25 Stories. Average rating: 3.32

Interesting stories. Mostly General fiction, while some are SF. Good language and writing style. Most of the stories were however either just good [3-stars (13 stories)] or okay [2-stars (4 stories)]. Seven stories though, very much stood out for me.

n  5-starsn
n  Who Am I This Timen: When a characterless actor plays a character with extreme intensity in the theater, he finds a woman falling in love with these characters. Thinking what its advantages are, by the end of the story, made me find the story to be amazing.

n  All The King's Horsesn: After Colonel Kelly, along with his wife, two ten-year old twin sons and twelve others, crash-land their aircraft in a territory held by a Communist guerilla chief, their lives fall into Colonel's hands when he has to play chess against the chief to escape death. Now as POWs, the sixteen are now set as the chessmen in a big room of 64 squares, and upon anyone's capture, she/he is put to instant painless death! This was interesting and cruel. Enjoyed keeping 'myself' in the scenario.

n  Tom Edison's Shaggy Dogn: A short story that brings out a confidential fact about dogs. I loved this a lot, given my personal views about dogs and cats. I personally view cats as highly evolved and having an ability to survive anyhow as and whenever necessary. However my view of domesticated dogs is possessing complete loyalty, but its side-effect being usually submissive to its Master and as a result lacking evolutionary growth and eventually being called by me as 'stupid' if seen in a wider picture. Because of this view, this story beats me, and I loved it. It subverted my whole idea of a domesticated dog. :)

n  Unready to Wearn: Describes a time in the future when humans are able to manually discard and store their physical bodies, while allowing their psyche to be free from various duties and troubles, calling them 'amphibians'. This was such an awesome and interesting contemplative story.

n  4-starsn
n  Welcome to the Monkey Housen: A nice futuristic story where Earth's population has now reached 17 billion, and the World Government has forced two laws upon its people with regard to overpopulation: Encouraging Ethical Suicide OR Compulsory Ethical Birth Control using a pill.

n  Report on the Barnhouse Effectn: A fictional report about the discovery of the so-called Barnhouse Effect, which is something equivalent to Telekinesis, but much stronger and evolving.

n  The Euphio Questionn: Radiations from outer space are tapped and used in equipment, which when used cause people to be euphoric whenever enabled. Ecstatic situations indeed! :D

I got as far as the title story, in which a sci-fi rebel hero takes down a fascist government by kidnapping women, making them detox from a drug their body is dependent on, and then sexually assaulting them.

Welcome to the Monkey House is the best collection of stories I've read.

Rating it accurately is as difficult as ever. Should it be based off of the best stories? Or all of them? I don't know.

What I do know is: Harrison Bergeron, Welcome to the Monkey House, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, EPICAC, Where I Live, and The Euphio Question are some of the best shorts ever written.

Much like Vonnegut's other novels, they're strangely scientific with quirky characters, great dialogue, and plenty of comedic moments.

The rest of the stories weren't so great to write about. Some of them are pretty out there, though, if that's your thing...

Vonnegut does it again.

This took me way longer than intended, probably due to the hectic nature of my first week back in uae. Nevertheless, I'm glad I read it.
I was never a big fan of a book of collection of short stories. Usually there would be a lot of hit and miss. With Welcome To The Monkey House however, literally every short story was memorable. Maybe one was mediocre, but all of the rest were so good. I can't stress enough how each individual short story was able to stand on its own, and also made me think of each one after I let the book down.

If you are a fan of Vonnegut, you shouldn't miss out on this book.... 5/5

My favourite story was the brilliant All the King's Men. Sixteen American plane crash survivors captured by a communist group are forced to play a game of human chess in which only those left standing will live. The American colonel has to decide on the moves and his family are among the prisoners at risk of death.

A worthwhile read for Vonnegut fans for historical reasons only. Though you can see the Vonnegut who was to be in these stories, they are mostly not very good. Several are trite, all are rather manipulative, many fail to provide the proper context the reader needs in order to give a damn about what is happening.

I feel the need to address the elephant in the room in this collection; many reviews focus entirely on the rape scene in the title story as proof of the lack of worth of the entire book (or perhaps of Vonnegut's work.) Anyone who has read Vonnegut, or most of the other great writers of that generation from Updike to Roth to Bellow, knows that these men value women only as commodities. Women exist to offer sex, comfort, conversation, child-rearing services and that is it. Updike saw women's liberation solely as a cultural shift which allowed women to fuck him without societal censure and no one goes off on him. Look, most authors are pathologically self-involved so there is a predisposition to see the universe from their position at the very center. Add to that a social milieu in the first half of the 20th century which devalued women and you get the rape scene in Monkey House. Vonnegut did not see that specific rape as a crime, he saw it as an intervention, maybe even a benediction. Is that appalling? Absolutely. But Vonnegut is saying something about the ways in which government and society take control of our most basic urges, and he makes some valid points. He could have made the point it a way that showed respect for everyone in the story, but he did not. Read this as if it was in a time capsule and save your anger for the men in Congress who still see rape as a gift from God.

1982 January 6
2014 October 3

Where I Live - Keenly observed. I wonder what an update would be like 50 years on?

Harrison Bergeron - This one has aged a bit, but it's still good.

Who Am I This Time? - I vividly recall the American Playhouse production with Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken. Magic.

Welcome to the Monkey House - Likewise aged, not that there aren't people who would be delighted to see the sex drive killed for everyone else, but those people tend not to be in favor of birth control or assisted suicide.

Long Walk to Forever - This is the story that made me want to reread the collection particularly.

"A walk?" said Catharine.

"One foot in front of the other,"said Newt,"Through leaves,over bridges--"

Vonnegut repeats that line "through leaves, over bridges" several times, and it is amazing how much emotion he manages to convey in that utterly prosaic phrase. It kills me. As does Vonnegut's preferred title, "Hell to Get Along With", which should probably be the title of every proposal story ever.

The Foster Portfolio - Heh.

Miss Temptation - "I’m not Yellowstone Park!” she said. “I’m not supported by taxes! I don’t belong to everybody! You don’t have any right to say anything about the way I look!”

Vonnegut understands and conveys, in 1956 mind you,a point which still continues to elude many supposed adults even today.

All the King's Horses - A rather dark musing on war, but not too dark.

Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog - Just perfectly amusing.

New Dictionary - Would go well paired with David Foster Wallace's review of dictionaries.

Next Door - Oh, my.

More Stately Mansions - This is another one that has lived long in my memory. It's a very kind and accepting and loving sort of story about a quirky, possibly annoying-as-hell character. And also, the obsession with having the perfect home has only become stronger and more widespread.

The Hyannis Port Story - Another really sweet story that still manages to be cynical and funny.

D.P. - Vonnegut writes children so well, so real. Not at all like Salinger's improbable paragons. A most unusual war story.

Report on the Barnhouse Effect - Interesting to compare this with LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven in focus and tone and characterization.

The Euphio Question - Amusingly presented.

Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son - Oh, I love this, the contrast between the couples, the shower enclosure. Why doesn't anyone write stories from the point of view of storm window installers these days?

Deer in the Works - I'd say this one has exerted a small but deeply felt influence over my whole world view.

The Lie - Vonnegut can be warmly sympathetic to unlikely characters.

Unready to Wear - No question that I love this story.

The Kid Nobody Could Handle - An appreciation of the importance of finding one's home, in every sense.

The Manned Missiles - Perhaps the world didn't go this way because Vonnegut warned us against it? Interesting note: he thinks Earth will look green from space.

EPICAC - Unlike some of his peers, Vonnegut can easily imagine a brilliant mathematician who happens to be a woman.

Adam - Another sweet story that isn't sentimental at all.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Boy was the population explosion a big deal.

It's been more than 30 years since I first read this book, and a while since I've read anything else by Vonnegut. But rereading, I can't help notice how completely I've absorbed the Vonnegut mindset into my own. Most of my favorite authors these days I love for their humanism, their warmth, their sympathy, and their humor. Most of that must have come from Vonnegut, since I can't recall any one else I read in high school who was similar, except Douglas Adams. These are not bad people to have been raised by.

Kindle library copy

İlk olarak 1968 yılında yayımlanan bu öykü derlemesi, Vonnegut'ın öykücülük konusundaki maharetini gözler önüne sermek için biçilmiş bir kaftan. Kara mizahın ve hicvin her bir satırına ustalıkla yedirildiği ve de yazıldığı dönemin atmosferini bize buram buram hissettiren bu öykülerde bilim-kurgunun naif etkilerini de görmek pek âlâ mümkün. Döneminin ötesinde bir zihne sahip Vonnegut, bu eserinde de yine kendine özgü anlatım dilini gözler önüne seriyor.

Favori öykülerim:
- Harrison Bergeron
- Maymun Evine Hoş Geldiniz
- Foster Portföyü
- Bayan Tahrik
- Şahın Tüm Atları
- Tom Edison'ın Şakacı Köpeği
- Muhteşem Makineler
- Hazır Giyim
- EPICAC

Yazarın romanları kadar öykülerini de çok seviyorum. Öykü okumak konusunda çelişkiye düşenlere bu kitabı ve yazarın diğer öykü kitaplarını gönül rahatlığıyla tavsiye ederim.

Handan Balkara'nın akıcı çevirisiyle.

Keyifli okumalar!

Kitaplarla kalın!

My newfound fondness for Kurt Vonnegut has grown a little complicated after reading his short story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House. Although many of these stories were incredible (and I was touched at how personal some of them were -- perhaps unintentionally sometimes), others were... less than stellar. And I found two of them to be downright contemptible for the ideas they championed.

Some of these ideas can easily be explained away as a product of their time (1950s and 1960s). Some cannot.

But first, the good: "Harrison Bergeron" was, it seems, a piece of 1960s political commentary where the United States is forced into absolute equality. Pretty people wear bags over their faces. Smart people wear sonic disruptors. People with great eyesight wear unsuitable eyeglasses to make everything blurrier. Skilled dancers wear scuba diving weights around their waists. The ending was a skillful cringer, and I could see it easily getting rolled up into all sorts of slippery-slope, "everyone gets a trophy" talking points, but it was so funny and absurd in its delivery that it wouldn't have felt out of place on The Muppet Show. Loved it.

Other shorts, like "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," "Deer in the Works," "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," and others, also present some social or political commentary, but never quite so on their sleeves. Overpopulation and bad working conditions are certainly interesting pieces of commentary, but the narratives and characters on top of these ideas were equally interesting and fascinating and comical to explore.

"The Manned Missiles" consisted of a by-mail back-and-forth between two fathers whose sons fought on competing sides of a war. It was heartbreaking and uplifting all at once and had the tone and pacing of an Arthur C. Clarke story. "All the King's Horses" consisted of, basically, that scene from Harry Potter with the life-size chess game, except one side were United States POWs (Including a soldier's wife and two young children) and the other side was a crazed dictator from a foreign country.

Other stories had conclusions that were so surprising they almost felt like punchlines. "The Foster Portfolio" showed me how far a man would go to do what he loves while clinging to the accompanying shame of it like an old coat (But, man, is the casual and unquestioned marital dishonesty here a product of its time?), And "EPICAC" reminded me how far we all go to pretend to be better/smarter/more artistic than we really are in order to impress people. "New Dictionary" shows how stuffy we can all be about our ever-evolving language. "Next Door" was my favorite of this variety, but I don't want to spoil why -- read it! It's funny and ridiculous.

And others still, like "Who am I this time?" didn't seem to have anything particularly important to say but were still an awful lot of fun to read. "Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog" was laugh-out-loud funny and seemed in the end to be about one guy telling another a convoluted fiction just to get away from him. "More Stately Mansions" was dry up until the last page, but it was waaaaaay worth it, and while I don't know what "The Lie" was trying to say, it was an emotional and satisfying read. "The Euphio Question" reminded me of the aliens from Orson Scott Card's Children of the Mind, who tried to subdue humans by transmitting heroin directly into their bodies.

"The Hyannis Port Story" and "Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son" might have been more humorous back in the 50s or 60s but were a little dull to me.

"The Kid Nobody Could Handle" and "Long Walk to Forever" were some of my favorites, and for much the same reason, but I only want to talk about "'Long walk." This short story has its main character, a young man 18 months deep in the military, decide almost casually to go AWOL and abandon his post. He returns to his hometown and tells the childhood friend he grew up with, herself now a young woman, that he has always loved her, and that he wants to marry her. The only problem is that she's only a few days away from getting married to someone else. But they take a walk together anyway, and by the end of it she's changed her mind about her fiancé and the two of them are in love.

There are a couple of ways you can look at this, but personally, this felt like pure wish fulfillment; like the fantasy of a young man who has served his time in the military only to return home and find everyone paired up. The undertone is unyieldingly sad -- he is alone and feels out of place in the town he grew up in. And so I can imagine this main character with his chin resting on his hands, his elbows resting on a windowsill, daydreaming about opportunities lost while in the service. A beautiful, sad, and very personal fantasy.

All right. Now, the bad. Take the aforementioned "Long Walk to Forever" and juxtapose it to "Miss Temptation." In this short story, a man comes back from the military and feels acutely out of place. On one hand, it's great because this story's main character expresses his grief to his mother in profound words. It's moving. It sucks. On the other hand, the main character expresses this grief by taking out all his frustrations on a pretty woman he's never met. He unleashes verbal hell on this gal, explaining how unjust it is to show cleavage when he's apparently not allowed to touch her breasts; how unjust it is to wear jangly anklets above her bare feet because it makes him think about her bare feet; how unjust it is to wear lipstick if he can't kiss her.

Intentions be damned, it was awful to see this guy lose his temper and pitch a fit because this attractive woman wouldn't notice him. He has the nerve to visit her at her apartment the next day and apologize while, in the same breath, justifying his behavior: "All I was trying to say was you could be a little more conservative." And: "I just say what I think." And worst of all, at the end of the story, she convinces him to give her a chance and they go on a date. That's a nightmare fantasy. There are moving parts of this short story, but the interactions between these two characters fried the whole thing for me.

In the end it's not what he said that made this story so sour, nor was it the fact that she apologized to him for it. My biggest gripe was that it felt like the story championed this behavior. This guy was the protagonist.

But that was nothing, NOTHING, compared to the eponymous "Welcome to the Monkey House," first published in Playboy Magazine in 1968. I haven't read any of the other reviews for this book, but I'll try to be brief because I'm sure much has already been said about "'Monkey House." This dystopian short story has the United States combating severe overpopulation with mandatory "ethical birth control." Because birth control as we know it is deemed unethical for preserving pleasure while preventing pregnancy, so-called ethical birth control prevents pleasure while preserving the ability to become pregnant. Everyone is 100% numb form the waist down. Yikes.

The story's hero, Billy the Poet, kidnaps the main character (An attractive and provocatively dressed woman who works in a compassionate suicide center) and after her numbness wears off, he n  rapesn her at gunpoint while eight people hold her down. This is Billy's schtick. This is Billy's modus operandi. Similar to how Morpheus unplugs Neo in The Matrix, Billy kidnaps and rapes women to show them that ethical birth control is inhuman, that sex can be awesome, and that they should go and experience more sex with dudes who are better at sex than he is.

This was so horrifying, so unbelievably repugnant, that when I read, "He didn't hurt her. He deflowered her with a clinical skill she found ghastly," I clung to the hope that there would be a punchline at the end; that Billy would later reveal that what he'd actually done was merely clip her toenails or remove a mind-control patch from her thigh; that she didn't know any better because she'd never experienced any sexual stimulation in her life. But no. The reality that Billy raped her in order to correct her behavior is reinforced again and again and again, right up until the last paragraph.

I felt like Arlo in The Good Dinosaur when he met Thunderclap, right at that moment when Thunderclap reveals he's carnivorous. There are so many good ideas in here; so many endearing and heartfelt story beats; so many relatable moments and other moments communicated so skillfully that I felt able to relate without any shared experience (I never, for example, served in the military). And so, so many smiles. All these good feelies made it even harder to stomach the portrayal of browbeating women into feeling bad enough to go out with you and, yeesh, corrective rape, as justifiable things.

So, yeah, I'm no longer 100% on board with the Vonnegut train. But it's also not going to stop me from reading more (if not all) of his other work. On one hand, it might be unfair for me to critique these 50- and 60-year-old shorts through a 2020 lens... But on the other hand, I feel like "rape is bad," is pretty timeless.

My favorites:

"Harrison Bergeron"
"Who Am I This Time?"
"Long Walk to Forever"
"The Foster Portfolio"
"All the King's Horses"
"Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog"
"Next Door"
"More Stately Mansions"
"The Euphio Question"
"Deer in the Works"
"The Lie"
"The Kid Nobody Could Handle"
"The Manned Missiles"

A work of art, it belongs in the adorably perfect short story collections as those by Ray Bradbury and J. G. Ballard: yes, apocalypse; yes, spirituality; yes sci-fi and yes A PROPHET*. Only those writing with an eye to an uncertain yet not wholly unpredictable future (society limits individualism) can be considered amazing if they possess this attribute. I mean, Nostradamus as short story master? C'mon. Yet in all 25 stories, Vonnegut rarely repeats himself (except for gee-whiz! Easter eggs, such as: lo-tech science fiction a-la Eternal Sunshine and notable motifs like the play Death of a Salesman, radio entertainment, jobs, Wyandotte College, the name Sousa ; the first entry is geographical biography, the last one is a futuristic comedy), he is rarely overly sentimental, but always smart, precise, perfect*.

The diversity of genre, characterization***, dialogue, epochs... the imagination is vast and its no wonder every modern writer at one time or another decided to be like him, or not. But consider him they did, do, will. Welcome to the Monkey House****, we were warned.

*In MISS TEMPTATION we have beginnings of the straight male paranoia that ensued due to MeToo#...written in 1956! ...My favorite short story, D.P., and THE LIE all handle racism with such ease, because, well, these were all written in the 50's, and its chilling to see how much privilege vs. poverty/working/hardlife lifelong workers. I found out that rich Republicans love the term "democratic nation" since it evokes a type of humbling that's alien to them
**Page 115 , close to the book's center: "Have I made it clear that this book is a beauty?" --NEW DICTIONARY
***Characters' vernacular are uniquely their own! Funny, fragile, tragic, cuckoo... You find so many individuals, like a mid-century SciFi vanity fair!
****The titular short story, included with classics of literature "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner and O'Brien's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", are precursor to horror cinema firmly rooted in our own American fears (which may be something similar to: BECOMING THE MACHINE FOR THE MACHINE)

I read this when I was 17 & loved it. I'm re-reading it now & so far only really enjoyed the story "Who Am I This Time?" The title story was HORRIBLE. Mr. Vonnegut should have been ashamed that he ever even THOUGHT that rape is EVER ok, even in a dystopian future. The only two stories I remembered from my youth, "Harrison Bergeron" & "All the King's Horses", were not as good on the re-read. I'm forcing myself to finish this one. I'm going to go through all of my Vonnegut now, because I suspect it will end with me getting more shelf space for books that are actually good.

"D.P" and "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" were pretty good. The rest were meh. I have five stories left. This will not be a keeper when I am done unless the last five blow my socks off. Somehow I doubt they will.

Nope. Not a keeper. Ok to read once, but some of the stories were down right horrible. Read at your own risk.

This man was a genius!!!! And ---a loving Husband -father! One heck of a decent human being!!!

A few stories were soooooooooooooooooo good, that I was wishing I could 'go-back' and change a few things about my College days. I would have loved to be talking about this book in a College Class. I'm ready now!!!!!

I'm really happy I won this book. I could have missed it. THANK YOU --THANK YOU ---THANK YOU ---to whom ever 'picked' my name as a 'first read'.

I enjoyed reading other reviews --early this morning 3am ...(wonderful).

Here is a little something I'll add which I have not read in other reviews.

The copy of the book (in my hands) ---is "The Special Edition" --"Building The Monkey House" by Gregory D. Sumner. It was a treat 'added' to this book.
I love what he wrote about Kurt Vonnegut:

It was a time when Kurt --himself was having an 'add-on' built to his home. He needed a place for quiet to write. He and his wife had 6 kids. (3 of their own --3 where his sisters after she died). ---

This I the type of man he was: (he had a very unglamorous way about him). He worked hard --'showing-up' for work. He said:
"Mechanics fix automobiles" he once observed. Carpenters build houses. Storytellers use a reader's leisure time in such a way that the reader will not feel that his time has been wasted".