's a good guy and a good player. It was sad for him the way the season ended. It's just that I felt like that team had a chance to do some things and I wanted to be on the field with those guys. It didn't work out. But there's no bitterness toward anyone over anything that happened."
A Bledsoe comeback later in '07 or in '08? Not happening, he says. Money certainly is not a source of motivation -- from 1993 through 2003 Bledsoe received more than $62 million in compensation, most in the league. Bledsoe is leaving the game not because the right opportunity isn't available but to take the opportunity to spend more time with his wife, Maura, and their four children while pursuing business endeavors and continuing his charitable work through his foundation, Parenting with Dignity.
"That's why I waited this long to make an announcement," he said. "I wanted to be very sure. I needed to get some emotional separation from last season to make sure I wasn't making a decision I would regret. I wanted to make sure it was the right thing and it is. I would say this is a definite."
By Michael Smith
ESPN.com
Rather than spend a 15th season standing on a sideline as a backup, quarterback Drew Bledsoe has decided to walk away from pro football.
Bledsoe, 35, retires fifth in NFL history in pass attempts (6,717) and completions (3,839), seventh in passing yards (44,611), and 13th in touchdown passes (251).
The No. 1 overall selection in 1993 by the New England Patriots out of Washington State, Bledsoe spent his first nine seasons with the Patriots, the next three with the Buffalo Bills, and his last two with the Dallas Cowboys.
"I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans," Bledsoe said in a statement released through his representatives at Athletes First. "I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life."
A four-time Pro Bowler, Bledsoe backed up Tony Romo for the Cowboys' final 11½ games last season and had no interest in continuing his career in that role. Cincinnati and Seattle are said to have had interest in Bledsoe as a backup to Carson Palmer and Matt Hasselbeck, respectively.
"This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while," Bledsoe said last night from his home in Bend, Oregon. "I felt like this was the way I was going to go late in the season. I wanted to spend some time with it and not make a rash decision."
Being benched at halftime of Dallas' sixth game -- the third time Bledsoe lost his starting job though the first time he'd been outright replaced during the season -- did not rob Bledsoe of his confidence. He says he isn't leaving the game because he feels he's finished. As a matter of fact he says he feels as good as he did a decade ago.
Elias Says
Drew Bledsoe averaged 34.6 passes per game in his career, the highest average for any player in NFL history. Next-highest (minimum: 100 games): Dan Marino (34.5), Brett Favre (34.1).
• Read more Elias Says.
"The reason for the decision is not because I don't want to play anymore," he said. "The reason is there's a lot of other stuff I'm excited about doing. The positives of retiring outweighed the positives of returning and my desire to still play."
Bledsoe, who led New England to an appearance in Super Bowl XXXI and earned his lone championship ring with the Patriots in 2001, listed among his proudest accomplishments the respectable manner in which he carried himself on and off the field and the fact that he never literally had to be carried off the playing field.
"Looking back, I wish some things had gone differently," Bledsoe said, "but throughout 14 years in a very high-profile position in some high-profile places that I represented myself and my family well in terms of how I conducted myself on the field and off."
Though he took plenty of hits and sacks, Bledsoe, a prototypical pocket passer, almost always got up. He started all 16 games nine times.
"Nobody ever had to come and get me off the field," he said. "Even in New England [in '01 after Mo Lewis of the Jets leveled him with a hit that sheered a blood vessel] I went back out there and they had to tell me to stay out. I never once stayed down."
Bledsoe was unable to regain his starting job from Tom Brady -- he did, however, get a relief win in the AFC title game -- and the following offseason the Patriots dealt him to Buffalo. Three years later his run with the Bills ended when the team decided to hand the starting job over to first-round pick J.P. Losman.
His signing with the Cowboys prior to 2005 reunited him with Bill Parcells, the coach who drafted him in New England. With Dallas headed toward a disappointing 3-3 start, Parcells benched Bledsoe in favor of Tony Romo at halftime of a nationally-televised game against the Giants. The Cowboys released Bledsoe in March.
Bledsoe, however, says he harbors no ill will toward Parcells, Belichick, the Bills, anyone.
"I'm not leaving the game with any hard feelings," he said. "I had a great career and I enjoyed all of it, with the exception of losing. I enjoyed the time I had with all the teams I played for. I played with a ton of great players and a ton of great people.
"[Last season] was hard. Very hard. Nobody said life was fair but that was a tough pill to swallow. I'm happy for Tony who's a good guy and a good player. It was sad for him the way the season ended. It's just that I felt like that team had a chance to do some things and I wanted to be on the field with those guys. It didn't work out. But there's no bitterness toward anyone over anything that happened."
A Bledsoe comeback later in '07 or in '08? Not happening, he says. Money certainly is not a source of motivation -- from 1993 through 2003 Bledsoe received more than $62 million in compensation, most in the league. Bledsoe is leaving the game not because the right opportunity isn't available but to take the opportunity to spend more time with his wife, Maura, and their four children while pursuing business endeavors and continuing his charitable work through his foundation, Parenting with Dignity.
"That's why I waited this long to make an announcement," he said. "I wanted to be very sure. I needed to get some emotional separation from last season to make sure I wasn't making a decision I would regret. I wanted to make sure it was the right thing and it is. I would say this is a definite."
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies - NYTimes News Service
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies
By Dinitia Smith
New York Times News Service
Published April 11, 2007, 10:49 PM CDT
NEW YORK -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. "Mark Twain," Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, "Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage," "finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died."
Not all Vonnegut's themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.
His novels -- 14 in all -- were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago "filled with bittersweet lies," a narrator says).
The defining moment of Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. "The firebombing of Dresden," Vonnegut wrote, "was a work of art." It was, he added, "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany."
His experience in Dresden was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age."
To Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"
Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him "one of the most able of living American writers." Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.
He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.
With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes. But he also maintained a certain celebrity, as a regular on panels and at literary parties in Manhattan and on the East End of Long Island, where he lived near his friend and fellow war veteran Joseph Heller, another darkly comic literary hero of the age.
Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a fourth-generation German-American and the youngest of three children. His father, Kurt Sr., was an architect. His mother, Edith, came from a wealthy brewery family. Vonnegut's brother, Bernard, who died in 1997, was a physicist and an expert on thunderstorms.
During the Depression, the elder Vonnegut went for long stretches without work, and Edith Vonnegut suffered from episodes of mental illness. "When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information," Vonnegut wrote. She committed suicide, an act that haunted her son for the rest of his life.
He had, he said, a lifelong difficulty with women. He remembered an aunt once telling him, "'All Vonnegut men are scared to death of women.' "
"My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside," he wrote.
Vonnegut went east to attend Cornell University, but he enlisted in the Army before he could get a degree. The Army initially sent him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon) in Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering.
In 1944, he was shipped to Europe with the 106th Infantry Division and shortly saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge. With his unit nearly destroyed, he wandered behind enemy lines for several days until he was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp near Dresden, the architectural jewel of Germany.
Assigned by his captors to make vitamin supplements, he was working with other prisoners in an underground meat locker when British and U.S. warplanes started carpet bombing the city, creating a firestorm above him. The work detail saved his life.
Afterward, he and his fellow prisoners were assigned to remove the dead.
"The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified," he wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death."
When the war ended, Vonnegut returned to the United States and married his high school sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox. They settled in Chicago in 1945. The couple had three children: Mark, Edith and Nanette. In 1958, Vonnegut's sister, Alice, and her husband died within a day of each other, she of cancer and he in a train crash. The Vonneguts adopted their children, Tiger, Jim and Steven.
In Chicago, Vonnegut worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. He also studied for a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on "The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales." It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel "Cat's Cradle" as his thesis.)
In 1947, he moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and took a job in public relations for General Electric Co. Three years later he sold his first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," to Collier's magazine and decided to move his family to Cape Cod, Mass., where he wrote fiction for magazines like Argosy and The Saturday Evening Post. To bolster his income, he taught emotionally disturbed children, worked at an advertising agency and at one point started an auto dealership.
His first novel was "Player Piano," published in 1952. A satire on corporate life -- the meetings, the pep talks, the cultivation of bosses -- it also carries echoes of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." It concerns an engineer, Paul Proteus, who is employed by the Ilium Works, a company similar to General Electric. Proteus becomes the leader of a band of revolutionaries who destroy machines that they think are taking over the world.
"Player Piano" was followed in 1959 by "The Sirens of Titan," a science fiction novel featuring the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. In 1961, he published "Mother Night," involving an American writer awaiting trial in Israel on charges of war crimes in Nazi Germany. Like Vonnegut's other early novels, they were published as paperback originals. And like "Slaughterhouse-Five," in 1972, and a number of other Vonnegut novels, "Mother Night" was adapted for film, in 1996, starring Nick Nolte.
In 1963, Vonnegut published "Cat's Cradle." Though it initially sold only about 500 copies, it is widely read today in high school English classes. The novel, which takes its title from an Eskimo game in which children try to snare the sun with string, is an autobiographical work about a family named Hoenikker. The narrator, an adherent of the religion Bokononism, is writing a book about the bombing of Hiroshima and comes to witness the destruction of the world by something called Ice-Nine, which, on contact, causes water to freeze at room temperature.
Vonnegut shed the label of science fiction writer with "Slaughterhouse-Five." It tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an infantry scout (as Vonnegut was), who discovers the horror of war. "You know -- we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves," an English colonel says in the book. "We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. My God, my God -- I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'"
As Vonnegut was, Billy is captured and assigned to manufacture vitamin supplements in an underground meat locker, where the prisoners take refuge from Allied bombing.
In "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut introduced the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter ego. The novel also featured a signature Vonnegut phrase.
"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round," Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, "was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
"Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes."
One of many Zen-like words and phrases that run through Vonnegut's books, "so it goes" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" reached No.1 on best-seller lists, making Vonnegut a cult hero. Some schools and libraries have banned it because of its sexual content, rough language and scenes of violence.
After the book was published, Vonnegut went into severe depression and vowed never to write another novel. Suicide was always a temptation, he wrote. In 1984, he tried to take his life with sleeping pills and alcohol.
"The child of a suicide will naturally think of death, the big one, as a logical solution to any problem," he wrote. His son Mark also suffered a breakdown, in the 1970s, from which he recovered, writing about it in a book, "Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity."
Forsaking novels, Vonnegut decided to become a playwright. His first effort, "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," opened Off Broadway in 1970 to mixed reviews. Around this time he separated from his wife, Jane, and moved to New York. (She remarried and died in 1986.)
In 1979, Vonnegut married the photographer Jill Krementz. They have a daughter, Lily. They survive him, as do all his other children.
Vonnegut returned to novels with "Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday" (1973), calling it a "tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." This time his alter ego is Philboyd Sludge, who is writing a book about Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy auto dealer. Hoover has a breakdown after reading a novel written by Kilgore Trout, who reappears in this book, and begins to believe that everyone around him is a robot.
In 1997, Vonnegut published "Timequake," a tale of the millennium in which a wrinkle in space-time compels the world to relive the 1990s. The book, based on an earlier failed novel of his, was, in his own words, "a stew" of plot summaries and autobiographical writings. Once again, Kilgore Trout is a character. "If I'd wasted my time creating characters," Vonnegut said in defense of his "recycling," "I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter."
Though it was a bestseller, it also met with mixed reviews. "Having a novelist's free hand to write what you will does not mean you are entitled to a free ride," R.Z. Sheppard wrote in Time. But the novelist Valerie Sayers, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "The real pleasure lies in Vonnegut's transforming his continuing interest in the highly suspicious relationship between fact and fiction into the neatest trick yet played on a publishing world consumed with the furor over novel versus memoir."
Vonnegut said in the prologue to "Timequake" that it would be his last novel. And so it was.
His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country." It, too, was a best seller. It concludes with a poem written by Vonnegut called "Requiem," which has these closing lines: When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here.
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