Bagombo snuff box Uncollected short fiction

Vonnegut said that his last book, Timequake (1997), would be his last, but no one as imaginative and in love with language and story can resist the lure of the page, and it's obvious that he had a grand time working on this collection of his vintage stories. Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), his first story collection, contains 23 tales, and so does this volume, which also resurrects Vonnegut's earliest efforts, stories written during the fifties and sixties for such popular venues as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. In his engagingly autobiographical introduction, Vonnegut describes his stints as a Chicago journalist and PR man for General Electric in Schenectady, New York; his decision to supplement his income by writing; and his rapid success and evolution into a full-time writer. So, here are his literary roots, a set of stories that reflects their era's eagerness to turn the horrors of war into anecdote and to equate technology with progress. Unabashedly fablelike, they can be either sly or sweet, sentimental or vaudevillian, but all are quietly subversive. In "Thanasphere," Vonnegut imagines an early space flight in which an astronaut hears the voices of the dead. Elsewhere he mocks the rah-rah attitude of emerging corporate culture. In "Custom-Made Bride," he contrasts an earnest investment counselor with an obsessive artist, and several ebullient stories feature a small-town high-school bandleader. Rich in low-key humor and good old-fashioned morality, Vonnegut's stories are both wily and tender. --Donna Seaman

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. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Back before the web and before TV, recreational activity included reading short stories in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. The 23 stories in this collection were published in magazines like the Post during the Fifties and are collected here for the first time. The topics covered include space travel ("Thanasphere"), which describes the first manned orbit of Earth; finding the American Dream ("The Package"), about a new home full of the latest accessories; and an attempt to impress an old girlfriend (the title story). Poking fun at pretentious individuals is featured in both "A Present for Big Saint Nick," where Christmas has been turned into a forced admiration society, and "The Powder Blue Dragon," in which the purchase of a fancy sports car is believed to be the key to a fantasy life. Although many of the stories are topically dated, the ironic insights and illumination of character are timeless, and no one does it better than Vonnegut. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/99.]ÄJoshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. System, Poughkeepsie, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.