This book offers an entertaining set of Vonnegut's previously uncollected short stories, most of which were written in the 1950s and early 1960s. While the quality of the tales is not as good as those in his previously published
Welcome to the Monkey House, anybody who is a fan of Vonnegut's work, or even someone who simply likes good stories, will enjoy this book.
Yet like all good fiction, Vonnegut's work is as valuable for its insights as for its ability to entertain. While the stories collected here are in a variety of genres, one theme does emerge from them - the hunger for distinction. From the title story to 'The Package', 'The Powder-Blue Dragon' to 'Runaways,' many of the stories are about people seeking something that distinguishes them from the rest of their world, usually something that is artificial or external to who they are. That these searches usually end in folly for the characters appears to illustrate Vonnegut's point - it is who we are as people that matters, not the trinkets we buy or the poses we adopt. Though hardly radical today, it is a point that offers an interesting contrast to the consumer-driven age that spawned such tales.
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