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Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut
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Never-before-collected, vintage Vonnegut.
"Vonnegut said that his last book, Timequake (1997), would be his last, but no one as imaginative and in love with language and story can resist the lure of the page, and it's obvious that he had a grand time working on this collection of his vintage stories. Bagombo Snuff Box resurrects Vonnegut's earliest efforts, stories written during the fifties and sixties for such popular venues as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. In his engagingly autobiographical introduction, Vonnegut describes his stints as a Chicago journalist and PR man for General Electric in Schenectady, New York; his decision to supplement his income by writing; and his rapid success and evolution into a full-time writer. So, here are his literary roots, a set of stories that reflects their era's eagerness to turn the horrors of war into anecdote and to equate technology with progress. Unabashedly fablelike, they can be either sly or sweet, sentimental or vaudevillian, but all are quietly subversive. . . . Rich in low-key humor and good old-fashioned morality, Vonnegut's stories are both wily and tender." —Booklist
"You trust this voice . . . the pretentious are all brought to earth with his wit . . . These stories . . . speak only of simple truths." —Chicago Sun-Times
- Sales Rank: #122544 in Books
- Color: Cream
- Brand: Vonnegut, Kurt
- Published on: 2000-08-01
- Released on: 2000-08-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.96" h x .97" w x 5.15" l, .66 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Amazon.com Review
From out of the blue, here's a new collection of Vonnegut fiction--his first magazine stories from the 1950s in book form at last, with some charming reminiscences (and three new endings for old stories) by the author. Vonnegut says these tales were meant to be as evanescent as lightening bugs, and that image captures their frail magic. They're like time travelers from an epoch when stories swarmed in mass-market magazines, before TV dawned and doomed them.
Later greatness glimmers here: the offbeat sci-fi of "Thanasphere" (in which an astronaut encounters dead souls in space) and the hero's bogus adventures in alien lands in "Bagombo Snuff Box" look forward to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, as do the war stories "Souvenir," "Der Arme Dolmetscher," and "The Cruise of The Jolly Roger," which incorporate and amplify Vonnegut's actual war experiences. There's authentic midcentury news here, even in the gentle Saturday Evening Post social satire of "The No-Talent Kid," "Ambitious Sophomore," and "The Boy Who Hated Girls," which pretty much nail the high-school marching band experience. The pieces are peppered with odd, true observations and neat little turns of phrase: one incompetent kid in Lincoln High's band marches "flappingly, like a mother flamingo pretending to be injured, luring alligators from her nest."
You can't miss the ironic humor and the humane, death-haunted melancholy of the young war veteran and tyro writer. This collection beats his first novel, Player Piano, and anticipates the masterpiece Cat's Cradle, whose tiny chapters resemble short stories. Young Vonnegut is derivative, mostly of Saki and O. Henry, partly because he couldn't think of endings, and their switcheroos offered a handy model. But from the start, Vonnegut's idiosyncratic voice is unmistakable. --Tim Appelo
From Publishers Weekly
Any new book by Vonnegut, especially since he has vowed to retire from literature, will be welcomed by his fans. But as the author himself says in his introduction, these 23 apprenticeship stories "were expected to be among the living about as long as individual lightning bugs," and they will be of most interest to completists and scholars. Vonnegut's best short stories from the '50s were collected in Welcome to the Monkey House. Those in this collection for the most part work humbly with formulas dear to mid-century middlebrow magazines like Colliers. Included are tales like "The No-Talent Kid" and "The Boy Who Hated Girls," both featuring a genial bandmaster named George Helmholtz, who has to deal with misfit high school boys while dreaming of owning a seven-foot-tall drum. In "Thanasphere," Vonnegut tries out a sci-fi themeAa man is sent into space in a rocket and discovers that space is full of the voices of the dead. In a short, ironic piece, "Der Arme Dolmetscher," a soldier who recites a line from Heine's "Die Lorelei" that he has learned by rote is assumed to "talk Kraut" by a bungling officer. Pressed into service as a translator, he acquires just enough of the language to help his detachment surrender in the Battle of the Bulge. The title story concerns a man who visits his ex-wife and feeds her a cock-and-bull story about being an adventurer. In "Runaways," two teenagers realize that love is not enough to get married on, gently deflating the myth of the then-incipient youth culture long before the Summer of Love. Vonnegut's afterword, "Coda to My Career as a Writer for Periodicals," comments in his trademark style about his midwestern origins and the vagaries of writing for magazines. BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Back before the web and before TV, recreational activity included reading short stories in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. The 23 stories in this collection were published in magazines like the Post during the Fifties and are collected here for the first time. The topics covered include space travel ("Thanasphere"), which describes the first manned orbit of Earth; finding the American Dream ("The Package"), about a new home full of the latest accessories; and an attempt to impress an old girlfriend (the title story). Poking fun at pretentious individuals is featured in both "A Present for Big Saint Nick," where Christmas has been turned into a forced admiration society, and "The Powder Blue Dragon," in which the purchase of a fancy sports car is believed to be the key to a fantasy life. Although many of the stories are topically dated, the ironic insights and illumination of character are timeless, and no one does it better than Vonnegut. Highly recommended.
-AJoshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. System, Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
A welcome addition to the Vonnegut canon
By Chuck Augello (karinweigand@prodigy.net)
Since most of the stories in "Bagombo Snuff Box" were previously uncollected in book form, the arrival of this collection is a treat for all Vonnegut fans. As a writer of "slick fiction" for the magazine market of the 1950's and early 1960's, Vonnegut tailored his stories for a general readership; while the experimentalism of novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Breakfast of Champions" is nowhere on display, Vonnegut's craftsmanship is well-documented by these stories. "Bagombo Snuff Box" should be treated much like The Beatles Anthology collections; neither is for the casual fan, but both are indispensable for completists. The stories included in this collection are a cut below the stories in "Welcome To the Monkey House" (it's easy to see why they were left out of Vonnegut's first collection), but each is an enjoyable read, with several stories ("Thanosphere", "Custom-Made Bride" and "Souvenir") standing out for their voice and originality. This is also required reading for any serious students of Vonnegut, as many of the themes explored in his major works are given an early run-through in these stories. "2BRO2B" reads almost like a first draft of "Welcome to the Monkey House" and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" from the Monkey House collection. The stories are also interesting as snapshots from a by-gone era, particularly in their treatment of women. One of the strongest characters in the collection is Sheila White, of "Lovers Anonymous," a talented, ambitious woman whose sublimated talents places a strain on her marriage. While the impact of the story is lessened by a careless final sentence, Vonnegut should be credited for sneaking a potentially subversive theme into a mainstream publication. A reader's reaction to "Bagombo Snuff Box" will probably mirror his or her expectations. Anyone expecting cutting-edge Vonnegut will be disappointed. Fans who like to read everything a favorite author has written will be thrilled to add this to the collection. Since I put myself into the latter category, the arrival of "Bagombo Snuff Box" is like a Christmas present in July. Thoroughly unexpected, and completely enjoyable.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Not genius, the making of one
By Bill R. Moore
Kurt Vonnegut fans will want to read this, but... if you're new to the man, start elsewhere. Diehard Vonneguttians will enjoy this collection as it contains some worthwhile stories, but, mostly, it shows how his trademark caustically witty style developed. These stories aren't great in themselves, but they point the way. Certainly his literary merit based on his novels alone is beyond question - one of the 20th century's greatest and most important authors, Vonnegut helped shape the way many people, including myself, think. However, these stories are not great in themselves, certainly not compared to the high standard Vonnegut has since set for himself. Still, fans will want to read this book, as it contains some interesting stories, lays the foundation for his later masterpieces, and, indeed, completes their collection. New readers should start elsewhere.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Angels protect the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.
By taking a rest
Title of this review is a quote from Mr. Vonnegut in this book. The ONLY reason I stopped at 4 stars is that any author who writes with this much skill at the start of his career, must become better and better as his skills mature, and his experience increases. This is the first time I have read Mr. Vonnegut's work, and this collection of short stories has made me a fan that looks forward to the Author's work as it developed. Before you even reach the first story, Mr. Vonnegut provides a biography which is worth the cost of the book if you place a high value on humor, and regardless of whether you agree, social commentary wrapped in a wickedly subtle, and occasionally not so subtle manner. His definition of reading is the best I have ever read, and his description of his time as a salesman for Saab is priceless. Developing so much interest for a reader in the span of a short story is a remarkable feat for any author. Mr. Vonnegut together with John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner, to name a few literary masters, brought these stories to life when magazines ruled and TV was a nightmare (for the most part) yet to come. Together with artistic legends like Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth, these stories were entertainment for much of America. In spite of all the advances in communications, picking up a book with talent like this, will always endure. Thanks Mr. Vonnegut!
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