Welcome to the Monkey House

Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut, is one of the few remaining Vonnegut books on our shelves, and it's a beat up copy at that. What is it about this man that tickles our funny bones and makes us weep in frustration and nostalgia?

I asked two students that very question.

One replied that "Vonnegut knows what a reader wants to hear." Well, yes, especially if you believe that dogs are smarter than their people.

The other called him "the dark humor man, the funny grampa who embarrasses the bride on her wedding day with his views on everything." Too true, although whatever he uttered would be the truth.

Want a vision of the future? Read the first and last stories in this collection, and then, like Harrison Bergeron, treasure your imperfections in the face of mediocrity. Just be sure that, unlike Lou and Emerald Schwartz, you occupy a cozy bed in your own room while you read these wickedly funny stories.

And for Vonnegut's own words on whatever life throws at us? "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterwards."

Kurt Vonnegut, novelist and essayist, died this past April at 84.

My favorite? Miss Temptation, in which Cpl. Fuller, upon return from the Korean War, learns from an alluring and decent young woman how to be a human being again.

What's yours?