Welcome to the Monkey House

TW: rapeI have been a fan of Vonnegut for a long time and have adored many of his works including Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, and The Sirens of Titan. However, Welcome to the Monkey House is seriously disappointing. In the titular short story, Vonnegut is glorifying corrective rape. I've seen some folks saying that it's because of the time it was written and that he's not actually glorifying rape. These takes only contribute to rape culture. The story was literally first published in PLAYBOY.Vonnegut never even uses the term rape, he instead refers to it as "deflowering," despite the fact that the female protagonist literally is held down by eight people with a gun pointed to her head. He writes about rape victims being grateful in the end. The rapist says that he wished it could be done in another way and that he doesn't enjoy it, but that doesn't make him into a hero, it's simply an excuse. Billy is still a rapist, regardless of his intentions. Vonnegut writes about rape as if it's liberating for women, that women secretly want to be raped. He never condemns Billy's actions and instead describes him as having a shy smile and such, as if we are supposed to like Billy. Also, Billy only rapes women despite men also being given the same pills that eliminate sexual desire.I get that Vonnegut's writing is not meant for the faint of heart, but this is different from crass humor. It's extremely messed up to give Vonnegut a pass for this as he was someone who was able to critique war and capitalism and he should be able to recognize that rape is not okay either.

Came into this purchase knowing two things, that Vonnegut had a reputation for quality work and the Harrison Bergeron story that I read in high school lit was really good. Since "monkey house" was a fun sounding title I bought it, ignoring the book buying rule to never buy a book where the author's name is the same size or larger than the actual title. The title story "Welcome to the monkey house" has a protagonist that kidnaps and rapes a woman. There are cheesy boy meets girl stories. Faddish and dated "population bomb" mongering. It would be one star except for some interesting revelations of the post-WWII psyche that were accidental to the stories. Vonnegut must have written something much better to earn the reputation. I wish I knew what it was.

Please note that my rating is about the quality of the Kindle edition, not the quality of Vonnegut's writing.On the one hand, the short stories are wonderful and showcase some of Vonnegut's earlier writing. On the other hand, the Kindle edition would likely embarrass any author, and particularly one whose precision of language was equal to Kurt Vonnegut's. Specifically, the book appears to have been created by scanning a hard copy and then using optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert the images to letters, without making an effort to even so much as electronically verify that the OCR got it right (e.g. even a Word grammar checker would have turned up most of the obvious mistakes). This results in an almost verbatim rendering of the original, but not quite. In the Kindle version it is quite jarring to find, for example, the word "mat" appearing nonsensically in the middle of some sentences where the word "that" was plainly intended. Two examples: "It was in this news mat Nancy perceived a glint of hope" or "Why, honey bunch, they call mat truth serum." Mostly, "that" shows up correctly, but not always. Perhaps the most obnoxious example is in the short story "Deer in the Works" where a character's name is first given as "Lou Flammer" then inexplicably switches for a few pages to "Lou Hammer" and then switches back to last name "Flammer" again. Vonnegut doesn't make those sorts of mistakes. Kindle does, and it is a shame to do it to a writer of such ability. Nevertheless, what Vonnegut writes in these short stories are entertaining, thought provoking, disturbing, and somewhat of a time capsule for the mindset of America in the 1950s and early 60s. My only suggestion is to buy a hard copy version and read what Vonnegut actually wrote, instead.

This collection of short stories was a much needed reminder for me of just how great a writer Vonnegut is. Yes, he's hilarious (even the introduction is funny), but he's also moving, sentimental without being maudlin, and provocative. His very first short story, Harrison Bergeron, is a brief futuristic take on a world that many of us believe is about to be realized, to our dismay.At the end of this collection you are forced to admit he's got range, that's for sure.

Watched an old interview of kurt Vonnegut on Jon Stewart and Jon Stewart said it was Vonnegut's books that got him through his adolescence. I am experiencing my mid life adolescence. My son has schizo effective disorder hearing voices and seeing things. Some have explained this as a rather sane reaction to a crazy world. If the way humans behave doesn't make you crazy then you have the mental health problems not the other way around. What amazed me most is that many of these stories were written over sixty years ago. When I see the date of publication of the stories I am shocked - they are all relevant to problems we have today. All are stories that reflect Mr Vonnegut's love of humanity and his sadness with the lack of broad perspective we have as a group. I suspect some of the personal tragedies in his life led to this depth of insight in his writing. Every story in this collection is a gem. I only wish he were still alive so I could thank him for helping me to get through this difficult part of my life. Recommend to anyone and everyone.

I was introduced to WTTMH by my english literature teacher 37 years ago, as I couldn't cope with the syllabus offerings; that changed my view of short stories and gave me a passion outside Asimov, Hurbert and Silverberg. The introduction of humour, reflection and safe I say cynicism forced me not only to explore the world of Kigore Trout, but offerings authors including Harry Harrison's SAD and Douglas Adams HHGTTG.This is a must read offering as may insights today as it's commentary of the time of writing.To re-read today is to have the mind opened again and have whole nuggets of joy (of the written word) drawn in to the mind, for fresh insight and pleasure.

Just because you have read one KV stories does not prepare you for the next one. Many , varied, covering all sorts of taboos of the 70s and 80's its not really science fiction. rather a slight extension of sociology. The Handicap General is here, though the story is short , it has been used many times as an example of what socialist education is all about. = levelling the field by penalising the smart. This has been in place here in the UK for the last fifteen years, and a fifth of the populations is now functionally illiterate, yet 'educators' want to extend handicapping.

Promoters of this book mention science fiction but I think that this is a very small aspect of the book. The short stories are much more a kindly look at human nature or imagining an extreme extension of government policies as in the first story 'Harrison Bergeron' where everyone is artificially handicapped by a government agency to ensure equality. There is a certain 'feel good' factor about many of the items while at the same time there is food for thought. I have the Kindle version and there are a few typos but I liked the general style of writing. I would recommend this book.

A good read. A collection of many short stories from Vonnegut. If you like his novels you will most likely be fond of this one. All the stories have an emotional impact, and they showcase different writing styles from Vonnegut.

Usually I like Vonnegut's writing, but I found these short stories rather unsatisfying, almost as if they were novel ideas that he couldn't be bothered developing fully. Some of them also seem very dated now, e.g. "Welcome to the Monkey House" itself - using a ban on procreation as the basis of a dystopia just doesn't feel original enough any more, and the use of kidnapping and rape as part of the supposed resolution now comes across as deeply creepy.