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    Bagombo Snuff Box
    Bagombo Snuff Box
    Bagombo Snuff Box
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Bagombo Snuff Box

    Written by Kurt Vonnegut

    Narrated by Alexander Marshall

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This is vintage Vonnegut: short stories never-before collected or published in book form. They are from the era of the Golden Age of magazines: a pre-television time when publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Argosy, and others reigned supreme as Americans' entertainment choice.

    Before that Golden Age drew to a close half a century ago, a young PR man at General Electric sold his first short story to one of the publications. By the time he'd sold his third, Vonnegut quit GE to join the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner to write short stories at fifteen-hundred dollars a piece.

    Vonnegut himself has selected the best of these early stories for this audio collection, and has written a new preface and afterword for the occasion. Now listeners can relive the genesis of the master. Stories such as "Cruise of the Jolly Roger," "The Powder Blue Dragon," "Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp," and "Bagombo Snuff Box" return us to the beginning of a literary voice that's sure to endure forever. Bagombo Snuff Box, the missing pieces of the master's collection, is a ready-made classic for Vonnegut fans new and old.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 15, 2007
    ISBN9781598872231
    Bagombo Snuff Box
    Author

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as ""a true artist"" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene has declared, ""one of the best living American writers.""

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    Reviews for Bagombo Snuff Box

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed these short stories. These aren't sconce fiction except for one or two stories. It demonstates Vonnegut's mastery of storytelling. He could make a rock sound intersting. I love his introductions and epilogues. It really delves into the root of all of his stories and demonstates he doesn't take himself too seriously. These are the stories he had written before and during his first major novel, player piano. Many of the characters, plots and settings are revisited in depth in his later works. It's nice to read them here in their infancy. This book is more for the already established Vonnegut fan for that reason specifically. Fab lines:It proves that the short story, because of its phsiological and psychological effects on a human being, is more closely related to Buddhist styles of meditation than it is to any other form of narrative entertainment...a Buddhist cat-napReading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.
    • 5/5
      A very crazy and a very serious writer. I love him.
    • 5/5
      this book really took me back to a simpler time when riding with very much from the heart love the book lot of nostalgia
    • 4/5
      This is a short story collection by Kurt Vonnegut. These short stories were written in a time when a writer could make a living selling short stories to commercial magazines, and these were Vonnegut's. Other writers who were cranking out short stories for a regular paycheck included William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway,and John Steinbeck, so Vonnegut was in good company in this regard.The stories in this collection are all very entertaining and all have Vonnegut's typical sardonic wit. None of the stories really stand out as all are quite enjoyable, and Vonnegut does not have the bad habit of repeating the same themes that can lead to a short story collection becoming tedious by the end of the book. Instead, these are all very inventive, and many are quite different from each other. The only thing missing from this collection was that one great short story that the reader will remember long after finishing the book. File these under forgettably fun read.
    • 4/5
      An interesting collection of stories... a different Vonnegut
    • 4/5
      More than just a snapshot of Vonnegut's developing skills as a writer, Bagombo Snuff Box stands as a look back into American life in the mid-twentieth century. Full of stories of marriage, relationships, and love, this book explores changing notions of gender roles and family dynamics through the words of one of the country's greatest writers. Vonnegut's signature gentle humor comes through in early every story, and each reads as a quick jaunt into an easily-resolved dilemma. This collection is a representation of what magazine audiences at the time wanted to read, more than what Vonnegut wanted to write. It's a fascinating little cultural nugget, and it makes me wonder how popular fiction of today will hold up in fifty or sixty years. Surely, 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight will not find themselves among the pantheon of great American literature, while Vonnegut's stories have done just that.
    • 4/5
      These are Vonnegut's first published works, so obviously some of them lack a little polish. Still, many of them are recognizable as Vonnegut stories. At the end in the Afterword he has some great insight into the writing world (still true about 20 years later) and the Midwest. (Yay, Midwesterners!)
    • 5/5
      Pick up this collection of short stories and you'll get to travel back several decades while inside of Kurt Vonnegut's bizarre imagination. It's a long strange trip through 23 previously unpublished stories. The stories in the collection were written shortly after he left his PR job at General Electric, back in the 1950's. That was a time when the nation's magazines provided a ready market for short stories, allowing Vonnegut to begin to make a living off of his creative writing. His rich and fertile imagination gives this collection a wonderful variety. Some of the social and sexual attitudes are dated, but the prices that past for outrageously expensive in the 50's are so very comical now—just imagine $100,000 mansions and rare expensive sports cars for $5,651! Reading Bagombo Snuff Box brought memories flooding back of studying in college and using Vonnegut to "air out my mind" between reading Hegel and Marx. While it's guaranteed that Vonnegut fans will find some new favorite stories, all readers should know that it's impossible to traverse this fertile 23-step path without appreciating this writer's mind and his humorous imagination. You owe yourself some Vonnegut. (5/01)
    • 5/5
      This is probably my favorite of Vonnegut's works, but then I love short stories. Some are touching, some are sad, and some are laugh out loud funny. This is some of his best work.
    • 4/5
      Stories from the '50s & '60s KV wrote to make a living. It's not as inspired as his novels - but as he explains he wrote these to pay the bills to allow him to be able to write his bizarrely brilliant novels. There are flashes of KV genius & some are strangely evocative pictures of the '50s & '60s. Some are a bit boring though.