For Writers

We had to read Slaughterhouse Five in our high school literature course, and it changed my view of what books and writing can do to help the human mind and soul evolve. After that, I read everything of Vonnegut's that I could get my hands on. Absolu...  

An excerpt from the full review: “Unpublished is not a word we identify with a Kurt Vonnegut short story,” Sidney Offit notes in his foreword to “Look at the Birdie,” a new collection of Vonnegut’s early, and unpublished, short fiction. Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries of similar stature, Vonnegut was until early middle age a practical and adaptable writer, a guy who knew how to survive on his fiction. In the era of the “slicks...  

I have always loved the hilarious, classic Kurt Vonnegut essay about writing conferences Teaching the Unteachable. It contains one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes, which I have paraphrased for years: "The idea of a conference for prose writes is an absurdity. They don't confer, can't confer. It's all they can do to drag themselves past one another like great, wounded bears." Every time someone new to writing asks me if I recommend this...  

When a renowned author dies, two critical processes begin: first, placing the writer in the pantheon; and second, digging out every jot, every piece of juvenilia, every previously unseen word the deceased wrote.  

The Star-Ledger - NJ.comBooks: 'Look at the Birdie' by Kurt Vonnegut, and 'Kurt Vonnegut's America'The Star-Ledger - NJ.com... “Player Piano” to “Sirens of Titan” to “Mother Night.” I've reread them all now, except “Bluebeard.” Betsy Willeford is a freelance writer living in Miami.and more »  

-"Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction," by Kurt Vonnegut; Delacorte Press (272 pages, $27)