I heard once from an old English teacher that the hardest pieces to write are short stories and short films. To develop a plot and characters in a short and constricted time frame requires no small amount of skill. There's no room to waste words and phrases; to do so would turn your short story into a novella. Poe was great at it. And I feel Vonnegut was great at it too.

Welcome to the Monkey House has been a favorite book of mine for a long time. I may have inadvertently acquired this copy from an old girlfriend; in which case I would have to apologize to her for my theft. But I'm calling grandfather clause, and there's no way I'd give it back.

Some of these stories are fairly well known. "Harrison Bergeron," for example, is a story that gets taught in school occasionally. And it's a great short story; a better defense of individualism than any drivel Ayn Rand ever spewed out.

"Who Am I This Time?," "Thomas Edison's Shaggy Dog," "Welcome to the Monkey House," and "All the King's Horses" are fantastic stories as well. I picked this collection up again earlier this morning, and have already devoured the first four stories. I wouldn't be surprised if I finish another one or two before I leave for work in an hour.

So in case it was not already abundantly clear; I really like this book. And I tend to think other people will as well.

Put it down for some time after the eponymous "Welcome to the Monkey House." I only speak for myself, but I'm tired of reading about rape, either as a plot device or metaphor. Especially since I read this just after "Sirens of Titan," in which Vonnegut also writes in a detached manner of a character's assault. The character Billy's explanation of his actions was condescending and objectifying, even saying his other victims were "grateful," and asserting Nancy's anger is not because of her violation, but because he is a bad lover. I realize that Vonnegut is using this device to discuss other ideas, but that's not enough for me to enjoy this story. Even re-reading bits for the purpose of this review was a frustrating endeavor. It was enough to put me off Vonnegut for a while.

Nevertheless, I did finally finish the other stories, and am glad I did. The later stories are thoughtful and interesting. Not sure they were enough in the end, however, to redeem this collection for me.

Din recenzia care va apărea în curând pe Bookblog: „Kurt Vonnegut creează lumi verosimile plecând de la idei neverosimile. Nebunești. Absurde. Și, din nefericire, absurdul lor, pe măsură ce povestea înaintează, devine din ce în ce mai puțin absurd. Te trezești că acel lucru s-a întâmplat, se întâmplă sau se poate foarte ușor întâmpla. Cândva, în viitor. Dar nu foarte departe. Dar ele au nevoie să fie dezvoltate mai pe larg, nu concentrate în sticluțe mici, precum parfumurile scumpe. Pe de altă parte, majoritatea povestirilor oferă suficiente detalii, sunt suficient de dense cât să aibă și cap, și mijloc, și coadă, cât să nu lase cititorul dorindu-și mai mult, mult mai mult. Au exact dozarea necesară. Unele dintre ele.

Problema cu volumul de față este că unele povești nu duc nicăieri. Încep și se termină la fel cum au început, nu au nicio finalitate, nu vin cu nimic nou. Comis-voiajorii (care apar, dacă rețin bine, în trei povestiri din douăzeci și cinci) rămân tot comis-voiajori, cuvintele rămân cuvinte (nu ca în povestea cu dicționarul), actorii rămân actori, se schimbă prea puțin, prea nesemnificativ ca să îl facă pe cititorul cel pretențios din mine să își mai amintească ceva și peste o bucată mai mică sau mai mare de timp.

Altele, în schimb, ajung să dăinuie. Sau să fie preluate, transformate, adaptate, de alți scriitori, scenariști și regizori de film. Doar au trecut mai bine de șaizeci de ani de la apariția majorității poveștilor. În fine, unele au devenit legendare între timp, și, pe de altă parte, probabil că, pentru a înțelege cu adevărat măsura talentului, geniului chiar al lui Kurt Vonnegut, ar trebui să abordez măcar unul dintre romanele menționate ceva mai sus.”
Mai multe, pe Bookblog: https://www.bookblog.ro/recenzie/dist....

Noped the fuck out of this one when the titular story turned into one long apology/endorsement for rape.

This collection of early short stories, mostly from the 1950s, displays Vonnegut's versatility--of subject matter, theme, and style; and also his grasping for an identifiable, unique personal style. At this point, he already is a mature, assured writer. Except for possibly "The Manned Missiles" (which nonetheless has the same clever twist ending as many of the other stories in this collection) all of the stories in this compilation are great. Vonnegut's command of narrative and descriptive detail are solid. His irreverance is not always as pronounced as it would be in his later novels, but one begins to spot several instances of trademark Vonnegutese (the phrase "being amphibious" in the story "Unready to Wear" feels like something out of "Slaughterhouse Five"). There's often a Runyonesque gentility and sense of irony in the pieces, and always great generosity and sympathy toward his characters--even the ones he mocks--and their dilemmas, some of which are small every day ones and some that are enormous in their moral and life-and-death implications. Written in a time of Cold War fears, the non-sci-fi pieces are mostly about everyday people trying to find value and purpose in small things, in traditions, in comradeship, in love, while larger corporate, technological and political imperatives pull at their souls.

The preface--a gracious and funny homage to his family and only a slight introduction to the works--was written circa 1968 when this collection appeared and gives us the familiar Vonnegut irreverence. In it, Vonnegut seems slightly embarrassed and ashamed about some of the early pieces therein, but he needn't have been. Actually, in a published grading of his own works (done years later), Vonnegut gave this collection a B- when stacked against the entirety of his ouevre. Not too bad. If it were an option, I'd give this collection four and a half stars. I'm recommending it strongly to all.

Several of the stories in the collection are science fiction and like a lot of science fiction from a half century ago the accuracy of the predictions offered are hit-and-miss. What strikes me most impressively, though, is how many of Vonnegut's ideas--whether later creators were aware of them or not--managed to show up in later written works, movies, tv shows, etc.

The human chess game played in "All the King's Horses" (1953) became the motif of a famous episode of the cult tv show, "The Prisoner" in 1967.

Bullard's exhortation and business advice to a stranger in "Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog" (1953) to "Go plastic, young man!" predates the more famous iteration of that same advice in the film, "The Graduate" 14 years later.

The much-quoted Vonnegut gem from this collection, "A sane person to an insane society must appear insane," has been paraphrased and restated ad infinitum in popular song and other entertainments ever since.

The computer blowing its lid in "EPICAC" is a motif that would show up several times in Star Trek.

Politically, the book offers a more moderate Vonnegut, but one of my favorite quotes (from the short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" about future sterilization taken to an extreme) shows his true (and good) colors, and his understanding of the ongoing modus operandi of right-wing types:

“If you go back through history, you’ll find that the people who have been most eager to rule, to make the laws, to enforce the laws and to tell everybody exactly how God Almighty wants things here on earth – those people have forgiven themselves and their friends for anything and everything. But they have been absolutely disgusted and terrified by the natural sexuality of common men and women.”

4/5

This collection of short stories has been sitting on my desk for the past couple of months. I've been enjoying a story when I get a spare moment. I'm glad I approached it this way because I think had I read them all back-to-back, I would have gotten a bit tired of Vonnegut's uniqueness (which I am a fan of, but maybe just not in large doses). I was also pretty zonked when reading the last stories, so I will probably have to revisit them sometime...


My favourite stories:

Harrison Bergeron
Who Am I This Time?
Welcome To the Monkey House
The Foster Portfolio
Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog
Next Door
The Hyannis Port Story

This is a difficult review for me to make sense of--I really liked almost all the stories I read--especially as I read them--but each one left me a little sadder for having read it. I'm not a fan of nostalgia, so while all the stories' pangs were poignant and touching, it was not a welcome touch. I feel like it's a similar response to how some people react to puns--I love them, but some people cringe. Similarly, I loved the idea of most of these stories, but in the end they make me cringe. Because of this, reading the collection took a long time (~2 months probably)--rarely could I read more than one in a sitting. What I did read I do appreciate, and I feel it was done with sincerity and in high quality, but it's not something I'm eager to repeat. Strangely I also have the feeling that I've read all the stories before, whether this is the second time I've seen the book or if I'd been assigned them individually over many prior years of schooling I don't know. As I've remarked before, I need to stop reading collections of short stories!

n  "One foot in front of the other --- through leaves, over bridges---"n

This is a short story about forbidden and true love, ardently written by Kurt Vonnegut. He has a way of showing intense emotions using simple words and repetitions. . . Oh my .. That ending ...

This was a nice collection of short stories dwelling on a lot of different themes added with Vonnegut's personal view which is evident in them. Although most of the stories were quite good, I found myself enjoying those who were practically SF the most, which is were at least by my opinion Vonnegut is in his best.

Canada's iconic Toronto Star columnist Greg Clark said it best (in his characteristically plucky way): MAY YOUR FIRST LOVE BE YOUR LAST!

So it goes. Cause a long time relationship is a lot like Bobby Fischer facing off against Boris Spasky: for each of them had MEMORIZED EVERY MOVE THE OTHER COULD EVER MAKE.

Cold War? Forget that - their cold-blooded war was INFINITELY ICIER!

So it is with a marriage, when each partner makes calculated moves.

And as it was too with Kurt Vonnegut's first marriage.

Yikes!

So it's no wonder that my personal fave from among these pieces is the idyllic description of the HONEYMOON YEARS of that marriage. BTW - that came, as it often does, before those notorious HONEYDEW years (Honey, Do this - Honey, Do that)!

But could the disruptive static between his parents have contributed to his literary star son's equally disruptive instability? Did for me.

For as I so relish Kurt's blissful HONEYMOON years, so I adored my parent's loving one-year-old wedded bliss - something my stable siblings never knew!

But the inevitable advent of family stress needs a release.

So when my bro was born, when I was three, the sudden sibling suspicions crackled through the air with the fractious friction they produced. Cain and Abel!

And so little Fergus gradually regressed further into the awfully overaffective Asperger’s area of the Autism spectrum. I became denser than a block of cement.

I drove my dear longsuffering Dad to despair in his patient efforts to make a man out of me.

My own and the Vonneguts' son Mark's only release by late adolescence was psychotropically-induced dementia!

Ah, those crazy pot-headed seventies! For that was our catalyst.

Enough to MAIM a good kid.

And so, when I eventually returned to normalcy -

It was HEAVEN.

This is a marvellous collection of Vonnegut's early fictional shorts, written back in the carefree days before the Black Dog of clinical depression showed up on his doorstep with a sign around his neck.

Feed me! Feed me, the sign said.

The postmodern havoc of escalating bad news'll do that to a guy.

So why, may I ask, was Vonnegut now more prolific than before - after adopting that mangy cur?

Bottom line, I guess, is that while earlier he wrote to make a few extra bucks -

NOW HE WROTE ONLY TO SAVE HIS SOUL FROM THAT UGLY BLACK DOG.

The world is overpopulated, and they have Ethical Suicide Parlors, where public minded citizens are encouraged to go in and get a lethal injection from the attractive hostesses. There's a big thermometer outside, showing how many people there currently are in the world.

So the guy comes in, and he's chatting with the hostess. He wants to know how much the mercury will go down if he decides to do it. A foot?

No, she says.

An inch?

Not quite, she says.

Suddenly, he changes his tone. Every inch, he says, represents seventeen million people.

That's not the right way to look at it, she says. But she doesn't say what is the right way to look at it.

Ever since reading this story as a teenager, I've been unable to take anyone seriously who uses the expression "That's not the right way to look at it". Not my fault. Blame the late Mr. Vonnegut.

I spent over three months with this book, never reading more than one story per day. I have read selections of Vonnegut, including parts of Player Piano and "Harrison Bergeron," but this was my first cover-to-cover read. I love the guy. Something about his writing is so believable to me. I rarely have difficulty stepping into his POV.

Welcome to the Monkey House is a bit of a hodgepodge collection, jumping from sci-fi to articles suited for Ladies Home Journal. Some of the stories, naturally, are not as good as others--but this is a collection, not a coherent narrative. I enjoy how Vonnegut takes simple genre fiction and still catches my attention with his subtle humor. I would suggest taking your time with this one and reading it across several months. Vonnegut may not be for everyone, but I look forward to reading more novels in the coming years.