Kurt Vonnegut used to like to say, "Practicing an art form is a way to grow your soul." He would screw up his lips into a prune face after he said this because of how important he believed this idea to be. Pity the Reader is the very embodiment of that idea, a book about writing and life and why the two go together. It includes rare photos and reproductions, Vonnegut's own account in his own words of how he became a writer and why it matters, and previously untold stories by and about Vonnegut as teacher and friend. It turns out he was generous to a fault about students' writing, idiosyncratic, a bit tortured and always creative as a teacher, and here in this book that portrait becomes our gateway into getting to know Kurt Vonnegut better than we ever have before as a human being. Vonnegut recounts that his favorite work of art among all those his children produced "so far" is a letter his daughter Nanette wrote to a disgruntled customer, after he had tormented a new waitress at the restaurant where she had just started working, and then he shares the letter with us. Thus he illustrates his first writing rule: "Find a subject you care about." This book is full of such rare, intimately teachable moments, and they add up to something special. Pity the Reader indeed.
Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style
Kurt Vonnegut
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- SKU:
- 9781644210215
- UPC:
- 9781644210215
- Gift wrapping:
- Options available
- Published by:
- Seven Stories Press
- Pub date:
- 10/13/2020
- Binding type:
- Paperback
- Pages:
- 448
- ISBN:
- 9781644210215

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Mark Godfrey
The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960–1980
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Sofia Samatar
Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life
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