Editing Kurt Vonnegut (section)

=== Marriage, University of Chicago, and early employment ===
After he returned to the United States, 22-year-old Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high-school girlfriend and classmate since kindergarten, on September 1, 1945. The pair moved to Chicago; there, Vonnegut enrolled in the [[University of Chicago]] on the [[G.I. Bill]], as an [[anthropology]] student in an unusual five-year joint undergraduate/graduate program that conferred a [[master's degree]]. He studied under anthropologist [[Robert Redfield]], his "most famous professor".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vonnegut |first=Kurt |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/23253474 |title=Fates worse than death: an autobiographical collage of the 1980s |date=1991 |publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons |isbn=978-0-399-13633-7 |location=New York |pages=122 |oclc=23253474}}</ref> He also worked as a reporter for the [[City News Bureau of Chicago]].{{sfn|Smith|2007}}<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://chronicle.uchicago.edu/940203/vonnegut.shtml|title=Kurt Vonnegut to visit campus as Kovler Fellow|website=chronicle.uchicago.edu|date=February 3, 1994}}</ref>

Jane, who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore,<ref>{{harvnb|Strand|2015|p=26}}</ref> accepted a scholarship from the university to study [[Russian literature]] as a graduate student. Jane dropped out of the program after becoming pregnant with the couple's first child, [[Mark Vonnegut|Mark]] (born May 1947), while Kurt also left the university without any degree (despite having completed his undergraduate education). Vonnegut failed to write a dissertation, as his ideas had all been rejected.<ref name="TheParisReview"/> One abandoned topic was about the Ghost Dance and Cubist movements.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/184338/kurt-vonnegut-by-kurt-vonnegut/9780385343763/excerpt |access-date=March 24, 2023 |website=Penguin Random House Canada |archive-date=March 24, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230324072706/https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/184338/kurt-vonnegut-by-kurt-vonnegut/9780385343763/excerpt |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=electricliterature |date=April 7, 2015 |title=Kurt Vonnegut's Graduation Speech: What the "Ghost Dance" of the Native Americans and the French... |url=http://electricliterature.com/kurt-vonneguts-graduation-speech-what-the-ghost-dance-of-the-native-americans-and-the-french/ |access-date=March 24, 2023 |website=Electric Literature |archive-date=March 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230325092008/https://electricliterature.com/kurt-vonneguts-graduation-speech-what-the-ghost-dance-of-the-native-americans-and-the-french/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=May 18, 2017 |title=Of Ghost Shirts and Gizmos |url=https://salo.iu.edu/index.php/of-ghost-shirts-and-gizmos-phillips-on-player-piano/ |access-date=March 24, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170518201902/https://salo.iu.edu/index.php/of-ghost-shirts-and-gizmos-phillips-on-player-piano/ |archive-date=May 18, 2017 }}</ref> A later topic, rejected "unanimously", had to do with the shapes of stories.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Klinkowitz |first=Jerome |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3nwMCAAAQBAJ |title=The Vonnegut Effect |date=June 5, 2012 |publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-61117-114-3 |access-date=March 24, 2023 |archive-date=March 24, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230324202601/https://books.google.com/books?id=3nwMCAAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture's Novelist, Dies |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20070413friday.html |access-date=March 24, 2023 |website=archive.nytimes.com |archive-date=March 24, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230324072725/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20070413friday.html |url-status=live }}</ref>{{sfn|Vonnegut|2009|p=285}} Vonnegut received his graduate degree in anthropology 25 years after he left, when the university accepted his novel ''[[Cat's Cradle]]'' in lieu of his master's thesis.{{sfn|Marvin|2002|p=7}}

Shortly thereafter, [[General Electric]] (GE) hired Vonnegut as a technical writer, then publicist,{{sfn|Noble|2017|loc=p. 166: "In the early 1950s novelist Kurt Vonnegut was a technical writer and publicist at GE headquarters in Schenectady."}} for the company's [[Schenectady, New York]], News Bureau, a publicity department that operated like a newsroom.<ref>{{harvnb|Strand|2015|p=81}}</ref> His brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, focusing mainly on a silver-iodide-based [[cloud seeding]] project that quickly became a joint GE–[[United States Army Signal Corps|U.S. Army Signal Corps]] program, Project Cirrus. In ''The Brothers Vonnegut'', [[Ginger Strand]] draws connections between many real events at General Electric, including Bernard's work, and Vonnegut's early stories, which were regularly being rejected everywhere he sent them.<ref>{{harvnb|Strand|2015|p=87}}</ref> Throughout this period, Jane Vonnegut encouraged him, editing his stories, strategizing about submissions and buoying his spirits.<ref>{{harvnb|Strand|2015|p=89}}</ref>

In 1949, Kurt and Jane had a daughter named [[Edith Vonnegut|Edith]]. Still working for GE, Vonnegut had his first piece, titled "[[Report on the Barnhouse Effect]]", published in the February 11, 1950, issue of ''Collier's'', for which he received $750.<ref>{{harvnb|Boomhower|1999}}; {{harvnb|Sumner|2014}}; {{harvnb|Farrell|2009|pp=7–8}}.</ref> The story concerned a scientist who fears that his invention will be used as a weapon, much as Bernard was fearing at the time about his cloudseeding work.<ref>{{harvnb|Strand|2015|p=117}}</ref> Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by the fiction editor at ''Collier's'', Knox Burger, and again sold it to the magazine, this time for $950. While Burger supported Vonnegut's writing, he was shocked when Vonnegut quit GE as of January 1, 1951, later stating: "I never said he should give up his job and devote himself to fiction.  I don't trust the freelancer's life, it's tough."<ref>{{harvnb|Shields|2011|p=115}}.</ref> Nevertheless, in early 1951 Vonnegut moved with his family to [[Cape Cod, Massachusetts]], to write full time, leaving GE behind.<ref>{{harvnb|Boomhower|1999}}; {{harvnb|Hayman|Michaelis|Plimpton|Rhodes|1977}}; {{harvnb|Farrell|2009|p=8}}.</ref> He initially moved to [[Osterville, Massachusetts|Osterville]], but he ended up purchasing a home in [[Barnstable, Massachusetts|Barnstable]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sidman |first=Dan |title=Cape ties to writer Kurt Vonnegut celebrated |url=https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/entertainment/books/2014/10/09/cape-ties-to-writer-kurt/36022438007/ |access-date=April 4, 2023 |newspaper=Cape Cod Times}}</ref>