Previously Unpublished Kurt Vonnegut Novella Published as Kindle Single

Posted on March 25, 2012

A previously unpublished 20,000-word novella by Kurt Vonnegut has been published as a Kindle single by RosettaBooks. The novella, Basic Training, was written to be sold under the pseudonym Mark Harvey.

RosettaBooks says the novella appears to have been written in the 1940s. Vonnegut used pseudonyms during this period in his life when he was working in public relations for General Electric to avoid moonlighting accusations. He was trying to get his stories published in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, which rejected Basic Training in the last 1940s.

Here is a descrption of Basic Training from the publisher:

Basic Training 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.