On the Web Tue Dec 08 2009

What Vonnegut Left

By Veronica Bond

Pop Matters examines where an author's "previously unpublished" posthumous works come from, those of Kurt Vonnegut in his recent Look at the Birdie in this case:

Vonnegut was no hack, but he needed to make a living, and so he became a staple of these publications (in good company that included the likes of Louis L'Amour and Elmore Leonard, among others). In a 1951 letter included in this book, Vonnegut observes: " . . . of course, if you appear in the Atlantic or Harper's or the New Yorker, by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so. This is poor competition for the fat checks from the slicks. For want of anything more tempting, I'll stick with money."