Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

By Kurt Vonnegut

“Relentlessly fun to read.”—Dave Eggers • A collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction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.

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9780440338772

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as ""a true artist"" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene has declared, ""one of the best living American writers.""

Reviews for Look at the Birdie

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having not read any Vonnegut in many years, it was a pleasure to read these stories. Not all of them hit the high mark that I came to expect from the author, but it was fun to get back into his unique way of looking at things. He was great at building absurdity upon absurdity. Not sure how much younger readers are into Vonnegut but they should definitely read his classics.

[goodinthestacks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some decent Vonnegut stories, but nothing astounding. I enjoyed reading several, but others I could not get into at all. Though, a mixed bag of Vonnegut is better than no Vonnegut at all.

[shadowofthewind · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was a little disappointed with this book as it lacks all the characteristics that readers come to expect of a Vonnegut work. Furthermore, the foreword of any work by Vonnegut was just as entertaining as the stories themselves, but this one came up short. The forewords made sense of the whole thing. I remember reading the foreword of Breakfast of Champions and reading about how soldiers fighting during World War I head the silence on the 11 day of the 11 month with the truce and swore that it was the voice of God. This is just a collection of short stories from a novice writer trying to find his voice. Armageddon in Retrospect was the last book Vonnegut was working on before his death. In that book, I could tell that he wanted to rework certain stories within it. There are in fact two stories in that work that are identical with exception to the ending. It was a magnificent final work, Birdie is probably the worst. It probably shouldn't have been put out at all with the exception pleasing hard core Vonnegut fans. With the exception of Candido, all of the stories are very bland and predictable. They lack the characteristics of the Vonnegut everyone knows.

[thecrow2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The second 'we-swear-it's-the-last' collection of short stories from one of the greatest american writer of the XX c. Still unique, still enchanting.... Miss you Kurt!

[campingmomma · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm so glad someone decided to put all these "lost" stories in this fine collection. Hall of Mirrors and the title story; Look at the Birdie were probably my two favorite with Petrified Ants being my least. I have to admit though that Petrified Ants was not what I expected. I enjoed the story of the ants more than I did the characters in the same story. All in all a good read for some previously unpublished stories.

[phyrexicaid · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read "Petrified ants" before reading this collection. I feel "Petrified ants" is the weakest of the stories. The others are great vignettes, which could perhaps have been made into short novels. Enjoyable nonetheless.

[anoceandrowning · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It is hard for me to believe that anything Kurt Vonnegut wrote could have somehow remained unpublished after all this time. I have a feeling that his remaining family kind of uses his work as a sort of bank account dipped in time-release. Every time they need a significant chuck of cash, they must just dip into what I imagine to be a giant solid pewter trunk and pull out some of ol' Uncle Kurt's gold.Because, let's face it, the man can do no wrong. These stories must not have been his favorites. That part is evident. They lack the luster that his other works carried. Collectively, these stories are like a tarnished pocket watch you find in your grandfather's closet when you're cleaning his house out after he dies. It doesn't keep time and it's got something sticky on it, but, upon further investigation, you eventually find out that he took it from a Nazi soldier he strangled to death with his bare hands. It isn't a good watch, but it's incredible all the same.I was surprised by some of the stuff I found in this book. Some stories, like the last one (which, by the way, was so unexpectedly powerful that it caused me to stop breathing once I fully realized what that old bastard had done), were quite unusual for Vonnegut. Instead of going for a humorous take, he set you up for one then followed up with the literary equivalent of a dead baby. It wasn't his best, but it wasn't intended to be. God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Come see us again sometime.