Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Contributor(s): Vonnegut, Kurt (Author), McConnell, Suzanne (Author) |
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ISBN: 1644210215 ISBN-13: 9781644210215 Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: October 2020 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Reference | Personal & Practical Guides - Language Arts & Disciplines | Style Manuals - Literary Collections | American - General |
Dewey: 813.54 |
LCCN: 2020041507 |
Physical Information: 1.3" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" L (1.30 lbs) 448 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |
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