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In the novels that followed, Vonnegut opted for settings that were only slightly more earthly. "Mother Night" (1962) told the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr. -- an American Nazi propagandist during World War II, double agent and "citizen of nowhere at all." In "Cat's Cradle" (1963), science is an agent of destruction, religion a comforting lie; the story is a parable about the end of the world, like most of Vonnegut's work. "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" (1965) introduces some of Vonnegut's recurring characters -- millionaire Eliot Rosewater, who joins a different volunteer fire department every time he gets drunk, and Vonnegut's alter ego, sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout. The novel brings this recurring message, from Rosewater: "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Vonnegut packed several dozen chapters into books with fewer than 200 pages. Some critics scorned him, citing the influence of television or accusing him of pandering to youth with "dormitory profundity." But Vonnegut explained it this way: "I find sections of my book constructed like jokes, and they're not very long. And I suddenly realize the joke is told, and that I'd spoil the joke if I were to go past." Vonnegut was perfecting the art of the tall tale. His put-ons had more in common with Mark Twain than with the head games of postmodernists like Thomas Pynchon or John Barth. Vonnegut created a fun house, but the message was not lost there.

In 1967, Vonnegut wrote about the new Random House dictionary for the New York Times Book Review. The first sentence could have been aimed at his critics: "I wonder now what Ernest Hemingway's dictionary looked like, since he got along so well with dinky words that everybody can spell and truly understand." At the time, Vonnegut was benefiting from the publishing revolution of paperbacks -- the only form in which his books were available. But when publisher Sam Lawrence read the review, his firm, Seymour Lawrence, gave Vonnegut a three-book contract and agreed to republish his previous five books in hardcover. Soon Vonnegut could be found beyond the drugstore. He was headed for the ivory tower.

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  Like the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Vonnegut's so-called masterpiece, "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969), may not be his best work. But the book, a cathartic statement he wrote after a trip back to Dresden on a Guggenheim Fellowship, was huge: a profitable ticket to many a literature syllabus and that rarest of things, a popular and critical success. (It came in at No. 18 on the Modern Library's list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century.)

In "Slaughterhouse-Five," a soldier named Billy Pilgrim witnesses a massacre perpetrated by his own countrymen and becomes "unstuck" in time. Aided by the advanced extraterrestrial civilization that kidnaps him and places him in a zoo, Pilgrim comes to understand time as if it is a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, with all moments laid out on the range, coexisting in perpetuity. The realization that war, like life, can be brutal and nonsensical is greeted with a shrug: So it goes.

Also like the Beatles, Vonnegut found himself banned. "Slaughterhouse-Five" was burned in Drake, N.D. It was banned for its religious references in Rochester, Mich., and for its "foul language" in all of Kentucky. The outcry was hard to square with Vonnegut's perspective on things: "You can teach savagery to people ... They may need the savagery, but it's bad for the neighbors. I prefer to teach gentleness."

Writing in the Saturday Review in 1971, critic Alfred Kazin said, "Vonnegut is always at home with characters who are not with it in our kind of world, people whose total helplessness and inability to explain anything have indeed made them unworldly, extraterrestrial, open to mischief from outer space." But Vonnegut himself was seen as being extremely with it. Published near the height of American involvement in Vietnam, "Slaughterhouse-Five" brought on a Vonnegut Zeitgeist: His name became identified with pacifism and black humor. He became a hip father figure to baby boomers, who made a campus hero of him. He took up a post at the University of Iowa writers' workshop; at Harvard, there were 15 applicants for every slot in his class.

In a series of profiles, Vonnegut was hailed for spanning the generation gap. Never mind the fact that he told Life magazine that baby boomers were "the most conceited generation in history." ("They're bright, but I'm not sure they're competent," he added.) The new label stuck -- "an articulate bridge across the generational chasm," as the New York Times put it. What Vonnegut offered was indignation in the guise of whimsy. He was impatient with piety and sham, and he was funny about it. Vonnegut, however, was just as wary of labels as ever.

He was on the lecture circuit, capitalizing on his newfound popularity, when it hit him. After a speech, Vonnegut was asked what right he had, as "a leader of American young people," to "teach them to be so cynical and pessimistic." As he recounted in a 1974 essay, "I was not a leader of American young people. I was a writer who should have been home and writing, rather than seeking easy money and applause." It was one of the many honest self-observations that would become part of his charm. Labels continued to accrue, but Vonnegut dodged them: "I have found that a humanist is a person who is tremendously interested in human beings. My dog is a humanist."

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