[Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is a collection of Vonnegut's essays, reviews, and speeches.] His technique, properly applied, is unsurpassed. In a piece of speculative reporting such as "There's a Maniac Loose Out There," the account of a grisly crime on Cape Cod,… Vonnegut approaches his own opinion with a jigsawlike gallery of observations that leaves one meditating on one's own responses. And in "Excelsior! We're Going to the Moon! Excelsior!" he frequently follows his own paragraphs by repeating a word or phrase from within them, letting it reverberate as if to re-examine his own sentence from another, more interesting viewpoint…. Occasionally these techniques fall flat, leaving a sense of facility and emptiness. But more often their seemingly random perceptions provide a surprisingly acute moral juxtaposition.

Still, it is this very tone of moral insight which has gained Vonnegut his reputation as a humanist and a conveyor of wisdom that...