Monday’s release of Vladimir Nabakov’s The Original Laura has generated considerable fanfare, in large part because the famed writer expressly requested in his will that the works be destroyed. Meanwhile, the posthumous publication of another famous former Cornellian has gone largely unnoticed, despite some highly favorable reviews. In the books of Bokonon ...: Kurt Vonnegut ’44 speaks at The Sun’s 125th anniversary banquet in 2005, before his death in 2007.

On Oct. 20, Delacorte Press printed 14 previously unpublished short stories by former Sun assistant managing editor Kurt Vonnegut ’44. Named Look at the Birdie after one of the short story’s titles, the collection is the second compilation of Vonnegut’s work published since his death in April 2007.

Look at the Birdie has received high praise in The New York Times and on several online blogs. Curiously, however, several publications such as the L.A. Times, the Village Voice, Newsweek and others that had reviewed Vonnegut’s first posthumous book, Armageddon in Retrospect, have yet to mention Look at the Birdie.

Author and New York Times book reviewer Dave Eggers wrote that the beginning of Vonnegut’s collection, “immediately reminds us how beautifully Vonnegut wrote, and how judiciously he measured out his most lyrical sentences.”

Eggers, who, according to a separate piece published in the Times, “once read all of Vonnegut’s fiction in a month,” praises the stories for their succinct, upbeat nature. “Why these stories went unpublished is hard to answer. … They’re polished, relentlessly fun to read and every last one of them comes to a neat and satisfying end,” Eggers wrote.

Bryan Young, filmmaker and Huffington Post blogger, wrote that the stories are “all classic Vonnegut, handcrafted to perfection by a master storyteller … like going to an old friend.”

The self-billed “contemporary literature guide” John Formy-Duval called “each story … a small gem that will find its way proudly into the Vonnegut cannon” on about.com.

Still, despite these favorable reviews, the Times remains the one major U.S. newspaper that has run a story about Look at the Birdie.

Although evaluated for its literary merit, Look at the Birdie (perhaps inadvertently) provides a historical insight into a bygone form of storytelling. As described in the foreword by Vonnegut’s friend, author Sidney Offit, “[The stories] are evidence of ... the popular ‘slick’ magazines [of the] fifties and early sixties.”

“Slicks” — such as Collier’s and Cosmopolitan — helped Vonnegut “support his growing family” by selling individual stories for a “generous fee,” according to Offit. Offit also mentioned that Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner also began their careers writing “Slicks,” which Offit describes as “so easy to read, so straight-forward … until the reader thinks about what the author is saying.”

Look at the Birdie is Vonnegut’s fourth collection of short stories, and the prolific writer’s 33rd published work, ranging from novels to dramas, according to vonnegutweb.com.