{ "item_title" : "Pity the Reader", "item_author" : [" Kurt Vonnegut", "Suzanne McConnell "], "item_description" : "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.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/64/421/021/1644210215_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "19.95", "online_price" : "19.95", "our_price" : "19.95", "club_price" : "19.95", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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