Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Welcome to the Monkey House (1970)
I never really intended to read my way through his entire back catalogue, but I guess he wrote so much, and so much which sold so well as to warrant an extended print run, that I suppose it's inevitable that I should still be finding titles I'm yet to read on the second hand shelves; and I usually buy them because there's always the chance of the latest find being one of the good ones. Usually it is, although sometimes it will turn out to have been Kurt going through the motions, meaning the jokes are still good but the whole gets to be a bit of a slog. Monkey House was purchased out of habit without particularly high expectations. I knew it was a collection of previously published material, and this would therefore be my fourth Vonnegut of such composition. I knew not to anticipate any massive surprises.
Happily, excepting a single book review, it turns out to be a collection of his short fiction, and therefore quite unlike other assemblages I've read which have been mostly of essays and the like. Even better is that it seems Vonnegut was well suited to the short form given how it obliged him to get straight to the point, sparing us any of the rambling post-modern gagfests which are either wonderful, or else serve only to remind me of Marx Brothers routines amounting to someone talking bollocks very, very fast. Most of these short stories were written prior to the success of Slaughterhouse Five, back when he was still trying and are thus informed with a sense of the author hoping to appeal to an audience at least a little bit. Hence we get the apeshit satire, Jonathan Swift jammed on eleven and daring you to whine about suspension of disbelief, but relayed with a tight, vaguely populist sense of craft - like Player Piano distilled to something which doesn't go on far too long. There are a few which don't really do anything much, but everything here is kept short and punchy so its worth sitting through a few duds for the sake of Harrison Bergeron, More Stately Mansions or The Kid Nobody Could Handle. Vonnegut's strength has always been his humour combined with a razor sharp critique of Emperors failing to dress themselves accordingly, in which capacity Monkey House represents an impressive display of muscle.
I never really intended to read my way through his entire back catalogue, but I guess he wrote so much, and so much which sold so well as to warrant an extended print run, that I suppose it's inevitable that I should still be finding titles I'm yet to read on the second hand shelves; and I usually buy them because there's always the chance of the latest find being one of the good ones. Usually it is, although sometimes it will turn out to have been Kurt going through the motions, meaning the jokes are still good but the whole gets to be a bit of a slog. Monkey House was purchased out of habit without particularly high expectations. I knew it was a collection of previously published material, and this would therefore be my fourth Vonnegut of such composition. I knew not to anticipate any massive surprises.
Happily, excepting a single book review, it turns out to be a collection of his short fiction, and therefore quite unlike other assemblages I've read which have been mostly of essays and the like. Even better is that it seems Vonnegut was well suited to the short form given how it obliged him to get straight to the point, sparing us any of the rambling post-modern gagfests which are either wonderful, or else serve only to remind me of Marx Brothers routines amounting to someone talking bollocks very, very fast. Most of these short stories were written prior to the success of Slaughterhouse Five, back when he was still trying and are thus informed with a sense of the author hoping to appeal to an audience at least a little bit. Hence we get the apeshit satire, Jonathan Swift jammed on eleven and daring you to whine about suspension of disbelief, but relayed with a tight, vaguely populist sense of craft - like Player Piano distilled to something which doesn't go on far too long. There are a few which don't really do anything much, but everything here is kept short and punchy so its worth sitting through a few duds for the sake of Harrison Bergeron, More Stately Mansions or The Kid Nobody Could Handle. Vonnegut's strength has always been his humour combined with a razor sharp critique of Emperors failing to dress themselves accordingly, in which capacity Monkey House represents an impressive display of muscle.
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