Fiction Addict

Genre: Comedy, Sci-fi

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Released: October 20, 2009

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

American fiction suffered a great loss in April 2007 when Kurt Vonnegut passed away. Thankfully, his fans have not been forgotten, as two posthumous volumes of his writings have so far been released. The second of these, Look at the Birdie, a collection of previously unpublished short fiction, hit shelves in late October.

The stories in Look at the Birdie were not written anywhere near the time of Vonnegut’s death, and for having sat around unpublished for nearly fifty years, they hold up pretty well. The curmudgeonly Vonnegut of latter days is virtually absent from this book. Instead, we find an almost uncharacteristically optimistic Vonnegut. The problems in the world that he later subjects to satire and black humor are here met with hope in the goodness of human beings (hope he might later deem misplaced). While this results in a generally bright collection, Vonnegut occasionally falls into bouts of sentimentality, something fans of his later works might be unaccustomed to. But there is enough here that is vintage Vonnegut—quirky, off-kilter, incisive, and hilarious—that should satisfy his readers.

My favorite story in this collection is probably “FUBAR,” which provides us with a look at Fuzz Littler, whose life has been Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition, “not by malice but by administrative accidents.” Littler “became fubar in the classic way, which is to say that he was the victim of a temporary arrangement that became permanent.” Littler is a bumbler in the same way that many of Vonnegut’s great characters are, but this bumbler, entering the universe with Vonnegut’s optimism in control, comes to a better end. I also enjoyed “Little Drops of Water,” in which a spurned woman gets the best kind of revenge on her fastidious jilter: marriage. “Shout It from the Housetops” provides an interesting look at the life of a wildly popular writer and the damage her fame does on her personal life, something Vonnegut may have known something about.

Vonnegut’s trademark explorations of the bizarre and excursions into sci-fi territory are certainly present here. In “Confido,” an inventor finds creates a device that provides a constant conversation partner for the wearer. Unfortunately, the conversation is not always what one wants to (or should) hear. In “The Nice Little People,” a small, knife-shaped space ship arrives on earth, and the tiny aliens it contains begin to worship the man who gives them peanut butter and cheese. There are appearances by murder counselors, hypnotists, civilized ants, and real and counterfeit geniuses, and these characters combined with Vonnegut’s playful storytelling and penchant for twists make for novel, entertaining stories.

Look at the Birdie is peppered throughout with Vonnegut’s surreal illustrations, and the introduction by Sidney Offit is a fitting tribute to one of the masters of American fiction. An introductory letter that Vonnegut wrote to Walter J. Miller in 1951, which he describes (in the same letter) as “sententious crap, shot full of self-pity . . . the kind of letter writers seem to write,” helps set the stage for what is to follow. While I wouldn’t say Look at the Birdie is Vonnegut’s strongest work, it was certainly a joy to read and, best of all, reminded me of why I read his books in the first place. Kurt Vonnegut will truly be missed.