{
    "id": 383593,
    "slug": "pity-the-reader",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Pity the Reader",
    "subtitle": null,
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    "description": "<p>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. <em>Pity the Reader</em>&nbsp;is the very embodiment of that idea, a book about writing and life and why the two go together.<strong><br /></strong>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.<br />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.<br />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. <em>Pity the Reader </em>indeed.</p>",
    "additional_content": null,
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    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 448,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2020-10-13",
    "publication_date_latest": "2020-10-13",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9781644210215",
            "product_form": "BC"
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:35:10+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-11-05T00:32:50+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4108,
        "slug": "random-house-us",
        "name": "Random House US",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:07:56+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:09+00:00"
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    "contributors": [
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            "slug": "kurt-vonnegut-2",
            "key_names": "Vonnegut",
            "names_before_key": "Kurt",
            "prefix_to_key": null,
            "contributor_role": "A01",
            "readable_contributor_role": "Author"
        }
    ],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
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            "subject_code": "320",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:35:10+00:00",
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