“Bagombo Snuff Box”
by Kurt Vonnegut
Published: August 2000
ISBN: 0425174468

(Updated: July 10, 2006.)

From the Publisher…

From the acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Timequake comes this new compilation of short fiction, twenty-three previously uncollected stories. These vignettes of American life draw on Kurt Vonnegut’s World War Two experiences and the resolute optimism of the country after the war. Together, they present a poignant and humorous portrayal of an America peopled with overzealous high school band directors and their students (“Ambitious Sophomore”), rebellious housewives (“Custom-Made Bride”) and boasting salesmen (“Bagombo Snuff Box”), soldiers misplaced during the war (“Der Arme Dolmetscher”) and people lost in their own gadget-filled homes (“The Package”).

In an era before television, Kurt Vonnegut found a ready and willing audience in the readers of such magazines as Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Argosy, and Redbook. These rare, rediscovered tales give us a glimpse into a more innocent America — and into the developing genius of one of, the greatest writers of our time.

This wasn’t the first time I read this book. As happens, once I dive into the writing voice of certain authors, I want to “hear” more. So… I read this book again.

Bagombo Snuff Box is a collection of short stories. Short stories usually leave me with the same feeling I have on reading magazine articles. Roughly translated this means that usually, just as I become interested, the story is over. So… the only way I can combat this sense is by reading good collections of stories. This collection is good.

It is good in the same way looking over and through a pile of old magazines is good. It is a glimpse into another time. It is a small blast of a voice that I so love to hear now, “then”. It is a bag of seeds of stirrings, of preoccupations, of interests, of watchfulness. And… this book has some lovely characters in it that somehow I know could only have lived in that time, in their time, in the time of the writing of these stories.

I think what I ultimately love most about this book is that it lets me feel as though I am able to “think the past” a bit. The dialogue, the vocabulary, the concepts, the characters, the stories themselves have an innocence of not having a bunch of answers that we now supposedly have, of not knowing how things — science, history, world conditions and politics — turned out, of not yet having shifted individually or as a society to accomodate this “next” reality. What a wonderful “place” that is! And… I don’t mean that in a “longing for the past” sense but I do mean that in a “how amazing to reframe our current context” sense.

If you’ve never looked through old “Science Today” or “Today’s Woman” type of magazines, give it a try at some point. Oddly enough, it isn’t usually the main articles that interest me the most. It’s usually the advertising or classified sections that absolute have me spellbound. And… once “there”, I find it impossible to not pick up a current version of these magazines in order to look at them through the same lens. It is a great exercise in head-shaking. It is a great exercise in remembering to not take ourselves quite so seriously in the ways that we usually do. It is a great exercise in moving back to what counts “most” now. And… this — the reminding, the moving — is what Bagombo Snuff Box does too.

“We” are not yet finished. “We” do not yet know it all. Even the most leading edge of science, the most “seeing” of our visionaries still can’t see beyond “our” present. And… this too will seem innocent at some point. I guess this makes me want to be really conscious of where I hang I my hopes and the “why” of my beliefs.

Ultimately, reading Bagombo Snuff Box makes me want to define and live a “good” life. And… “if this isn’t nice, what is?”