What do you think?
Rate this book
The Petrified Ants
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Vonnegut explores the relationship between science’s pursuit of truth and the state’s need to control it in “The Petrified Ants,” a darkly whimsical story about two Soviet researchers who stumble upon an amazing discovery, only to learn that natural history is also written by the hand that wields the power. “The Petrified Ants” and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut’s unique voice had been stilled forever–and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.Other stories from Look at the Birdie available as single-story sale August 25, 2009"Hello, Red"On sale October 20, 2009:"Confido""FUBAR""Shout About It from the Housetops""Ed Luby's Key Club""A Song for Selma""Hall of Mirrors""The Nice Little People""Little Drops of Water""The Honor of a Newsboy""Look at the Birdie" (Short Story)"King and Queen of the Universe""The Good Explainer"
18 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
9 people are currently reading
992 people want to read
About the author
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
710 books37.1k followersKurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 4, 2021
You could condense this 28 pages down to two words, Communism Bad, and you’d essentially have the same thing. Decent writing but it clearly exists simply to share a political message and that message is hammered home by an unaccompanied sledgehammer.
Read
January 26, 2022I remember reading this story as a teen, and I've recalled it many times since then. I think I liked it when I first read it, but lately something has been bothering me about this story and I felt I should put it into words. For a long time I thought it had to be a coincidence that Vonnegut wrote a short story about Russian myrmecologists. And if it were only about Russian myrmecologists I could probably accept that it was a coincidence. But this is a story about Russian myrmecologists where the ants are vehicles for ideologies.
I'll start with a brief summary: Two brothers, Josef and Peter, are researchers who specialize in ants. They are called to study ant fossils that were found deep underground in a failed uranium mine. The mine is supervised by Stalin's favored third cousin. Josef, the elder brother, is a diplomatic person, able to toe the party line and avoid the suspicion and ire of the Communist party. In contrast, Peter is young and rash, and he had already offended the Communist party with a prior research paper, for which he had to issue an apology. The two brothers investigate the ants and discover that the oldest ants were individuals before they became hive creatures, as evidenced by their individual homes, as well as evidence of literature, arts, and technological developments like the wheel. These ants do not have pincers. As they progress through the later layers of strata, they find that the pincerless ants are overtaken by ants with pincers, who live in large, communal homes, and the literature/technology gives way to only one set of 'paintings', which Peter concludes must be political posters. In the final layers of strata, the pincerless, individualistic ants are extinct. When the brothers present these findings to Borgorov, Stalin's cousin, he rejects their interpretations, and insists that there must have been a geologic upheaval, and that the individual ants were "lawless ants", "capitalists who attacked and exploited the workers," before they were eventually subdued by the other ants.
As it stands alone, this is a relatively straightforward, albeit clumsy and shallow, allegory for the suppression of other ideologies in a communist regime. That's how I read it back when I was a teen. However, if you haven't read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, you should, and you should know it was written by Pyotr (Peter) Kropotkin, a Russian anarchist, socialist, and zoologist. You should also know that Kropotkin based many of his arguments in Mutual Aid on his extensive study of ants, among other animals, and that his main thesis was that cooperation, not competition, made for the success of the species.
After reading Mutual Aid, I can't help but feel this short story is intellectually dishonest. One of the lines in particular that stood out to me was referred to the younger brother's frustration at being rebuked for other research: "he had had to apologize because the ants he had studied would not behave the way the top Communist scientific brass wanted them to." Vonnegut is clearly criticizing the tendency to suppress facts that are not in line with a narrative. But this is exactly what he is doing in this text - he invents new scientists who study different kinds of ants, ones that behave like individualist capitalists - because the actual Russian scientist who studied actual ants found facts and came to conclusions that did not mesh with Vonnegut's Western ideologies.
I cannot find any sources about Vonnegut's familiarity with Kropotkin's work. However I have found some interviews where he expresses familiarity with anarchism in general and famous anarchist theorists like Bakunin, so I find it hard to believe he was unaware of Kropotkin or his theories in Mutual Aid. This belief is further cemented by the fact that he wrote a short story about a Russian myrmecologist named Peter who is critical of the Communist Party. In conclusion, this short story is intellectually dishonest.
I'll start with a brief summary: Two brothers, Josef and Peter, are researchers who specialize in ants. They are called to study ant fossils that were found deep underground in a failed uranium mine. The mine is supervised by Stalin's favored third cousin. Josef, the elder brother, is a diplomatic person, able to toe the party line and avoid the suspicion and ire of the Communist party. In contrast, Peter is young and rash, and he had already offended the Communist party with a prior research paper, for which he had to issue an apology. The two brothers investigate the ants and discover that the oldest ants were individuals before they became hive creatures, as evidenced by their individual homes, as well as evidence of literature, arts, and technological developments like the wheel. These ants do not have pincers. As they progress through the later layers of strata, they find that the pincerless ants are overtaken by ants with pincers, who live in large, communal homes, and the literature/technology gives way to only one set of 'paintings', which Peter concludes must be political posters. In the final layers of strata, the pincerless, individualistic ants are extinct. When the brothers present these findings to Borgorov, Stalin's cousin, he rejects their interpretations, and insists that there must have been a geologic upheaval, and that the individual ants were "lawless ants", "capitalists who attacked and exploited the workers," before they were eventually subdued by the other ants.
As it stands alone, this is a relatively straightforward, albeit clumsy and shallow, allegory for the suppression of other ideologies in a communist regime. That's how I read it back when I was a teen. However, if you haven't read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, you should, and you should know it was written by Pyotr (Peter) Kropotkin, a Russian anarchist, socialist, and zoologist. You should also know that Kropotkin based many of his arguments in Mutual Aid on his extensive study of ants, among other animals, and that his main thesis was that cooperation, not competition, made for the success of the species.
After reading Mutual Aid, I can't help but feel this short story is intellectually dishonest. One of the lines in particular that stood out to me was referred to the younger brother's frustration at being rebuked for other research: "he had had to apologize because the ants he had studied would not behave the way the top Communist scientific brass wanted them to." Vonnegut is clearly criticizing the tendency to suppress facts that are not in line with a narrative. But this is exactly what he is doing in this text - he invents new scientists who study different kinds of ants, ones that behave like individualist capitalists - because the actual Russian scientist who studied actual ants found facts and came to conclusions that did not mesh with Vonnegut's Western ideologies.
I cannot find any sources about Vonnegut's familiarity with Kropotkin's work. However I have found some interviews where he expresses familiarity with anarchism in general and famous anarchist theorists like Bakunin, so I find it hard to believe he was unaware of Kropotkin or his theories in Mutual Aid. This belief is further cemented by the fact that he wrote a short story about a Russian myrmecologist named Peter who is critical of the Communist Party. In conclusion, this short story is intellectually dishonest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 4, 2019
Η πρώτη μου γνωριμία με το έργο του Βόνεγκατ έμελλε να είναι αυτό το διήγημα, αδημοσίευτο όσο ζούσε ο συγγραφέας. Μου έγινε αμέσως φανερό ότι κατείχε άψογα την τέχνη της γραφής, ενώ και το βασικό του εύρημα είναι πανέξυπνο· δύο σοβιετικοί μυρμηγκολόγοι στα μεταπολεμικά σταλινικά χρόνια ανακαλύπτουν έναν απολιθώμενο πολιτισμό προϊστορικών μυρμηγκιών ο οποίος διαπιστώνουν ότι είχε μια ιστορική εξέλιξη που τους θυμίζει πολύ έντονα «κάτι». Ταυτόχρονα όμως η κριτική του είναι τόσο κοντά στην αντισοβιετική προπαγάνδα που καταντάει καρικατούρα, πράγμα που ίσως εξηγεί και γιατί δεν το είχε δημοσιεύσει ο ίδιος ποτέ. Σίγουρα θα διαβάσω και κάτι άλλο δικό του.
January 20, 2010
Super quick read that was pretty amusing. Two scientists in the Soviet Union find a collection of fossils (petrified ants). They find that the ants had societies and were able to map out the evolution of the ants. The people up the chain do not like the findings- the ants were too free thinking and too much against the views of the government. The government has the two scientists write a more "favorable" report, covers up the dig site and sends the two scientists to Siberia to work the rest of their days.
It really reflects how our own governments work many times. Many times I think the truth is covered up by officials who don't like the findings or the truth and want something different reflected. Whether it is to hide their own flaws or hide flaws in an already imperfect system, they cover things up and life goes on.
It really reflects how our own governments work many times. Many times I think the truth is covered up by officials who don't like the findings or the truth and want something different reflected. Whether it is to hide their own flaws or hide flaws in an already imperfect system, they cover things up and life goes on.
April 9, 2013
meh - too on the nose.
February 12, 2020
Unfortunately and uncomfortably relevant in relation to Trump’s Republican Party.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
August 28, 2020
Like all great satire, it's depressing because it's still topical.
January 21, 2026
One of the stronger stories in this collection. Functions as a great metaphor for the social effects of governmental control and secrecy during the Cold War.
March 7, 2017
Too short
June 23, 2015
interesting short story about fossilised ants found in the bottom of a uranium mine in Stalin Russia.
the ants were civilised and cultured. They had homes , books and a sense of society and culture.
Vonnegut uses his trademark satire to reflect his story on our times and how each human could have represented a pincerless ant.
the ants were civilised and cultured. They had homes , books and a sense of society and culture.
Vonnegut uses his trademark satire to reflect his story on our times and how each human could have represented a pincerless ant.
May 14, 2012
I think the book gods are smiling on me today. Small but perfectly formed, in this short story two Russian scientists come across some petrified ants that startingly point out the way mankind is headed, only to have history rewritten by someone more powerful.
November 1, 2010
Having just watched the Station Agent, I was already in a Russian/Soviet Union mode when I picked up this short story...LOVED it! Perfect for a snowy afternoon...and we'll have those soon enough.
August 21, 2012
This took 5 minutes to read; I don't think it can actually be called a book. It's good though, very clever.
November 1, 2012
An ant civilization! That was a very interesting analogy.
It's the first short story I read for Kurt, and I'm looking forward to read more of his books.
It's the first short story I read for Kurt, and I'm looking forward to read more of his books.
April 7, 2013
A take on the Russian interpretation of socialism. However, I felt the underlying message was how people would always see evidence in a way that justifies what they have already taken to be true.
December 22, 2014
Quick, good. Oh KV, I miss you so.
June 28, 2013
Absolutely brilliant. A brief, very brief, but powerful story. No doubt Vonnegut is one of the greatest, he can deliver a very important message in a precise and concise but humorous way.
December 17, 2013
Fascinating short story about communism and how man creates the history that power wins
December 25, 2013
Short and classical Kurt Vonnegut! Every chapter is ended with suspense and you can't help but laugh at the terrible ending.
March 11, 2014
Light but heavy.
April 23, 2016
Excellent short story. Typical KV insight and humour. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews