Episode 471: A Discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Pity the Reader with Leslie Salas!

May 8, 2021

Episode 471: A Discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Pity the Reader with Leslie Salas!

Episode 471 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

In this week’s show, Leslie Salas and I discuss Kurt Vonnegut’ and Suzanne McConnell’s compendious Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style.

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Episode 471 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

Kurt Vonnegut, leslie salas, Pity the Reader, Suzanne McConnell

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One response to “Episode 471: A Discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Pity the Reader with Leslie Salas!”

Suzanne McConnell

May 25, 2021 at 4:24 pm

This is Suzanne McConnell, wanting to comment and thank you for this discussion. I loved it! What a smart, provocative exchange! I was especially gratified to hear you talk about the practices; I’ve not heard any feedback about them. The publisher refused them in the hardback. So glad you liked them! Hope they’re useful. It was fun concocting them. I loved the words ‘funky and weird” describing Slaughterhouse-Five. And I wanted to explain one thing – the reason I pointed out the nose in the example of Kurt’s doodles, rather than the butt or whatever, is because many years later, after he became famous, that same nose often became part of his signature. Vonnegut fans would recognize it. It’s his. And one small (but significant) correction; he changed the ending of Breakfast of Champions after the couriers read it and expressed dissatisfaction, not Slaughterhouse Five. He’d not have been cavalier about changing Slaughterhouse Five, his dark-night-of-the-soul work, after laboring on it for 25 years. Breakfast of Champions had already undergone wildly different drafts and is a very different book. I also loved your contradictory responses to the introduction, since I think readers probably fall into exactly your two categories of opinions about it. My publisher sent me the notice of the discussion – all of us are pleased, so thanks very much again. I’ll be spreading the word.

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