Ce, nu stiti unde e Bagombo? Cica in Ceylon. Eh, nu stiti unde e Ceylon? Pai, pe langa Africa. Sau pe langa India? In fine, e important si asta, sa stiti pe unde se situeaza Bagombo, dar si mai importanta e tabachera. De ce? Eh, cititi si poate veti afla. Pentru ca nici asta nu conteaza foarte mult, de fapt, ci drumul pana la ea. Adica cam ca in viata. Poate ca nu stii de la inceput destinatia ta, dar drumul poate fi fascinant, si chiar mai important decat finalul calatoriei.Bine, deci ati inteles: sunt fan Kurt Vonnegut, iar aceste peste douazeci de scurte povestiri mi-au pus din nou neuronii intr-o miscare browniana, intr-un carusel, intr-un montagne- russe, intr-un circuit de Formula 1. Lectura lor a fost o adevarata desfatare, o reala provocare si o incantare sublima a mintii. Ceea ce va doresc si voua, sa treceti prin asemenea stari cat mai des.

Vonnegut înainte de Vonnegut...

În „Introducerea” la această carte, prozatorul vorbește cu extremă modestie despre povestirile scrise la începutul anilor 50 ai secolului trecut: „Eram convins că nu fac nici cît o ceapă degerată. Nu voiam decît să-mi întrețin familia” (p.17). În „Cuvîntul final despre cariera mea de scriitor pentru reviste”, prozatorul este și mai aspru. Găsește că deznodămîntul cîtorva povestiri este de-a dreptul „stupid” (p.339). Ca admirator al lui, aș spune că nu trebuie să-l credem pe cuvînt. Ca individ care nu vrea să mintă pe nimeni, aș spune că Vonnegut nu este foarte departe de adevăr. Multe povestiri sînt banale, demonstrative (aș numi „Dragonul auriu” și „Jolly Roger în croazieră”). Altele nu. Exemplul cel mai bun este negreșit chiar „Tabachera din Bagombo”.

Cel care a spus că geniul este o lungă răbdare n-a greșit cu totul. Kurt Vonnegut a muncit din greu pentru a deveni marele prozator din Abatorul cinci, din Leagănul pisicii, din Mama Noapte. A muncit din greu și aproape fără speranță: „Încet dar sigur, Soarta... începuse să facă din mine un scriitor de ficțiune și un ratat, și asta a durat pînă cînd am împlinit patruzeci și șapte de ani, fir-ar să fie” (p.22). Nu-i ușor să trăiești cu gîndul neîmplinirii, să continui să te analizezi lucid, să rămîi franc. Ratații au tendința să devină mitomani. Vonnegut a ocolit ispita, și-a păstrat cumpătul. Și a perseverat. N-a devenit nici depresiv. Pînă la urmă, „Soarta” (nu știu dacă acest cuvînt desemnează altceva decît hazardul) i-a făcut dreptate.

Există în acest volum cîteva proze remarcabile. Aș adăuga lîngă titlul menționat mai sus („Tabachera...”): „Săracul orășel bogat”, „Suvenirul”, „Der arme Dolmetscher”. Mai sînt, firește, și altele. Nu mai pun la socoteală „Introducerea” și „Cuvîntul final...”, texte redactate tîrziu (în 1999), cu ocazia publicării în volum a vechilor povestiri. Cuprind observații și îndemnuri (pentru tinerii scriitori) pline de bun simț și modestie.

I don't care if you ever read this book, and in fact, though I know I did (and apparently gave it three stars several years ago), I don't remember anything from it except for the intro. Please allow me to reproduce a small chunk of that here:

Kurt Vonnegut's Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every character must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

After this, Vonnegut talks about how his "one reader" is his sister Allie, who "is up in Heaven now." He then says this (which, if you have a sister, or even just a heart, will make you immediately tear up): "The boundaries to the playing fields of my short stories, and my novels, too, were once the boundaries of the soul of my only sister. She lives on that way."

Sob!

Vonnegut's short stories are mostly satirical and sharp social commentary. His experience working for GE shines through in several places and while the context is very dated, the theses of the stories are timeless.

There are a couple of gems in here that provide a glimpse into the early stirrings of the style Vonnegut would come to develop, but this collection is ultimately made up of stories written by a yet unknown novelist while he was still learning the craft and sold to magazine periodicals with the goal of simply making just enough money to put food on the table. Still worth the read if you're a Vonnegut fan.

This book is a collection of some of Vonnegut's earliest short stories, written for weekly and monthly magazines. They're interesting as a perspective on this era, when "serious" literary authors, or at least burgeoning ones, wrote for magazines, as well as writing full-length novels. They're also an interesting look into Vonnegut's earliest writing style (although he admits in a postscript that he could not help editing the ending of many of the chapters). That being said, they're not as enjoyable as Vonnegut's books. His signature style (choppy sentences, conversational tone, a satire comprised of almost humourous yet mournful exasperation) has not really come into itself here. The purpose of these stories is also very different from his full-length books. They are meant to entertain (Vonnegut's introduction is instructive, I think, when he talks of the central tenets of writing that he taught in his creative writing course. One of these is that the audience should be able to expect what will happen next, because the plot is logical and the characters understandable. This concept was applied here, yielding stories whose endings could often be guessed at the very outset.). I think "2B402B" was the most indicative of Vonnegut's later style. However, Vonnegut does succeed at his primary objective here--entertaining. They are quick, enjoyable reads that are good for the subway commute.

Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the worls, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I might as well settle here as anywhere, since I haven't very strong reasons for living in any particular part of the country. 54

Why don't you say, 'I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a work of art'? ... Design your life like that Finnish carafe over there clean, harmonious, alive with the cool, tart soul of truth in our time. 112

As he walked up to Amy's small, ordinary house, he managed a smile of sad maturity, the smile of a man who has hurt and been hurt, who has seen everything, who has learned a great deal from it all, and who, incidentally, has made a lot of money along the way. 139

He was being asked to match his father's passion for the factory with an equal passion for something else. And Franklin had no such passion-for the theater or anything else.
He had nothing but the bittersweet, almost formless longings of youth. 206

He wanted to cray about growing old, about the shabby ends brave young lovers came to. 224

One of the worst mistakes a person can makes, sometimes, I guess, is to try to get away from people and think. It's a great way to lose your forward motion. 238

From what I've seen of the rich people I grew up with, money just makes people worried and unhappy. People with a lot of money get so worried about how maybe they'll lose it, they forget to live. 254

If we should try to prove our love,
Our love would be in danger.
Let's put our love beyond all harm.
Good-bye - sweet, gentle stranger. 257

The world could do with a good deal more mess, if you ask me. 262

I guess the world seems so upside down so often is that everybody figures he's doing things on account of somebody else. 279

Housewifery is a swindle, if a woman can do more. 279

Women are awful bluffers sometimes. 279

What (creative writing) students wanted and got, and what so many of their children are getting, was a cheap way to externalize what was inside them, to see in black-and-white who they were and what they might become. 290

"My longtime friend and critic Professor Peter Reed, of the English Department at the University of Minnesota, made it his business to find these stories from my distant past. Otherwise, they might never have seen the light of day again. I myself hadn't saved one scrap of paper from that part of my life."
(Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in the Introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box.)

I am not sure that the collection of early short stories Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., one of my favorite authors, should have been published. I suspect that the publisher's eagerness to make a buck off the great author's name may be more to blame than Dr. Reed's zeal. Mr. Vonnegut himself seems to be aware of literary weakness of the stories: he writes in the Coda:

"Rereading [some of the stories] so upset me, because the premise and the characters of each were so promising, and the denouement so asinine, that I virtually rewrote the denouement before I could stop myself."

Further in the Coda the author is even more critical of these early stories that date back to the 1950s when they were published in such magazines as Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Argosy, Redbook .

Most of the 23 stories collected here are completely unremarkable and instantly forgettable. They are overtly and overly didactic, aimed at readers with teenager-like worldview, and just plain sophomoric. The endings, clearly meant to be "surprising", are quite predictable. The weakest story, A Night for Love is trite and unbelievably syrupy. This Son of Mine aims at psychological depth yet what we receive is a maudlin, sentimental mess. And this mess comes from my beloved author of  Slaughterhouse-Five !

Some stories in the set are a little better. Souvenir rings true as it is based on Mr. Vonnegut's experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany, yet it is marred by atrociously cheap ending. A Present for Big Saint Nick is partially redeemed by being just nasty enough at the end. The only story that I like is Der Arme Dolmetscher, again referring to the author's war experience, but maybe I like it just because of the phrase "Where are your howitzers?" (Vo zint eara pantzer shpitzen?), which reminds me of Monty Python's Hungarian Tobacconist's Sketch.

Dr. Reed points out two interesting aspects in his Preface: the stories feel quite dated because the women play secondary roles in all of them and the men are completely defined by jobs they have. Well, these observations are way more interesting than the stories themselves.

Also, to be clear, my one-star rating is relative: what merits one star for Mr. Vonnegut, would bring a much higher rating in the case of a less talented author. This set of stories ranks nowhere near even the weakest entries in Vonnegut's literary output, such as, say,  Deadeye Dick   or  Mother Night . To compare it with the author's great books such as  Bluebeard  or   Breakfast of Champions  is absurd, not even mentioning his masterpiece  Slaughterhouse-Five .

One and a half stars.

A collection of Vonnegut short stories is always a treasure. His stories were modest and homey, but they always have a simple message and are easy to read. The stories collected here were the bread and butter of his early writing years: literally, they put food on his family in a time when he could sell three stories a year and support a family.

He was also learning his craft here. There are some classic stories here and a few that needed a little more polish. But each is a reminder of the simple time when short gifts like these were the primary entertainment option for a wide number of people.

SHORT STORIES:
-Thanasphere
-Mnemonics
-Any Reasonable Offer
-The Package
-The No Talent Kid
-Poor Little Rich Town
-Souvenir
-The Cruise of the Jolly Roger
-Custom Made Bride
-Ambitious Sophomore
-Bagombo Snuff Box
-The Powder Blue Dragon
-A Present for Big Saint Nick
-Unpaid Consultant
-Dear Arme Dulmetscher
-The Boy Who Hated Girls
-This Son of Mine
-A Night for Love
-Find Me a Dream
-Runaways
-2BRO2B
-Lovers Anonymous
-Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp

8 Rules of Writing: (Intro)
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

Start as close to the end as possible.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Before I begin, let me say that Vonnegut is one of my favorite American novelists of the 20th century. GALAPAGOS holds a special place in my heart to this day. I AM A FAN.

This collection opens with a preface by the author wondering why anyone would want to amass his early works in one book. It's common for writers to semi-apologize for their earliest pieces. Sometimes this comes from a place of humility. Other times it's just the truth.

In this case, Vonnegut is telling the truth. Get two stories in and you can tell that he was in his writing infancy. Most of the stories were roughly written, trite, and/or moralistic. I actually rolled my eyes at the end of one.

That said, there were a handful of stories that I enjoyed, especially the first piece. (Gotta love ghosts in space.)

What kept me intrigued was having access to the ground floor of such a celebrated literary career. With hindsight on my side, I got to explore this collection with an eye for what would later become tell-tale Vonnegut styles, themes, and character quirks. I wouldn't recommend this book for entertainment as much as for insight into the writer Vonnegut would become. If nothing else, do it for the space ghosts.

All the stories were fun to read. Some were really good. Worth a read for any Vonnegut fan.