Meant to finish this in Feb, but better late than never.

Kurt Vonnegut’s, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” is a brilliant collection of short stories, ranging from the mundane to commentary on war and politics to raw science fiction. Vonnegut’s range in works is truly amazing, as he did a great job at capturing many different ideas and tropes within the collection of stories.

The first time I read through the collection, I loved it. This second time, I loved it more. Harrison Bergeron, All the King’s Horses, Who am I this Time, Unready to Wear, and EPICAC are some of my favorites. There’s hardly a story in this collection that I do not love.

From a literary standpoint, the way in which he is able to use simple diction but yet portray deeper meaning is quite remarkable. Though many of these stories were written in the 50s, many of them have stood the test of time and are quite applicable to todays world and what we are facing in terms of life, love, war, politics, etc - hence why he is my favorite author.

May he rest in peace.

I love Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughter House Five consistently makes the list of my top ten favorite novels and Ice-nine consistently makes the list of my top ten favorite doomsday devices. However, if I didn't love Kurt Vonnegut, I would have dropped this book the moment I read the titular story and never looked back.

TW: Rape
Someone please tell me that I dramatically missed the point of Welcome to the Monkey House. It started out strong, like the dystopian futures of his that I love so much. The skewed morality of people unwilling to allow birth control but interested in controlling an exploding population leading to chemical castration for the populace and suicide parlors rather than actual birth control. I even get that Billy the Poet is a terrorist who supposedly takes no joy in doing the things that he does and is not necessarily painted as a good person. But I really, really need someone to tell me that the punchline of this story is not predicated in the theory that being raped at gun point would increase or jump start a woman's sexual appetite. Because I've looked at this story from a couple of different angles, and I can't make sense of it unless that punch line is serious.

Which, no. No. No. No. No. No. Not okay. Not even a little bit okay. Women do not work that way. People do not work that way. It would be very nice if someone could tell me that I simply missed the punch line or got it wrong. Being raped while being held down by a group of people is nothing at all like a nineteenth century wedding night.

I loved the rest of the collection. Harrison Bergeron is an old favorite of mine. Adam made me cry. The story about the man who would literally turn down a fortune for his music was utterly beautiful. I even liked the semi-autobiographical piece that Vonnegut apparently wrote for a women's magazine. The beautiful thing about short stories is that even if you hate one, there are plenty of others to choose from.

My tattoo is a quote from this story....so I'd say it's pretty great.

A collection of solid short stories from the fifties and sixties – depending on who you ask, Vonnegut's strongest years. Personally I will cast judgment only after reading Man Without a Country, though my periodic readings of other Vonnegut books (including the famous blivit) tend to support the theory that he was at his most potent with earlier works. "Harrison Bergeron" is a very pointed look at egalitarianism and equality mongering from a simpler time, and it's exactly the sort of thing a disaffected teen convinced of its own brilliance would go nuts over. For the time it was probably great, but I found it so passionately overwritten, and its point so blatantly delivered, that it became kind of annoying and even potentially Randian. There is nobody safe from the law of mediocrity, and any sort of shackled god/goddess, unshackled, would probably be a sociopath or deviant or bigot... still it's essentially a great story, I suppose.

The good thing is a lot of the stories are essential short stories, in form and content, and therefore subdued, with ambiguous or conclusive endings and subject matter that is often 'mundane'. He shows wisdom and humanity with each, and generally racks it up for the more science fictiony numbers. Good stuff all around, but I suppose I have my misgivings. One story contains the germs of Dr. Manhattan (bonus points if you know which) and "EPICAC" was a real gem.

Good stories, none of them particular knock-outs, but worth a couple of reading sessions apiece. That's the problem I've always had about Vonnegut: many declare him to be a sublime and powerful and wise and great writer, and he is those things – sometimes. His offerings are never trite or ridiculous (though he pursues the ludicrous with admirable zeal), always contain some wisdom, but they never make for such good reading that I am forced to exclaim anything about it. He's Vonnegut, he has some really fine novels to brag about (a job that falls to his latter-day apostles), and that one scene in Slaughterhouse 5 always gets a chuckle out of me, but I've never been totally astounded and I do not believe in the hype. For all that, he's still really important and his stories, whatever their missteps, are typically wise, hopeful, and evocative.

I think Vonnegut's best talent as a writer is his knack for stripping away the gap between facade and reality. He loves to sketch out characters that are (or simply seem) amazingly rich or powerful or charismatic. Then he breaks their circumstances down such that they're stuck with only their base humanity, and they have to confront themselves as they really are. How degrading to find out how much you're just like everyone else!

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.

There's 25 stories in this book, all very short. When an American writer says short stories he means it, none of that novella crap here. I'll try to keep this review short too.

I wanted to give this three stars but I really couldn't bring myself to do that with stories like Harrison Bergeron, Report on the Barnhouse Effect and The Euphio Question collected here. Vonnegut builds worlds and encapsulates the essence of an idea in 7-15 pages, and there's quite a few stories in here that are philosophical and idealistic like the ones I listed, most notably the actual Welcome To The Monkey House (Although Harrison Bergeron is still probably my favorite. I remember reading it in my sociology textbook in high school and loving it). Those were definitely the best. The others are short love stories, even when its not necessarily love between two people. Love of life, love of music, love of purpose. A whole lotta love. Those were good too, it's always interesting seeing a Sci-Fi writer write about love because its an interesting take that gets you hooked, not the characters but the setting. The stories aren't all sci-fi though, some of them have the approach or the setting but Vonnegut is also good at writing about plain old people in a plain old world and those are beautifully written as well. Not all of them were great but I would call only one or two 'on the weak side'. I don't know maybe I'm not good at rating books with stars but you can tell from my review that I liked it so yeah. Read if finishing a story gives you some sense of fulfillment/achievement/self worth. It did wonders for me this week.

A compilation of short stories, delicious and delightful with a light touch of makes us human.

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.

PS: - povestirea cea mai impresionanta (greu cuvantul pentru niste povestiri prin excelenta impresionante si surprinzatoare) e pentru mine, de departe, Toti caii regelui, despre cum e sa ai in maini viata celorlalti si sentimentul de-a fi la moftul cuiva, gandire limpede in tensiune, thriller in toata puterea cuvantului, ca la PROTV.

- mi-a placut in mod deosebit Colectia de primavara-iarna, despre o lume utopica(?) in care oamenii pot invata sa-si paraseasca corpurile, pricina tuturor nazurilor si neintelegerilor, pot fi amfibii, cu optiunea de a imbraca unul cand nevoia o cere sa faci ceva, in sensu efectiv al cuvantului. Ce chestie, corpurile ne stapanesc si odata scapati de ele, ce buni si rabdatori am fi unii cu altii!

- cea mai amuzanta, hands down, Vecinii, despre mania decoratiunilor interioare. Am tras niste hohote bune la ironiile sotului si vecinilor. Povestita de un tip spiritual si simpatic, haios, cu un simt al umorului bland.

- si inca una pe care vreau eu s-o mentionez, Domnisoara Ispita - disturbing si mult peste ce m-asteptam sa faca cineva din subiectu asta. Care subiect nu e foarte original, e fata-cliseu ce innebuneste orasul de se regleaza ceasurile dupa tabieturile ei, blala.

apoi, Chestiunea Eufio, euforia-fericire data la pachet, Cine sunt, de data asta? - viata prin teatru, Portofoliul Foster, despre o viata dubla, aproape la nivel inconstient, Cerb in uzina despre viata ca angajat intr-o corporatie - o abordare foarte comica! Si nu in ultimul rand, faimoasa distopie Harrison Bergeron, inspiratia pentru filmul 2081, cu scene care ma bantuie si azi (2015)

Kurt Vonnegut was a beacon from above, illuminating my youth. Literature could be serious and fun, all at the same time.

Mockery was culture, satire was seriously funny, and books could be simple, silly, and profound.

Welcome to the monkey house, where there are no rules except the ones you tell yourself.

I actually found most of the stories in this book to pretty entertaining, however, this book got the rating that it did because of two short stories in this book: Harrison Bergeron and Welcome to the Monkey House.
Harrison Bergeron tried to tell the reader that we want things equal, but not too equal otherwise we run into problems x, y, and z. considering this was written in 1961 I am curious and annoyed at the possible intentions of this writing. As for Welcome to the Monkey House, I really want to like it, but there it has this tiny problem of trying and failing to be funny, and this not so tiny problem of saying it is rape women in order to cause some sort of sexual awakening in them (not sure I should expect much better from a story that debuted in Playboy magazine).