Welcome to the Monkey House

Welcome to the Monkey House collects Vonnegut’s short fiction through the 50s and the 60s, a blend of the scifi that made his reputation and non-genre stories about Yankee storm window salesmen that paid the bills. There’s the characteristic Vonnegut humor, irony, profanity, the gut punches cloaked in plain words and honeyed absurdity.

Reading a whole bunch of these back to back, though, reveals a basic underlying sentimentality. I’m not sure if Vonnegut actually likes people much, but he sure is sentimental about them, in all their aches, weirdnesses, sins, and dreams.