Shout About It from the Housetops (Stories)

Book excerpt: Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. In “Shout About It from the Housetops,” an unassuming storm window salesman observes the effects of full disclosure firsthand when he drops in on the town’s freshly minted celebrity couple–a notorious ladies’ man and his novelist wife, author of a scandalous bestseller not-so-loosely based on her real marriage. “Shout About It from the Housetops” and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut’s unique voice had been stilled forever–and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.