Kurt Vonnegut: Look at the Birdie
Look at the Birdie
Buch
- Short Fiction
- Random House LLC US, 09/2010
- Einband: Kartoniert / Broschiert
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-13: 9780385343725
- Bestellnummer: 5380582
- Umfang: 272 Seiten
- Sonstiges: ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT
- Copyright-Jahr: 2010
- Gewicht: 198 g
- Maße: 202 x 134 mm
- Stärke: 22 mm
- Erscheinungstermin: 15.9.2010
Achtung: Artikel ist nicht in deutscher Sprache!
Beschreibung
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen short stories from one of the most original writers in American fiction. This series of perfectly rendered vignettes, never before published in Kurt Vonnegut's lifetime, reveals a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post–World War II America - a 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. Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought that Vonnegut's voice had been stilled forever - and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
Rezension
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction.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 post - World War II America - a 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 capturing - and provide insight into the development of his early style - collectively, 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 forever - and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
From the Hardcover edition.
Klappentext
"Relentlessly fun to read."-Dave Eggers • A collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fictionIn 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 post-World War II America-a 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 capturing-and provide insight into the development of his early style-collectively, 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 forever-and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
Includes these never-before-published stories:
"Confido"
"FUBAR"
"Shout About It from the Housetops"
"Ed Luby's Key Club"
"A Song for Selma"
"Hall of Mirrors"
"The Nice Little People"
"Hello, Red"
"Little Drops of Water"
"The Petrified Ants"
"The Honor of a Newsboy"
"Look at the Birdie"
"King and Queen of the Universe"
"The Good Explainer"
"[Look at the Birdie] brings us the late writer's young voice as he skewers-sometimes gently, always lethally-post World War II America."-The Boston Globe
Auszüge aus dem Buch
CONFIDOThe Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it. At one with this sad, sweet allegory outside the kitchen window of her small home was Ellen Bowers, who, early in the morning, was preparing Tuesday breakfast for her husband, Henry. Henry was gasping and dancing and slapping himself in a cold shower on the other side of a thin wall.
Ellen was a fair and tiny woman, in her early thirties, plainly mercurial and bright, though dressed in a dowdy housecoat. In almost any event she would have loved life, but she loved it now with an overwhelming emotion that was like the throbbing amen of a church organ, for she could tell herself this morning that her husband, in addition to being good, would soon be rich and famous.
She hadn't expected it, had seldom dreamed of it, had been content with inexpensive possessions and small adventures of the spirit, like thinking about autumn, that cost nothing at all. Henry was not a moneymaker. That had been the understanding.
He was an easily satisfied tinker, a maker and mender who had a touch close to magic with materials and machines. But his miracles had all been small ones as he went about his job as a laboratory assistant at the Accousti-gem Corporation, a manufacturer of hearing aids. Henry was valued by his employers, but the price they paid for him was not great. A high price, Ellen and Henry had agreed amiably, probably wasn't called for, since being paid at all for puttering was an honor and a luxury of sorts. And that was that.
Or that had seemed to be that, Ellen reflected, for on the kitchen table lay a small tin box, a wire, and an earphone, like a hearing aid, a creation, in its own modern way, as marvelous as Niagara Falls or the Sphinx. Henry had made it in secret during his lunch hours, and had brought it home the night before. Just before bedtime, Ellen had been inspired to give the box a name, an appealing combination of confidant and household pet - Confido.
What is it every person really wants, more than food almost?" Henry had asked coyly, showing her Confido for the first time. He was a tall, rustic man, ordinarily as shy as a woods creature. But something had changed him, made him fiery and loud. "What is it?"
"Happiness, Henry?"
"Happiness, certainly! But what's the key to happiness?"
"Religion? Security, Henry? Health, dear?"
"What is the longing you see in the eyes of strangers on the street, in eyes wherever you look?"
"You tell me, Henry. I give up," Ellen had said helplessly.
"Somebody to talk to! Somebody who really understands! That's what." He'd waved Confido over his head. "And this is it!"
Now, on the morning after, Ellen turned away from the window and gingerly slipped Confido's earphone into her ear. She pinned the flat metal box inside her blouse and concealed the wire in her hair. A very soft drumming and shushing, with an overtone like a mosquito's hum, filled her ear.
She cleared her throat self-consciously, though she wasn't going to speak aloud, and thought deliberately, "What a nice surprise you are, Confido."
"Nobody deserves a good break any more than you do, Ellen," whispered Confido in her ear. The voice was tinny and high, like a child's voice through a comb with tissue paper stretched over it. "After all you've put up with, it's about time something halfway nice came your way."
"Ohhhhhh," Ellen thought depreciatively, "I haven't been through so much. It's been quite pleasant and easy, really."
"On the surface," said Confido. "But you've had to do without so much."
"Oh, I suppose - "
"Now, now," said Confido. "I understand you. This is just between us, anyway, and it's good to bring those things out in the open now and then. It's healthy. This is a lousy, cramped house, and it's left its mark on y