Look at the Birdie: A Last Look at Kurt Vonnegut

A little while ago, I wrote a review of Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House. I said I thought it was one of the finest works that the author ever produced and perhaps the best collection of short stories it was ever my pleasure to read. I still believe that, but I will be dog-vanished if Look at the Birdie isn't only a hair behind it in quality.

Having said as much, I am puzzled. Where were these excellent but heretofore unpublished stories when Vonnegut was putting out so much dreck toward the end of his career? I think I know the answer. Sidney Offit, who wrote the introduction, inserted into his orgy of name-dropping the probability that Vonnegut did not consider these stories good enough for publication in any of the many magazines of the day that featured top-notch fiction by excellent authors.

It sort of makes sense. These stories all date back to an era between the Great Depression and the 1950s. Back then, Kurt Vonnegut was a starving artist with a painful sense of integrity. Slaughterhouse Five-an excellent novel, to be sure-had not yet come along to make him rich and, by the same token, lazy. Once he caught on that the publishers would throw wads of money at him for any manuscript he tossed their way, he was off to the races. I should point out that he did take a break from the potboilers to write the wonderful novel, Jailbird, in 1979, but, generally, he was past it.

Somewhere all those earlier, not-quite-good-enough stories must have been lost in the shuffle. In any case, he certainly did not need the money. I am guessing his heirs did not need the money either, but they were absolutely right when they put these stories out for their artistic merit in 2009.

If you are fortunate enough to find this collection in your hot little hands, you will be pleasantly surprised, right off the bat, by the first three stories: "Confido," a nifty sci-fi piece about an introspective inventor and his ingenious device; "FUBAR," a wonderfully awkward romance (And for those of you who know what the acronym stands for, rest assured, Vonnegut soft-peddles that first letter. After all, we are talking about the 1950s.); and "Shout About It from the Housetops," a hard look at fame.

Not all the stories are excellent, but none are terrible, and there are more great ones after the first three. I will not go into which is which, because I want you to read the whole book, should you get the notion to check it out. I think Mr. Vonnegut deserves that much from us, after putting out such a fine product.

Another thing I like about this collection is that it is very user-friendly to the commuter, which I find myself being one of, two days a week. There are two stories that are somewhat longer than the others: "Ed Luby's Key Club" and "The Petrified Ants." To assist the harried train-rider, those stories are broken down into sections so that, if your stop comes up before you can finish the whole thing, you have a convenient leaving-off point.

I would strongly recommend that you check your local library for this book. Again, keep in mind, though the stories are over fifty years old, the book itself was published in 2009. If your library has the book at all, it may be in a special recent arrivals section, as would be the case with mine.

If by some bit of misfortune your local lending resource has no plans to carry Look at the Birdie, then I would say it is well worth the coin you would need to part company with it order to own it, even allowing for the sad fact that books (Including the wonderful collection, Shaggy Dogs) cost too damn much.

Source

Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut