["Welcome to the Monkey House"] says much against "collections."… Most collections are little more than old soup warmed over. Possibly a few bridging pages or paragraphs will be added in an effort to spark new flame under the kettle. The literary gourmet will not be fooled, however. Old soup is old soup no matter how you ladle it.

"Welcome to the Monkey House" fails to enhance Kurt Vonnegut's reputation. There are only brief glimpses of the hilarious, uproarious Vonnegut whose black-logic extentions of today's absurdities into an imagined society of tomorrow at once gives us something to laugh at and much to fear. At his wildest best (as in his earlier "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" or in "Cat's Cradle") Kurt Vonnegut is a laughing prophet of doom. Too much of this book … is slick, slapdash prose lifted from the pages of magazines of limited distinction. (pp. 4-5)

[In "Welcome to the Monkey House," Vonnegut is] content to write a three-page preface and then, apparently willy-nilly, toss together whatever materials appeared handiest….

Some few of the selections are worthwhile. There's a pleasant little essay on the Cape Cod village where the author lives, a funny review of The Random House Dictionary … and some three or four stories dealing competently and wildly with improbable tomorrows. (p. 5)

Unhappily, such touches are rare. The rather pitiful state of magazine fiction is what one most remembers about this book. (p. 19)