In one of his many books, Kurt Vonnegut told a short but hilarious story about a letter he wrote to his Uncle Alex. It was a gag letter, crudely insulting his uncle, signed with (what Kurt thought was) a transparently fake alias. Rather than collapse in hysterics at his nephew’s amazing humor, Uncle A mistook it for a genuine letter and was enraged.
I’ve had no trouble finding snippets and references to the letter, but want to see the tale as it was originally published, and can’t find any indication of which book it appeared in. Does anybody know?
Yeah, I got pulled in too. I can understand why KV regarded the book as still-born, but reading the condensed version was fun. Plotwise, my biggest complaint --which I don’t think needs a spoiler box-- is that there was little anticipation at the end of the time quake. If your life jumped ten years back just as you were pulling into your driveway on June 9, 2011, I think you’d be in a high state of excitement as that instant approached a second time.
There was a mention that the security guard was afraid he’d be zapped back into his prision cell again, but I think a lot of people would be ready for something odd to occur the instant they were no longer just reliving past events. Kilgore seemed like the only one not caught off guard.
