3.5 stars ( )

Currently re-reading this and enjoying every little one. ( )

I'm not usually a short story guy but I love Vonnegut. Actually, I think his short stories are better than his long form. However, this collection gathered from magazines published early in his carrier was not his top notch work. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Vonnegut short stories but it is a very enjoyable read. ( )

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 It's a long strange trip through 23 previously unpublished stories.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) ( )

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!) ( )