Bagombo Snuff Box
Kurt Vonnegut
RosettaBooks
<p>Here, Kurt Vonnegut's final short story collection&#8212;Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)&#8212;we have combined early and rather more obscure stories which had not appeared earlier. Drawn largely from the 1950s and the slick magazine markets which Vonnegut had from the beginning of his career in the postwar period demonstrated an uncanny ability to sell, these stories show clearly that Vonnegut found his central themes early on as a writer. More, he had been able to place stories in great consumer magazines like Colliers (that his good friend and college classmate Knox Burger was editing Colliers during this time was perhaps no small factor in Vonnegut's success). There were only a handful of science fiction writers of Vonnegut's generation who were able to sell in such a broad manner outside of the genre during the '50s, but it was this success that allowed Vonnegut the consistent denial that he was not a science fiction writer at all.<p>Vonnegut's themes&#8212;folly, hypocrisy,...</p></p>