KURT VONNEGUT DIES AT 84

Music for me is proof of the existence of God.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, author of landmark books such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) has passed away at age 84. Vonnegut (born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana) died at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital at 9:45 p.m. ET Wednesday.

Vonnegut is survived by his second wife, photographer Jill Krementz and his seven children. He shared three children with his first wife (childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox, who he divorced in 1979) and later adopted his sister Alice’s three children when she died of cancer, and adopted another child, Lily in 1982.

The remarkably creative and always cynical author had been hospitalized for several weeks after a fall in his Manhattan home left him with irreversible brain injuries.

Vonnegut’s novels and short stories, with their black humor, bitter aftertaste, and insightful commentary on humanity, attracted a cult following which cemented him as one of the most important authors in 20th-century American literature.

For more on Kurt Vonnegut’s life and death go here.