We are what we pretend to be - Kurt Vonnegut

Called "our finest black-humorist" by The Atlantic Monthly,
Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th
century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time
in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.

Written to be sold under the pseudonym of "Mark Harvey," Basic Training
was never published in Vonnegut's lifetime. It appears to have been
written in the late 1940s and is therefore Vonnegut's first ever
novella. It is a bitter, profoundly disenchanted story that satirizes
the military, authoritarianism, gender relationships, parenthood and
most of the assumed mid-century myths of the family. Haley Brandon, the
adolescent protagonist, comes to the farm of his relative, the old crazy
who insists upon being called The General, to learn to be a
straight-shooting American. Haley's only means of survival will lead him
to unflagging defiance of the General's deranged (but oh so American,
oh so military) values. This story and its thirtyish author were no
friends of the milieu to which the slick magazines' advertisers were
pitching their products.

When Vonnegut passed away in 2007, he left his last novel unfinished. Entitled If God Were Alive Today,
this last work is a brutal satire on societal ignorance and carefree
denial of the world's major problems. Protagonist Gil Berman is a
middle-aged college lecturer and self-declared stand-up comedian who
enjoys cracking jokes in front of a college audience while societal
dependence on fossil fuels has led to the apocalypse. Described by
Vonnegut as, "the stand-up comedian on Doomsday," Gil is a character
formed from Vonnegut's own rich experiences living in a reality Vonnegut
himself considered inevitable.

Along with the two works of fiction, Vonnegut's daughter, Nanette shares reminiscences about her father and commentary on these two works-both exclusive to this edition.

In this fiction collection, published in print for the
first time, exist Vonnegut's grand themes: trust no one, trust nothing;
and the only constants are absurdity and resignation, which themselves
cannot protect us from the void but might divert.