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Book Reviews of Look at the Birdie: Short Fiction

Look at the Birdie: Short Fiction
Look at the Birdie Short Fiction
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
ISBN-13: 9780385343725
ISBN-10: 0385343728
Publication Date: 9/7/2010
Pages: 272
Rating:
  • Currently 4.7/5 Stars.
 3

4.7 stars, based on 3 ratings
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Book Type: Paperback
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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Helpful Score: 1
(Illustrated by himself)
These unpublished stories are a fitting tribute to one of our greatest writers. Unfortunately, except for a copy of a typed letter to Miller Harris dated 1951, none of the stories are dated. Too bad! Why were they unpublished? Was he not satisfied with them? Were they recent, waiting to be submitted? (Am I starting to write like Jules Verne?) It may be possible to guess a date of some. For instance, Shout About It From the Housetops concerns a salesman selling storm window to a recently wealthy pop author. Considering the book that she wrote, and the hyday for aluminum storm windows, could it be a take on Grace Metaliouss Peyton Place (195 )? Fubar, his version of the WWII acronym snafu, triggers a memory of Hellers Catch 22 (196 ) transmogrified to the industrial milieu of a GE. In Ed Lubys Key Club a married couple own an old station wagon whose wood was beginning to rot. This reference to the Beech Wagon of the later 1930s could date the story from the 1950s also. The Petrified Ants, while it has some undertones of H. G. Wells The First Men In the Moon, reflects Stalinist Russia in its ruthlessness and absurdity: another possible product of the later 50s or early 60s.