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Bagombo Snuff Box (Paperback)

by Kurt Vonnegut (Author) "At noon, Wednesday, July 26th, windowpanes in the small mountain towns of Sevier County, Tennessee, were rattled by the shock and faint thunder of a..." (more)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
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Product Description

From Amazon.com

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
At noon, Wednesday, July 26th, windowpanes in the small mountain towns of Sevier County, Tennessee, were rattled by the shock and faint thunder of a distant explosion rolling down the northwest slopes of the Great Smokies. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (8)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3.0 out of 5 stars Can the real Kurt step up?, Jul 6 2002
By Beth "bethiejw2" (Mesa, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
There is a definite reason where the introduction bewares of this being Pre Vonnegutan days. There's the beginning of a master, some twists but that's all. Vonnegut is best known for his quirky, cynical twist on society. If anything in a lot of these stories he supports it. Especially when in "Lovers Anonymous" when he went on about magic markers and report cards, (you have to read it in order to know what I'm talking about.)
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5.0 out of 5 stars Daughter pleaser, father face-saver, May 5 2002
By Chris Holmes "busker" (Corfu, Greece) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Bagombo Snuff Box (Hardcover)
The only KV I've read is "Cat's Cradle" and that was 30 years ago. I noticed that my divine and discerning elder daughter carrying round various Vonnegut volumes so, ..., I snapped it up.
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4.0 out of 5 stars vonnegut in short form, April 18 2002
By ostawookiee "ostawookiee" (Winston-Salem, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bagombo Snuff Box (Hardcover)
The contents are short stories from mainly the fifties that Vonnegut got published in various magazines of the day. The stories read like typical Vonnegut, though in short format, you can tell Vonnegut focuses more on characters than on plot. I found it enjoyable. My one critique is that many of the stories were very very similar. As if he published one in Cosmo, and they called him and said "we like that! give us more as close to that as possible!"
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for the Vonnegut fanatic!
Even Vonnegut's lighter side is genius. This book is a collection of short stories he published in various magazines before he became a novelist. Read more
Published on Feb 28 2002 by J. Sesta

4.0 out of 5 stars Not genius, the making of one
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... Read more
Published on Dec 22 2001 by VoodooLord7

5.0 out of 5 stars Different from his novels, but excellent nonetheless!
I believe this to be an excellent collection of short stories from the "early Vonnegut days," if you will. Read more
Published on Nov 30 2001 by a_bricker

3.0 out of 5 stars Could be worse, Could be better
Fifty years from now, Kurt Vonnegut may very well be viewed a one of the top 5 American writers of the 20th century. Read more
Published on April 7 2001 by ghineman

4.0 out of 5 stars Early Works
I picked this up for cheap and was pretty happy with the content.

This book is good for those who like to see the evolution of a writing style. Read more

Published on Oct 3 2000 by ed

3.0 out of 5 stars Coming to a Close
In the introduction to this collection, Vonnegut says, "there is no greatness in this or my other collection, nor was there meant to be. Read more
Published on Aug 30 2000 by s-ray

3.0 out of 5 stars It's vintage...
I bought this book after picking it up in an airport bookstore. I was killing time, waiting on a delayed flight, and, as happens more often than not, I was sucked into the... Read more
Published on Aug 30 2000 by mahalia

4.0 out of 5 stars Power naps of Vonnegut
These short stories, harking back to another age and a near-extinct genre, offer what amounts to fifteen-minute power naps, delivering Vonnegut's refreshing wit and unique... Read more
Published on Jun 2 2000 by Brian T. Carpenter

3.0 out of 5 stars Not his best work
I began reading Vonnegut as a teenager. He was the first writer whose career I actually followed. When a new Vonnegut book got released, I was the first in line. Read more
Published on May 11 2000 by Voice of Chunk

4.0 out of 5 stars Even in three generations, things don't change that much.
I enjoyed this collection of Vonnegut's earlier short stories for many reasons: I liked that the same character (high school band instructor George Hemholtz) is the protagonist... Read more
Published on Mar 30 2000 by laa-laa

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