BOOK / "MERCY OF THE READER." Kurt Vonnegut

Narrative Kurt Vonnegut liked to say, "Practicing an art form is a way to make the soul grow." "Have Pity on the Reader" is the very embodiment of that idea, a book about writing and life, and why the two go hand in hand. A master of masters, the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Breakfast of Champions" was extremely generous with his students: creative, encouraging, unpretentious, fun, and rich in technical resources that also hide the philosophy he had about the art of storytelling. "Find a theme that matters to you and that in your heart you feel should matter to others," was his first rule. And only once the theme was clear, he told his students: "Write to please one person. If you open the window and make love to the entire world, so to speak, your story will catch pneumonia." This book is full of luminous and subtle stories, very useful for learning to write, and also of situations in which Vonnegut shows his most human side: we see the war veteran, the family man, the chain s