Bagombo Snuff Box

It's a Vonnegut fan's dream: un-collected gems of his early fiction in audio form. Vonnegut handpicked these rare pieces from his writings of the 1950s and 1960s. Already, his satirical sense of the absurd is present, not only in the bizarrely named title piece, but also in such stories as "The Boy Who Hated Girls" and "Thanasphere." Reader Alexander Marshall brings to the stories the perfect balance of a suave announcer's voice (listeners can easily imagine these stories being presented on radio) and a wide range of character voices that add incredible color to the zany characters only Kurt Vonnegut could create. R.A.P. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

June 28, 1999
In an amiable and lengthy introduction read by the author, Vonnegut sounds downright aged, undeniably wise and a bit wistful, conjuring up the time of his early writing career when he wrote these previously uncollected short stories for magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Argosy. Sparks of his youthful, mischievous humor soon break through, as he describes his time working first as a PR man for General Electric, then as a journeyman magazine writer. "Thanasphere," a SF outing about an astronaut who hears the voices of dead spirits in space, mocks Cold War-era scientists who were "amazed at nothing." Likewise, "To Be or Not to Be," with its future-view of enforced population control, shows Utopian ideals gone awry. Read in sensitive tones by Marshall (an actor who has narrated parts for animated series on TV), the stories' sly moods seem to build on their own. Based on the 1999 Putnam hardcover.

April 15, 2000
Last year Vonnegut distressed his fans by saying that Timequake was his final book. The unexpected appearance of Bagombo Snuff Box this year is therefore a welcome surprise. However, it should be understood that this book contains no new fiction; it's a collection of stories that haven't seen the light of day since Vonnegut published them in early 1950s magazines. Their not being reprinted sooner says something about them--most simply aren't very good. When they start to develop interesting ideas, they tend to end abruptly and pointlessly. As a group, they're little more than curious relics revealing little of what makes Vonnegut's later work special. If anyone other than Vonnegut had written them, this book wouldn't draw flies. However, he did write them, and that means the book will draw library patrons aplenty. Alexander Marshall's reading is service able, but the real treat in this abridged audio edition is the author himself; he narrates his own lengthy, and often revealing, introduction and afterword. His reading alone is worth the price of admission, and it makes this an almost obligatory purchase for libraries catering to his readers.--R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA

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