Books
86 AMERICANWAY
NOVEMBER 15 2009
ManyaMericans
get their first gander at a Kurt Vonnegut novel early on in
high school. That first read seals the deal: Either you’re aVonnegut fan or you’re
not, plain and simple. Thosewho have fallen on the fan side are stillmourning his
April 2007death. Luckily for readers, he left behinda slewof unpublished stories,
many ofwhichwill be released over the next several years.
The first are in the newly released
book titled
Look at the Birdie: Unpub-
lished Short Fiction
($27, Delacorte
Press). Another short-story collection
is set to come out in early 2011, and
there are future plans for a collection
of letters and an encyclopedia of Von-
negut’sworks. In addition, Vonnegut’s
publisher, Random House Publishing
Group, is in the process of rereleas-
ing 15 of his earlierworks in a volume
featuring cover art drawn by theman
himself.
We checked inwithRandomHouse
editor Kerri Buckley to find out what
readers can expect from these coming
works.
What is it liketobeoneofVonnegut’s
literary caretakers?
It’s a pretty big
task. First and foremost, it’s surreal.
You’re reading
Slaughterhouse-Five
in
the ninth grade, and you don’t figure
that somewhere down the line you’re
going to be elbow deep in a box of
original Kurt Vonnegut short stories
that have never been published. I have
met so many fascinating people who
were close to Kurt over the course of
his life. That’s an enormous privilege
that I understandnot verymanyother
people are going to have. So I’m flat-
tered and I’m honored and I’m careful
and I’m just really lucky.
How much material did you have
to choose from? What was the
whittling-down process like?
The
first step was to read [all of the 400
files the estate gave us]. There was a
lot of cataloging and a lot of sorting. I
was living in [a new] apartment, with
no furniture and hundreds of pieces of
Vonnegut on the floor. I was weed-
ing out things that were damaged
— some of the originals had torn,
so they were illegible. Some were so
heavily annotated that it was obvious
Kurtwouldnotwant thempublished. I
was reading for commonalityandcon-
sistency. We purchased 30 stories for
the two collections.
What can readers expect from the
stories in
Look at theBirdie
?
Hewas
The death of celebrated author Kurt Von-
negut two and a half years ago left a void
in the literary community. Several new
collections of his unpublished stories honor
his life andwork. By JennaSchnuer
Reviving
Vonnegut
very much finding his comic voice.
There are some extremely wry comic
points to these stories. If you have
read Vonnegut widely, youwill recog-
nize the seedling of an idea that years
later grew into a larger, different idea
— a little Easter egg tucked in there
for the well-educated [Vonnegut]
reader.Without dropping in toomany
spoilers, his pacifist side is verymuch
in evidence.
Doyouhaveany favorites?
Two. [One
is] “HelloRed.” It’s very early. It’sVon-
negut finding hisway. He showsmore
than he tells, which is not typical of
him in later years. It leaves you feel-
ing very unsettled. My other favorite
is “The Nice Little People.” It’s Kurt
Vonnegut does early sci-fi. It’s so cool.
The husband [in the story] makes a
most peculiar discovery inside a pock-
etknife. It’s just glorious.
Vonnegut has a lot of verydedicated
fans. Does that put pressureonyou?
It’s very, very difficult to put together
something after an author has passed
away. I think no matter who the au-
thor is — big or small — you’re tak-
ing on some responsibility you didn’t
exactly ask for. Some people have
said he didn’t want these published.
To that, I say he did. The originals are
all [attached to] rejection slips [hehad
received]. I donot thinkhis intentwas
to bury these from the world. I hope
thatwe’ve done him justice.
