Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in postâ‚¬"World War II Americaâ‚¬â€œa world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence.

Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturingâ‚¬â€œ and provide insight into the development of his early styleâ‚¬â€œcollectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut.

Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut' s characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled foreverâ‚¬â€œand serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.

Read "Hello, Red" and "The Petrified Ants," two of the stories from the collection, as single-story e-books before Look at the Birdie goes on sale. Available wherever e-books are sold.
Country USA
Manufacturer Delacorte Press
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2009-10-20
UnitCount 2
EANs 9780385343718

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Delacorte Press
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2009-10-20
UnitCount	2
EANs	9780385343718

Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

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