Welcome to the Monkey House

OK, I admit it. I sneaked into my parents' room while they were bowling to look at my Father's Playboy. It was a night that changed my life. No, not what you're thinking . . . that's where I first read "Welcome to the Monkey House" and Kurt Vonnegut's writing. Tom Swift was immediately forgotten.

As

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time passes, Vonnegut's impact on American Literature is increasingly appreciated. If you've never been exposed to his writing, this is an ideal place to start. In fact, in some high schools across the US, "Harrison Bergeron" is required reading. This little gem of a story is probably second to the title story as one of my favorite short stories from Vonnegut.

Vonnegut's writing style is clean, elegant and he takes no prisoners when he lashes out with his satirical pen. The title story deals with over population, the creation of an "ethical birth control pill" and a small rebellion against the pill. The story was first released around the time The Pill was first developed. In the years since, this story has become even more of a mirror of the "moral wars" being fought over this medical breakthrough and the consequences of overpopulation. At least we are not to the point of one of the proposed solutions, but that debate, assisted suicide, is a hot topic.

It is not possible to review all the stories in this anthology in this limited space, but I hope you will see just how much of a visionary Kurt Vennegut was with his writing. Hopefully we will never see the world of "Harrison Bergeron", but it is in the realm of possibility, as are many of the other stories presented here.

Strongly suggested for everyone's bookshelf. That way, you won't have to sneak into a night stand and risk getting caught reading "Playboy" magazine by your parents . . . or your kids.

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The Basics

A series of short stories (and even a couple of articles) by Kurt Vonnegut.

My Thoughts

Sad to say, the first thing I want to address is that the title story of this collection (“Welcome to the Monkey House”) is one of the most horrifically unfortunate things I’ve ever read. I want to

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sit here and tell myself that Vonnegut was from a different time, blah blah. I can’t justify it. And I can’t not talk about it openly and honestly. TRIGGER WARNING: the story has what is basically date rape, and it attempts to make this seem entirely normal and okay. And it just isn’t. Older fiction has a lot of unfortunate implications in it, and you have to be somewhat prepared for that stuff, but I was genuinely shocked to see something like that as written by Vonnegut. It just felt backwards and insensitive, and while he’s quick to pull out the offensive and stick it in your face, this was on a whole other level.

Having said that, can I judge an entire collection on one story? No, that’s not really fair. Especially considering the rest of them don’t contain anything remotely like that, and almost all of them are strong, well-written stories that I really enjoyed. The reason I was shocked in the first place was because Vonnegut never came off as that deeply insensitive to women, at least not from my perspective. The rest of the stories reflect that, being satires and science fiction and mostly about the human condition not including such a heavy, knee-jerk-inducing subject.

As for the tales here that make it worth reading (just take my advice and skip the title story entirely), “EPICAC” was one of the first ones I purposely flipped to, and it’s both short and lovely. “Harrison Bergeron” is a famous one collected here, and if you ask me, for good reason. “Euphorio” was another, fantastic, science fiction story that deserves to be read, especially for that ending. I also found “All The King’s Horses” to be very tense and suspenseful. Those are just my favorites boiled down from too many to name, as there is a lot of really great writing here.

So the final verdict is I recommend the collection save one story. It really is easily skippable and ignored, and the rest are worth your time.

Final Rating

4/5

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I listened to Welcome To The Monkey House as an audio book. The narrators, aside from David Strathairn, are mostly just goofy. Maria Tucci did a good Russian accent, but her women characters are whiny. I realize that this is probably how Vonnegut wrote them, but yech. Two of the other guys are

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annoying but I don't know if it's Tony Roberts, Bill Irwin or Dylan Baker. This is a book that, because it is so dated and sexist, needs competent narrators to make it palatable. Alas, they're not there. As for the title story, it seems to me to be a theoretical way to justify rape. What kind of a man would think such a situation would be a reasonable response to overpopulation? If it weren't for the story "Adam" about a Jewish new father, and the story about the German orphans I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's amazing to me that Vonnegut could write two stories so full of real characters and actual emotions but prefers to write an anthology populated, for the most part, with caricatures of 1950's TV shows.

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Wonderfully world-building, the stories in this collection are varied and thoughtful, and as clever as they are entertaining. While I'd only read Vonnegut's longer prose pieces in the past, this collection contains what are now some of my favorite short stories, and I'll now think of this wonderful

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work first when I think of Vonnegut. With sympathetic characters, graceful trajectories, and fascinating premises, the stories here are simply unforgettable, and I've no doubt that I'll be passing this collection on to anyone interested in short stories, as well as sharing some of the stories with my writing students.

To my mind, my favorites will likely remain "Who Am I This Time?", "The Euphio Question", and "The Kid Nobody Could Handle", but there are too many great stories here to list each one. Additionally, for writers, the ending essay on "Welcome to the Monkey House" is a fascinating look at Vonnegut's journey toward producing what is now one of his most widely known stories. Discussing numerous and wildly changing drafts, Gregory D. Sumner discusses Vonnegut's methods of world-building and writing, including numerous excerpts from various drafts. While this essay might not be of interest to every reader, it will absolutely be of interest to Vonnegut lovers and writers.

On the whole, this is a marvelous book. If you like short stories OR Vonnegut's other works, it's well worth the read, and now takes the place as my favorite work by Vonnegut.

Recommended, of course.

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For the most part, this collection of short stories are quite entertaining. The fact that they are science fiction stories written in the 50s and don't sound silly is quite remarkable.

Hands down the greatest short story compilation by a master of the written word. Gems like "Harrison Bergeron" and the "Euphio Question" are simply incredible explorations into society's incessant need to strive for an unreachable utopia at the cost of humanity's soul. Highly, highly recommended.

I feel like a broken record when it comes to short stories, but every time I seem to have the same reaction. It’s incredibly rare to find one where every story in the collection is a gem and this is no exception to that rule. There are some great pieces including “The Lie” about a young

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boy’s application to the prep school. “Unready to Wear” is another fascinating one, telling the story of a world where some people have figured out how to leave their bodies behind and exist without them. They put on new bodies like a suit of clothes. But for every good one there is a weaker one and the collection of 25 stories is a mixed bag.

“Who Am I This Time?” is my favorite of the bunch. Harry is a quiet man who works at a local hardware store. Once a year he comes to life in a local theatre production. He throws himself into every new role with wild abandon, but the moment the curtain falls on the final night he return to his chronically shy personality. Helen is new to town and finds herself cast opposite Harry in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” She falls in love, but she’s fallen in love with the character Harry is playing, not Harry himself.

The main stories that I think will stay with me are not Vonnegut’s usual fare. For a man so well-known for his sarcasm the book contains some surprisingly sweet pieces. His cynical wit seeps in, but it's tempered with a warm nostalgia. Many of the stories were written while he was a young author trying to make ends meet. His talent is there but he was writing for a wider audience. A great example of this is one Vonnegut originally titles "Hell to Get Along With," when it was printed in the Ladies Home Journal (yes a Vonnegut article!) it was renamed, "Long Walk to Forever." Another great one is Adam, which introduces readers to two Holocaust survivors marveling at the miracle of childbirth.

BOTTOM LINE: Some of these stories, particularly the ones I mentioned, are absolute 5 star pieces for me, but overall the book is hit or miss. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to try Vonnegut to see if they might like his style.

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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

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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 womens' liberation solely as a cultural shift which allowed women to f*ck 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 millieu 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.

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My favorite Vonnegut book, of those I have read so far (including some of his non-fiction essays, which are terrible, his most well-known novels, which are mixed, and a couple of other short story collections, which are okay). The title story---about a future society that has outlawed sexual

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pleasure---and "Harrison Bergeron"---a brilliant satire of egalitarianism (which is strange, considering Vonnegut's own egalitarian leanings)---are great, and there are several other good stories, and none that are really bad.

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Essential reading for lateral thinkers

Another Vonnegut classic. Need I say more?

This collection, like Vonnegut's work as a whole, is a bit spotty here and there, but overall it's phenomenal in its scope and creativity.

The stories all have a really strong heart, which is part of the reason why Vonnegut is such a pleasure to read.

Some of the greats include "Report on the

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Barnhouse Effect," "The Euphio Question," the unabashedly sweet interludes of "Who Am I This Time?" and "EPICAC," and the seminal classics "The Lie" and "Harrison Bergeron."

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My road to Vonnegut has been a long one. I read Slaughterhouse-Five for a Contemporary Fiction class in college and enjoyed it very much, and I always intended to explore his other works at some point. Unfortunately, that didn't happen until a publication I subscribe to arrived in my mailbox

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containing an essay from his most recent (and, unfortunately, posthumous) collection, Armageddon in Retrospect. I was immediately gripped by the vitality of the piece, a reflection on the firebombing of Dresden, and I knew the time had come for me to finally get my hands on more of Vonnegut's work.

When I first opened this book, I found myself laughing out loud at the preface, and I knew I was in good hands. Paging back through the book now, I find myself fighting an urge to read passages aloud to no one. Some stories within are science fiction (with an interesting dichotomy of utopia/dystopia) while others are "mainstream" fiction, and they vary quite a bit in theme and tone; but I found in each of them a core of distinct humanity that pulled me in.

I thought about naming the stories in this collection that I enjoyed the most, until I realized that I'd be listing most of the table of contents. Suffice it to say that this is a wonderful book. Some of the stories are better than others, of course, but they're all accessible and highly interesting. Vonnegut's humor is often dark, but it shines, and his insights into humanity's quirks and foibles are sometimes stunning (I will point you here to "The Manned Missiles").

Waiting so long to rediscover Vonnegut's work was my mistake. I do not plan to make it again.

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Welcome...is exactly what you would expect from Kurt Vonnegut. A series of short stories that are dark, humorous, terrifying, mesmerizing, and like no one else could write. Well Done!!

Another fast read, I read this book in about a week or so. Much like his other books, I really enjoyed this collection of stories. I found many of the stories on the sad/depressing side, which seemed to put a damper on the book. The stories, however, which dealt with politics, society etc. I really

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liked and nicely offset the love themed ones. Like his other books, this one made me think about the people and things that sourround me on a daily basis. If you haven't read this book, I highly reccommend it.

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This was required for school, but I finished most of the stories on my own time. Some were better than others. Their focus was sometimes a little weird but I enjoyed Vonnegut's take on certain issues. His points were not too off base. A lot of things that he discussed are very important issues even

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today. I enjoyed reading it and I reccommend it for anyone looking for some insightful reading.

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absolutely wonderful collection. the long walk to forever is by far my favorite.

I bought this book soon after reading Slaughter House Five, but put it aside until a road trip I took a year later. There were about eight of us in a cramped car, and one of the girls found this, and started reading stories to the rest of us. More than once we were convulsing with laughter. Later,

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I went through the book myself, and found myself almost in tears. I am not a fan of short stories, but this book is near and dear to my heart.

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suprisingly, his short stories aren't all misanthropic visions of the future.. even though a lot of them are and they're great. some are really great small town and/or love stories, all of which are equally as good. or great.

Probably the most well known of these stories is Harrison Bergeron...which I must say I enjoyed.

But my FAVORITE story is, without a doubt, the story of Einstein's intelligence machine. After tested out on his dog, him and a neighbor discover dogs are FAR more intelligent than humans. After the dog,

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Sparky, exchanges Einstein's silence on the matter for the right filament for a light bulb, Sparky is brutally killed by the dogs who were listening outside.

Good stuff.

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I used to really love Kurt Vonnegut, and I suspect he was a pretty cool guy (based on some stuff I heard about him), but it feels like this collection aged badly. Perhaps because Welcome to the Monkey House is so problematic.
And yet there's Miss Temptation, which is so much more sympathetic...and

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I think the Hyannis Port Story is funny, and so is the Euphio Question, and The Foster Portfolio and Go Back to your Precious Wife and Son. The Manned Missiles broke my heart, as did All the King's Horses.
But now, as an adult, I despise Harrison Bergeron, and I can't tell you why, it just feels so dumb when I read it now. It's too over the top.
But somehow Who Am I This Time? isn't.
I don't know. Let's just leave it at the Barnhouse Effect, and go home.

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Probably the most well known of these stories is Harrison Bergeron...which I must say I enjoyed.

But my FAVORITE story is, without a doubt, the story of Einstein's intelligence machine. After tested out on his dog, him and a neighbor discover dogs are FAR more intelligent than humans. After the dog,

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Sparky, exchanges Einstein's silence on the matter for the right filament for a light bulb, Sparky is brutally killed by the dogs who were listening outside.

Good stuff.

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So...I don't think I'm exactly the right type of person for short stories. I'm probably too impatient to keep reading to really sit back and absorb each story for what it is, and to really digest what Vonnegut was trying to say in each story. I'm the same way with poetry. Anyway, my reading habits

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notwithstanding, I still enjoyed this collection, though the stories just sort of live in my head as fleeting images. Each one is just a small glimpse into a different world. I'm often a little dismayed when I come to the end of each story, since I'm the kind of person who always wants to know what happens next, and why these fleeting images can sometimes be unsatisfying. On the other hand, other stories I think are quite well contained in their few pages, and make for a well-rounded story in and of itself. Am I making sense? Probably not.

I still can't think of a good way to describe Vonnegut. He seems to defy classification, and the stories contained in "Welcome to the Monkey House" agree. Perhaps it's just my lack of willingness to put the time into fully analyzing it, but I don't sense an overarching theme to the collection - as I said, in my mind, they're just a series of disjointed images. Each one does just as well on its own as it does in a collection, I'd imagine. I was surprised to learn that I'd also read one of the stories too; in a high school lit class, we read "Harrison Bergeron," and here I'd thought that I'd never read Vonnegut before recently. Ah well - it was still a good story the second time around. I appreciate how Vonnegut writes everything so matter-of-factly. He doesn't blink an eye in describing the worlds he's created - where people 130 years old are considered young, where supercomputers can write poetry, a world where everything is equal. He never seems to judge these worlds outright - he just tells you what they are and lets you make up your own mind about them. Man...now I wish I'd gone to hear him speak in Madison.

Anyway, it's a good collection of stories, but I'll probably end up sticking with novels for awhile. It's surprising the different mind set you need to read something like this.

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Younger readers (as in early 30s and under) will be shocked by the misogyny, especially in the title story.

Since I grew up in the era these stories were written I found almost all of them very readable, some surprisingly so. My favorites were the anti-war stories and the ones that dealt with the

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aftermath of World War II (D. P. and Adam.

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