The Drone King, a previously unpublished Kurt Vonnegut short story

The Atlantic has just put up a previously unpublished short story by Kurt Vonnegut, The Drone King. It’s about bees.

He examined the card for a long time. “Yes,” he said at last. “Mr. Quick is expecting you. You’ll find him in the small library — second door on the left, by the grandfather clock.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I started past him.

He caught my sleeve. “Sir—”

“Yes?,” I said.

“You aren’t wearing a boutonniere, are you?”

“No,” I said guiltily. “Should I be?”

“If you were,” he said, “I’d have to ask you to check it. No women or flowers allowed past the front desk.”

I paused by the door of the small library. “Say,” I said, “you know this clock has stopped?”

“Mr. Quick stopped it the night Calvin Coolidge died,” he said.

I blushed. “Sorry,” I said.

“We all are,” he said. “But what can anyone do?”

An audio version of the article is available.

The story is one of five that Vonnegut wrote in the early 1950s that were recently discovered in the author’s papers. These five, plus all of Vonnegut’s other short stories, will be out in book form later this month.

* This post was cut and pasted from kottke.org

For more on . . .

-N- Stuff  :  Short Stories  :  Kurt Vonnegut's greatest writing advice

BE SURE TO SCROLL DOWN AND SUBSCRIBE - THANKS FOR READING!

The Mustard Seed - Author Unknown

The Mustard Seed - an old Chinese tale

Once there was a woman whose only son had died. In her sorrow she went to ask a wise holy man is there a way to bring her son back to life. “Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to bring your son back to life.” He said to her instead of sending her away or try reasoning with her.

At once she quickly set off looking for that elusive mustard seed. The first place she came to was is a huge mansion. Knocking on the door, she asked “I am looking for a house that has never known suffering. Is this the place? It is very important to me.”

“You have come to the wrong place” they told her. They begin to pour out all the tragic things that have befallen upon them.

“Who is better to be able to help these poor unfortunate souls than I who has experience sadness and can understand them?” she thought. Therefore she stayed behind and consoled and comforted them before going to another house that has never known sorrow before.

However, wherever she goes, from huts to palaces, there is never one without tales of sadness and misfortunes. In time to come, she became so involved in listening to other people’s sad stories that she forgot about her quest for that elusive mustard seed. By listening to other people, she had actually driven the grieving out of her life.

Cathedral, by Raymond Carver

"My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to."

You can buy it here

or download it here.

The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy

"Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation."

You can buy it here

or download it here.