Welcome to the Monkey House

Vonnegut begins with a moving episode about right now in which a young man searches for companionship and identity through participation in amateur theatricals, appropriately entitled Who Am I This Time?

An edged satire of the future concludes the first act

The final scene, entirely realistic and modern, gets to the heart of what really concerns young people as a music teacher fights to salvage a rebellious young man, explaining to him how one might bring beauty into the world

"Love yourself," the teacher tells him, "and make your instrument sing about it"

"[Vonnegut is] ... a zany but moral mad scientist at the controls of a literary time machine. He is George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer

Though Vonnegut is knocking a misplaced sense of values by showing the horrifying results, he's doing it with an irreverent chuckle" ~ The Times