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  • Published: 5 January 2021
  • ISBN: 9781644210215
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $39.99

Pity the Reader

On Writing with Style




The ultimate writing guide--with 16 new pages of writing prompts--by a grandmaster of American letters and his former student.

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.

  • Published: 5 January 2021
  • ISBN: 9781644210215
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $39.99

Praise for Pity the Reader

guide to making art with words, Pity the Reader: Writing With Style is a simply mesmerizing book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!” —Andre Dubus III The blend of memory, fact, keen observation, spellbinding descriptiveness and zany characters that populated Vonnegut’s work is on full display here, in a kind of workshop forum, with explanations by the writer himself, as recorded by a fellow writer, McConnell, who knew Vonnegut for decades. The result is Vonnegut as we’ve never seen him before, a man of kindness and generosity, humility and extraordinary introspection, whose humor and creativity served as a kind of protectorate, a shield, and most importantly a fountain of creativity to quench his life-long thirst for a better, kinder planet. It’s a must read for any young writer." —James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning novel, The Good Lord Bird  “Pity us not at all! What could be more welcome than Kurt Vonnegut’s acerbic writing advice expertly illuminated by veteran teacher/writer/editor Suzanne McConnell. A timely book for writers, readers, teachers and book-lovers alike. It’s unsentimental, unvarnished, and 100 percent treacle-free. If you’ve longed to be under Vonnegut’s spell once again, this is the book for you.” —Danielle Ofri, MD, author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear "I hate getting advice, personally. This is not that kind of book—it complains grumpily about the discomfort required to write truthfully and it celebrates the long history of art as 'a very human way of making life more bearable.' In short, it reminds us of the important things. Suzanne McConnell takes us eloquently into the joys of rediscovering Vonnegut, in a guide that will be profoundly useful to writers thinking about fiction’s purposes as well as its methods." —Joan Silber, author of Improvement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award "This is such a rich, generous book about writing and reading and Kurt Vonnegut as writer, teacher, and friend, that I find myself at a loss for the right good words. It’s a breeze to read.  Every page brings pleasure and insight. It captures the spirit of the man some of us were lucky enough to know and gives future generations a sense of him as a teacher and writer. It traces how Vonnegut grew as a writer and how his writing took shape. I have read it three times now and find it not only a meticulous homage and worthy memorial to a great human being and a lasting writer, but a true help, for all of us at any age, who yearn to write with style.” —Gail Godwin, bestselling author of A Southern Family among many others novels, and the forthcoming Old Lovegood Girls

“A love song for the writing life by one of the world’s finest humanist writers, Kurt Vonnegut’s wry and compassionate voice is given a resonant echo chamber here by the wise and abidingly respectful presence of his former graduate student, Suzanne McConnell. Part homage, part memoir, and a 100

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