Kurt Vonnegut Read online

  “Oh, it could be worse, much worse,” said Josef, holding the other end of the saw. He rubbed his frosted eyebrows against his sleeve.

  “I’m sorry you’re here, too, Josef,” said Peter sadly. “I’m the one who raised his voice to Borgorov.” He blew on his hands. “I guess that’s why we’re here.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” sighed Josef. “One stops thinking about such things. One stops thinking. It’s the only way. If we didn’t belong here, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Peter fingered a limestone chip in his pocket. Embedded in it was the last of the pincerless ants, ringed by his murderers. It was the only fossil from Borgorov’s hole that remained above the surface of the earth. Borgorov had made the brothers write a report on the ants as he saw them, had had every last fossil shoveled back into the bottomless cavity, and had shipped Josef and Peter to Siberia. It was a thorough piece of work, not likely to be criticized.

  Josef had pushed aside a pile of brush, and was now staring with fascination at the bared patch of earth. An ant emerged furtively from a hole, carrying an egg. It ran around in crazy circles, then scurried back into the darkness of the tiny earth womb. “A marvelous adjustment ants have made, isn’t it, Peter?” said Josef enviously. “The good life—efficient, uncomplicated. Instinct makes all the decisions.” He sneezed. “When I die, I think I’d like to be reincarnated as an ant. A modern ant, not a capitalist ant,” he added quickly.

  “What makes you so sure you aren’t one?” said Peter.

  Josef shrugged off the jibe. “Men could learn a lot from ants, Peter, my boy.”

  “They have, Josef, they have,” said Peter wearily. “More than they know.”

  KURT VONNEGUT was a master of contemporary American literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him, in the words of The New York Times, as “a true artist” with the publication of Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.

  SIDNEY OFFIT has written two novels, two memoirs, and ten books for young readers. He was a senior editor of Intellectual Digest and a book editor of Politics Today, and for three decades he has served on the boards of the Authors Guild and PEN American Center. Currently, Mr. Offit is the curator emeritus of the George Polk Awards in Journalism. He lives in New York City with his wife, Avodah.

  Early, unpublished short stories by America’s

  “unimitative and inimitable social satirist” *

  Kurt Vonnegut

  LOOK AT THE BIRDIE

  UNPUBLISHED SHORT FICTION

  Available in hardcover and eBook editions

  October 20, 2009

  Frequently startlingly perceptive, at points ruefully sinister, always vintage Vonnegut, the fourteen never-before-published short stories featured in Look at the Birdie date from the years before this American master began his ascent to international stardom and provide an unparalleled look into the early mind of the man who would go on to change the literary landscape forever.

  * Harper’s

  CLASSIC VONNEGUT

  AVAILABLE NOW FROM

  THE RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING GROUP

  A Man Without a Country

  Bluebeard

  Breakfast of Champions

  Cat’s Cradle

  Deadeye Dick

  Galápagos

  God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

  Jailbird

  Mother Night

  Palm Sunday

  Player Piano

  The Sirens of Titan

  Slapstick

  Slaughterhouse-Five

  Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons

  Welcome to the Monkey House

  a cognizant original v5 release october 04 2010

  The Petrified Ants is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by The Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Trust

  Foreword © 2009 by Sidney Offit

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  The story “The Petrified Ants” will appear in Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut, forthcoming from Delacorte Press.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33939-7

  Good News, copyright © 1994 Kurt Vonnegut/Origami Express, LLC

  www.vonnegut.com

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  I

  II

  III

  Epilogue