30 Best, a question

[Steelhead]

A Pynchon list subscriber (neither a technocrat nor an academic) asks,
pleasantly:

>Steelhead, this is not a flame.  What made you choose Welcome to the Monkey
>>House rather than Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle?

Mr. X:

I have been chastised by the Titans of Pynchondom, ordered to distill my
prose of its tendency toward the polemic and the invective (even when
strongly fused with irony) a-and like any of Pointsman's neutered pups, I
do as conditioned by my superiors.

So, here's the straight shit.

Understand, it's personal preference, but for me Vonnegut is at his best as
a short story writer: crisp, witty, bizarre. But since short stories no
longer pay, he's been forced to turn almost exclusively to the novel--which
he has done a fine job at, even if many of them do read like tightly linked
short stories.

I love Slaughterhouse Five, and will defend it, politely and effeminently,
to all comers. But my first reading of Monkey House (at the age of 12 mind
you) is itched clearly in my memory:  I'd never encountered anything like
it before. It was the first book I bought multiple copies of. That's why
its on my list.  Of the novels, I'd rank Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of
Champions above SF-5--but, again, that may only be because I read them
first--o-or more likely because SF-5 was ruined for me in a Contemporary
American Fiction seminar taught by a grad student who lumped Vonnegut in
the same class as Bruce Jay Friedman (is that his name? I've suppressed
it)--you know-the black humorists.

By the way, one of Vonnegut's first jobs was as a technical writer for:  GE.

Humbly,

Steely