SKU: 32780589530

We Are What We Pretend to Be: The First and Last Works

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We Are What We Pretend to Be: The First and Last WorksCalled 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

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."

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Published: 10/08/2013
ISBN: 9780306822780
Pages: 161
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.56w x 0.47d
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SKU: 32780589530

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Amazon Customer
Houston, US
★★★★★ 5
Five Stars
Format: Paperback
This helped a lot for us to prepare for the SLATE exam.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2016
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Amazon Customer
Fort Morgan, US
★★★★★ 5
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Format: Paperback
This is great! I like this one.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2016
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Ng Meowster
Bozeman, US
★★★★★ 2
Good to have if you've never seen the iTEP exam, but don't rely on it to boost your scores
Format: Paperback
This book is good in that it comes with two practice tests: one in the beginning of the book, one in the end of the book. The grading rubric is helpful too. However, the actual guide part of the book, doesn't help too much with how to improve test scores. What I like least about this guide is that it won't tell you which questions you answered incorrectly on the practice exams. A good test prep guide will tell you what you answered incorrectly, and will tell you what logic to follow to get to the correct answer. In the reading passages, it would be nice to know where I can find evidence to justify the "correct" answer. In the grammar section, it would be nice to know which rule I'm violating. Any test guide should always come with some testing strategies. I.E. If this question is taking up too much time, skip it and go to the next one. This guide lacks simple strategies like that. Simple strategies like that could be useful when incorporated into this guide because there are certain sections on the exam that you can go back to previous questions, but some sections where the "back" button is disabled. Overall, if you've never seen an iTEP exam before, this book is certainly helpful in that it will give you an idea of what you will be testing for. However, this book alone won't help you achieve a score of 6. The table of contents itself will tell you there are only 86 pages of actual content covering test material. That's not enough to cover how to excel in the exam.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2015
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Cliente Amazon
Battle Creek, US
★★★★★ 1
Don't buy it
Format: Paperback
It does not prepare for the real test. Using it is absolutely not enough to be approved with good grades. Too expensive for what it offers.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2016
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Xiaomeng Han
Natrona Heights, US
★★★★★ 5
Five Stars
Format: Paperback
great
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Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2016

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