Pity The Reader

“A rich, generous book about writing and reading and Kurt Vonnegut as writer, teacher, and friend . . . Every page brings pleasure and insight.”—Gail Godwin, New York Times bestselling author Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he’s given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition. His former student, Suzanne McConnell, has outfitted us for the journey, and in these 37 chapters covers the waterfront of how one American writer brought himself to the pinnacle of the writing art, and we can all benefit as a result. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the few grandmasters of American literature, whose novels continue to influence new generations about the ways in which our imaginations can help us to live. Few aspects of his contribution have not been plumbed—fourteen novels, collections of his speeches, his essays, his letters, his plays—so this fresh view of him is a bonanza for writers and readers and Vonnegut fans everywhere. “Part homage, part memoir, and a 100% guide to making art with words, Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style is a simply mesmerizing book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!”—Andre Dubus III, #1 New York Times bestselling author “The blend of memory, fact, keen observation, spellbinding descriptiveness and zany characters that populated Vonnegut’s work is on full display here.”—James McBride, National Book Award-winning author

Alas, the poor reader. Ever pelted with a heavy rain of words. Junk mail and Spam, E-mail and blogs; E-zines and streaming news. Preached at and scolded, befuddled and misled. Tortured with unpronounceable words and bored with cliché. Is it any wonder that people grow ever weary of reading? I undertook this book not just to help aspiring writers, but to help myself and my dwindling brethren: We who still love words. For us, few joys surpass a sentence that moves one to tears or laughter. That's true whether it's found in a book, a magazine, a song, on a blog or over a urinal. Such love borders on sickness. It's a disease I intend to spread. I aspire to be a one-man epidemic. If I can help raise a better crop of wordsmiths, then we poor readers may have more that's worth reading.

“From the absurdly comic to the acutely moving”—eleven fearless stories of love, friendship, faith and family under siege (The New York Times Book Review). Stretching from nineteenth century Ellis Island to twenty-first century Gaza and suburban Ohio, “these 11 stories, each ambitious in scope, drop us into one nerve-racking situation after another . . . inhabiting a wide range of voices” (San Francisco Chronicle). In “Coyote” a mother’s need to protect her toddler spirals into a dangerous obsession. “Prisoners Do” follows two married doctors who find temporary escape in a discomforting affair. An Israeli woman risks more than she imagines when she attempts to reclaim her captive child from militants in “All the Sons of Cain.” “Half-Life” uncovers the devastating secret behind a nanny’s chosen profession; in “An Uncontaminated Soul” a haunted and lonely cat lady’s impulsive rescue of two more kittens proves to be a heartbreaking turning point; and in the title story, an atheist family from Berkley relocates to the conservative Midwest to confront the consequences and limits of their beliefs. “Brave, essential, thrilling, each story in You Should Pity Us Instead takes us to those places we’ve never dared visit before” (Ben Stroud). “They detonate on target, literary grenades of resounding impact . . . bursting with startling insights, stabbing dialogue, ambushing metaphor, and stunning moments of dissonance” (Booklist).

Discover an "absurd, funny, and thought-provoking" book perfect for "anyone who has ever felt socially awkward or inadequate" (Louis Sachar, author of Holes and the Wayside School series). Dear weird toes, crooked nose, stressed out, left out, freaked out Dear missing parts, broken hearts, picked-on, passed up, misunderstood, Dear everyone, you are cordially invited, come as you are, this party's for you Welcome to Pity Party, where the social anxieties that plague us all are twisted into funny, deeply resonant, and ultimately reassuring psychological thrills. There's a story about a mood ring that tells the absolute truth. One about social media followers who literally follow you around. And one about a kid whose wish for a new, improved self is answered when a mysterious box arrives in the mail. There's also a personality test, a fortune teller, a letter from the Department of Insecurity, and an interactive Choose Your Own Catastrophe. Come to the party for a grab bag of delightfully dark stories that ultimately offers a life-affirming reminder that there is hope and humor to be found amid our misery.

Kailyn Lowry, the feisty, tattooed beauty whose determination to raise her son on her own terms has been documented on MTV's hit series Teen Mom 2, opens up in this raw memoir about her painful past and offers an inspiring account of a young girl's resolve to survive and succeed.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The Huffington Post • Kansas City Star • Time Out New York • Kirkus Reviews This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide. Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud. Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon. • On a job he had as a young man: “Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.” • To a relative who calls him a “great literary figure”: “I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.” • To his daughter Nanny: “Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.” • To Norman Mailer: “I am cuter than you are.” Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote. Praise for Kurt Vonnegut: Letters “Splendidly assembled . . . familiar, funny, cranky . . . chronicling [Vonnegut’s] life in real time.”—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review “[This collection is] by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane. . . . Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.”—NPR “Congenial, whimsical and often insightful missives . . . one of [Vonnegut’s] very best.”—Newsday “These letters display all the hallmarks of Vonnegut’s fiction—smart, hilarious and heartbreaking.”—The New York Times Book Review

This is a rollicking fictional memoir that takes us through the ups and downs of the mysterious author's life. And what a life it is, full to the brim with every imaginable kind of neurotic behavior. You will often laugh out loud. But you will also learn a great deal about the emotions and about which emotional strategies work and which don't.

A young Vietnamese-Australian named Nam, in his final year at the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, is trying to find his voice on the page. When his father, a man with a painful past, comes to visit, Nam's writing and sense of self are both deeply changed. Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice is a deeply moving story of identity, family and the wellsprings of creativity, from Nam Le's multi-award-winning collection The Boat. 'A tight and densely emotional journey that sucked me in and contained as much power as the lengthy title.' Killings, the Kill Your Darlings blog