Featured Post

Letterboxd Reviews

So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

A Book a Week - Bagombo Snuff Box


Book Forty-Eight of the Book-a-Week Quest

Bagombo Snuff Box
by Kurt Vonnegut (1999)

This is a collection of 23 short stories all of which were written by Vonnegut in the 1950s while he was a struggling writer, selling his "stuff" only to magazines.

Some are certainly better than others, as is often the case with short story collections (not that I've read a ton, but I've read a few). The stories start out fairly strong, lag a bit in the middle (the middle 12 or so were a struggle), and pick up again at the end. The big issue, which Vonnegut addressed in his introduction to the book, is that nearly every story is super-simplistic. You can see the "moral" a mile away. That doesn't necessarily make the stories bad, but it lessens their oomph, I guess.

Still, it furthered my knowledge that I generally like Vonnegut as an author (something that I thought way back in high school) and will continue to read through more of his repertoire.

2 comments: