Acclaimed author Kurt Vonnegut dies

NEW YORK - In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.

Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

In a statement, Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. .Ê.Ê. I would salute him - our own Mark Twain."

"He was sort of like nobody else," said another fellow author, Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull."

Vonnegut's works - more than a dozen novels plus short stories, essays and plays - contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography. Hours after his death, "Slaughterhouse-Five" had jumped to the top 10 on Amazon.com, while "Cat's Cradle" and the nonfiction "A Man Without a Country" had reached the top 40.

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim ("Slaughterhouse-Five") and Eliot Rosewater ("God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater") as transparent vehicles for his points of view.

"He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.

Some of Vonnegut's books were banned and burned for alleged obscenity. He took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.

Despite his success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.