Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991 TAG: 9102160156
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Vonnegut's lecture, titled "How to Get a Job Like Mine," will be March 3, at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased beginning Monday at the Arts at Virginia Tech Box Office or at the door the night of the lecture.
Admission to the lecture is $2 for Tech students and $3 for the public.
Vonnegut, with his drooping moustache, has been lecturing at colleges since the 1960s.
In 1970 he went into the movie industry, establishing Sourdough Productions, in association with Michael J. Kane and Lester M. Goldsmith.
His best-known novels include "Slaughterhouse-Five," which became a best-seller and which was a late-'60s movie, "Cat's Cradle," "The Sirens of Titan," "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and "Galapagos."
Vonnegut, who lives in New York, went to school during the Depression and was told by his father, an architect, "to be anything but an architect," according to news release.
When his older brother, Bernard, became a successful chemist, Vonnegut said he was given a direct order to become a chemist and kept away from the arts.
He studied chemistry for three years at Cornell University in upstate New York.
"I was delighted to catch pneumonia during my third year and, upon recovery, to forget everything I ever knew about chemistry, and to go to war," Vonnegut said.
After the war, Vonnegut attended the University of Chicago and also worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau.
He later worked in public relations for the research laboratory of General Electric and at the end of his third year there began selling short stories to Collier's and Saturday Evening Post.
by CNB