Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction

by KurtVonnegut (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $28.66

  Before the Golden Age of magazines drew to a close half a century ago, a young PR man at General Electric sold his first short story to one of the doomed publications. By the time he'd sold his third, he decided to quit GE and join the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and try to make a living at $1500. With four major magazines running five stories each week and smaller ones scouting as well, it was a seller's market, and Vonnegut was published regularly by The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Argosy and others. For this unusual collection, Vonnegut has selected twenty-four of his favourite stories never published before in book form and has written a new preface for the occasion. Vonnegut scholar Peter Reed, who unearthed the old publications, contributes an introduction. The stories bring us to the beginning of a literary voice that is sure to last forever. BAGOMBO SNUFF BOX, the missing pieces of the master's oeuvre, is a ready made classic for Vonnegut fans new and old.

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $24.72

  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