Author gets M. A. degree 25 years after leaving college

By Jeff Boyd

© Vonneweek 2000

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was recently awarded a M. A. degree from the University of Chicago almost 25 years after he graduated from that institution. The news came as a surprise to Vonnegut who had this to say:

I left Chicago without writing a dissertation- and without a degree. All my ideas for dissertations had been rejected, and I was broke, so I took a job as a P. R. man for General Electric in Schenectady. Twenty years later, I got a letter from the new dean at Chicago, who had been looking through my dossier. Under the rules of the university, he said, a published work of high quality could be substituted for a dissertation, so I was entitled to an M. A. He had shown Cat’s Cradle to the Antropology [sic] Department, and they had said it was hal-way [sic] decent antropology [sic], so they were mailing me my degree. I’m class of 1972 or so. (Huber)

The Anthropology Department in 1947 unanimously rejected Vonnegut’s original idea for a dissertation, Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales. His most popular and successful novel thus far has been Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969. It quickly rose to number one on the New York Times bestseller list and established Vonnegut as the voice of a new generation of anti-war pacifists. There is also a film version of this novel, directed by George Roy Hill, which has been acclaimed, by the author, as "…harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book" ("Vonnegut, Kurt Jr." 596).

Cat’s Cradle, which helped earn the author his degree, was first published in 1963 and immediately became popular among an underground population and yielded quiet yet admirable reviews from a few critics. The protagonist of the book, who is researching the bombing of Hiroshima, moves to a remote Caribbean island where he converts to Bokononism, Vonnegut’s original religion. Eventually he witnesses the destruction of the earth by Ice-9, a substance that freezes everything it touches ("Vonnegut, Kurt Jr." 595).

Here is some of what the critics have to say about Cat’s Cradle:

Cat’s Cradle is a novel about the varieties of truth available to man: scientific, religious, political, social, economic, humanistic. Ultimately, in its presentation of the open-ended, uncomfortable dilemma of human knowledge and wisdom, the novel sardonically blurs veracity and falsehood, treating them as interchangeable for all practical human purposes. It refuses to confirm what is reality. (Schulz 348)

Cat's Cradle is an irreverent and often highly entertaining fantasy concerning the playful irresponsibility of nuclear scientists. Like the best of contemporary satire, it is work of a far more engaging and meaningful order than the melodramatic tripe which most critics seem to consider ‘serious.’ (Huber)

Vonnegut has authored fifteen novels and dozens of short stories. He has written a play that ran on Broadway for six months. He has been cited as one of the great satirists of our time and is often compared to Mark Twain, whom he holds in high regard. He is a master storyteller and blends elements of science fiction, satire, and dark humor to warn his readers about the follies of human nature. He is in high demand on college campuses as a speaker and an interviewee for large publications.