Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and experiences the events of his life out of chronological order. War and absurdity ensue.

I've never read Kurt Vonnegut up until now and when Slaughterhouse-Five showed up in my cheapo ebook email a few days ago, I decided it was time. Get it?

Slaughterhouse-Five is often classified as science fiction but it reads more like Kurt Vonnegut trying to make sense of his World War II experiences through a humorous (at times) science fiction story. It also seems to be a Big Important Book, due to novelly things like themes of anti-war and the absurdities that come with it. It also uses a non-linear plot structure to illustrate the timey-wimey nature of Billy's affliction.

There's not really a whole lot to tell. Slaughterhouse-Five is basically a collection of non-chronological events in Billy Pilgrim's life: his experiences in World War II, his life after the war, and his abduction by the Tralfamadorians, aliens who view events in time simultaneously rather than chronologically.

The bleakness and black humor go together surprisingly well, like beer and White Castles. I have to wonder, though, if Slaughterhouse-Five would be as highly regarded as it is if it didn't land on so many banned book lists over the years. Nothing like some controversy to get people to read.

While it wasn't pants-shittingly awesome, I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'll likely pick up another Vonnegut book in the future. Four out of five stars. So it goes.

Criticii literari spun că romanul lui Vonnegut reprezintă o „satiră”, o „comedie neagră”, ceea ce și este într-un fel. Două voci (a Naratorului și a lui Billy Pilgrim) spun una și aceeași poveste: bombardarea de către armatele aliate a Dresdei și consecințele ei teribile (terestre și mintale). Nu voi rezuma cartea. Am făcut-o deja în altă parte. Aș menționa însă că Billy Pilgrim face parte din stirpea lui Don Quijote. Doi inocenți, doi încurcă-lume care și-au pierdut mințile...

Transcriu pasajul cel mai cunoscut cu speranța că va deveni și mai cunoscut:

„Billy agăţase pe unul din pereţii cabinetului său textul înrămat al unei rugăciuni, care exprima metoda sa de supravieţuire, în ciuda faptului că el unul nu punea mare preţ pe viaţă… Şi iată ce scria acolo:
Să-mi dea Domnul
- puterea de-a accepta ce nu pot schimba,
- curajul de-a schimba ce pot şi
- înţelepciunea de-a pricepe ce pot şi ce nu pot.
Printre lucrurile pe care Billy Pilgrim nu le putea schimba se numărau trecutul, prezentul şi viitorul”.

Un roman pe care îl recitesc cu plăcere ori de cîte ori mi se acrește de filosofie :)

At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five (now read 5 times) makes it difficult to take seriously.



However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore (and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward). Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time (and how this impacts perceptions of life and death). Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful. I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other reviews. You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps (which are taken to possibly irrational extremes). In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting...And so it goes!

A fun visit with cantankerous old Uncle Kurt.

Vonnegut is on a short list of my favorite authors and this is perhaps his most famous work. Not his best, but most recognizable. Billy Pilgrim is also one of his best characters.

(Kilgore Trout is his best).

I liked it as I like everything I have read of him. The recurring themes and characters, use of repetition for emphasis and comic relief, his irreverence and postmodern lack of sensitivity shine bright as ever here.

Vonnegut can be funny and grim on the same page, same sentence even, and not lose relevance or sincerity.

** 2018 - My wife and I visited Dresden, Germany this year and I could not help think of Vonnegut as a young POW who miraculously survived the firebombing and lived to tell the tale.

***** 2019 reread

Perhaps his most celebrated and recognized this is also considered one of his best and I’d agree. This 1969 publication was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. I think maybe only Ursula K. LeGuin could also pull that off. This was made into a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting) and the film won the Hugo and the Cannes Grand Prix.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck” in time. We all walk through life with a film of our past raging in our minds, but Vonnegut had Billy go one step further, in that he actually lives random moments in time, from his famous prison time in Dresden to his airplane crash, to his kidnapping and zoo sentence on Tralfamador.

Yes, Tralfamador. And we have another Kilgore Trout sighting, and also Elliot Rosewater and Howard W. Campbell Jr. We are surrounded and encompassed in the world Kurt made.

We must play a drinking game of sorts, every time death is mentioned we must say “so it goes”. In his introduction, we are told that this is to be a novel against war, an anti-war novel, and the ubiquitous phrase is used as an existential (and ironic) reminder that we live in each moment of time but that freewill is an intangible thing, as flimsy as dry rubber bands. The novel is also ripe with situational irony throughout, peppered with his inimitable dry humor and wit.

An observant reader will also note that when Pilgrim’s wife Valencia is in a car wreck, there is a bumper sticker that said, “Reagan for President”. Since this was first published in 1969, seven years before Reagan would be mentioned in the Republican primaries and eleven years before he would be elected, one wonders if KV had some time travel experience.

An absolute must read for his fans, a good introduction to his work, and an excellent book for all readers.

I was initially baffled by Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical, self-referential, satirical, postmodern, post-war, science fiction classic. Can you blame me?

Once I got into it, though, and got into the rhythm of Billy Pilgrim's time-hopping dance, I had to admit to myself, this is a brilliant work.

Billy Pilgrim survived the horrific bombing of Dresden in WWII. Some time later he becomes "unstuck" from time, able to travel with ease back and forth. He meets aliens (Tralfamadorians) who espouse a fatalistic philosophy, which he takes on wholeheartedly. They see the world in 4 dimensions, the 4th being time. Moments in time can be visited and re-lived at will. They can see the beginning, end and everything in between. Trying to change what happens is futile - what happens is what always will happen. The only comfort is that there are enough nice moments to relive.

This is how Billy Pilgrim copes with the atrocities he has witnessed. Suffering from PTSD, he's very detached and disconnected from the world after returning from the war. I understand, but find it deeply sad, that he has to reach so far out for hope, to make life palatable. He has to leave Earth to lighten the anxiety about the dark direction in which the world is spinning. Only when he is on display in an alien zoo is death relieved of finality and meaning.

As original and intelligent as this is, it was difficult for me to connect to. The book is very 'testosteroney'. This may be an unfair reaction, but it feels like it's written by a man for men; it's a gritty soldier's memoir of sorts, with female characters being peripheral and/or stupid and/or bitchy. So for me, this novel is like a painting by an undeniable talent, technically worthy of recognition, but one that I wouldn't hang in my living room. So it goes.

NB: I listened to this on audio and must say: James Franco had the perfect voice to narrate this book, with his slightly nasal, slightly wry, slightly charming, slightly odd combination of vibes only James Franco can offer.

The novel is a fabulist take on the destruction of Dresden—the Florence of the Elbe, the Jewel Box—by Allied Bombing at the end of World War II. Author Vonnegut witnessed the mayhem as a 23-year old American POW. There are no characters here, really. Billy Pilgrim and the others are flat flat flat. Vonnegut's point being that the suffering brought on by the war dehumanized and diminished everyone to one-dimensionality.

It's an interesting idea and a perfect match for his spare style. I remember reading the book thirty years ago and thinking it rather comic. On this second reading the humor morphed to bleakest gravitas. The phrase "so it goes," repeated after every mention of death, becomes tiresome. Halfway through I started mentally deleting it from the text. This improved the book somewhat. There is a section in which Billy Pilgrim, due to his capture by extraterrestrials—the Tralfamadorians—for whom time is constant, not linear, watches a war film in reverse.

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German planes flew at them backward, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. . . The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, and made everything and everybody as good as new

This germ of an idea, I suspect, was later expanded by Martin Amis in his Holocaust novel, Time's Arrow. Here's a brief quote from Time's Arrow to support my claim:

We'd picked up this batch from the mass grave, in the woods, and stood waiting by the van on the approach road while the carbon monoxide went about its work. All my men were dressed as doctors . . . waiting for the familiar volley of shouts and thumps from within . . . . We then drove them closer to town, where one of our men was readying the piles of clothes. Out they all filed. Among them was a mother and a baby, both naked, naturally, for now. The baby was weeping in a determined, muscular, long-haul rhythm, probably from earache. We then escorted this group of thirty souls into a low warehouse littered with primitive sewing machines and spindles . . . These Jews, led by the weeping baby, made their solemn way past a series of curtains and blankets and, one by one, backed their way through a missing panel in the wall. This panel I myself replaced with a softly spoken "Guten Tag." I don't know. I was moved, by their continued silence, by the baby's muffled cries. "Raus! Raus!" I shouted—to the men who romped off to explore the perimeter and to lay out some trinkets, and some food, some bread and tomatoes, say, as was traditional for the Jews later use.

Kurt Vonnegut. Four syllables, once pronounced, suspends in the air like a rock star swishing his name into the air for chanters to latch on and treble the echo. Slaughter-House Five, god knows how many syllables (depending on stress-points of your tongue), once sprinkled from the nozzle of mouth, hangs again in the air like a vagabond wrapper not finding a parapet to land. Perhaps both could have gone their way and not bothered to float into my fairly tranquil world. But they chose to break the silence. So it goes.

War time account is what both brought with them. They could have made the ‘screeching’ delivery (yes, there are types; go, search and look for keywords ‘gore’, ‘murder’, ‘gunshot’, ‘scabies’, ‘rabies’, ‘bleeding’, ‘one-legged’ to arrive at this type ), persuading the jingoist in me to pop to tired life. But both instead chose the ‘absurd’ delivery: non-linear events (time travel, ha!), comical alien world (really?), world within world (what’s that?) and an eccentric potpourri dedicated to memento mori (no pun intended). So it goes.

I have read Dostoyevsky and that man loves darkness. But this man (and his creation) loves death. No exclamations, no guffaws please; not when he propels his thought with this: n   ‘He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night. No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote’n. I could have overlooked such pomposity with a condescending hand and even the eclectic profundity of n  ’ The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin—who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements’n with a lukewarm shrug. But I stuck like a blinking golliwog, with eyes dancing to the shadows of death. So it goes.

You don’t know the Trafalmadorian world that the duo glorifies in full splendor and there isn’t much necessity to. If you insist (which all Earthlings do), it is this: people like you and me go there to live a life that cannot be envisaged in the world incubating us – Trafalmadorians let you live with arms and without arms (you don’t get it? Read it again; I did.), they keep you insulated from the past, present and future that are otherwise marked with red splotches and black marks, they erase the multiplicities of faith system, effectively setting the most volatile part to rest and they are funny. But the Trafalmadorians are a vulnerable lot which became rather apparent at their inability to stop their inmates from slipping through the porous boundaries of war-afflicted memories and reconstructed memories. So it goes.

I was now tempered to balance on that boundary; of fiction and fact, of figment and whole. The duo still sounded weird but substantially weird. And I know one thing for sure: when someone holds me long captivated with excessive humor, I invariably become the beneficiary of stark truths hidden under his tongue. So, I lurked around till this duo pulled aside a curtain and showed me a slaughter-house. It was supposed to house meat but instead housed prisoners; and incidentally, turned a good refuge till it lasted. So it goes.

As I was about to alight and walk into the slaughter-house myself, the twosome giggled in mock incredulity, flicked the sand time-keeper upside down and blurted, n  How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.n And all of a sudden, with just a switch, we swapped places and it was I who was fighting the wars, licking my scars, shoveling bodies, snapping bonds, mimicking death, eulogizing events and peeking from a window towards a world that still hadn't changed character and was continuing to pay no heed to me. I wondered what happened. But there was no one; no Vonnegut, no Slaughter-House, just a little bird squeaking n  ‘Poo-tee-weet’n and pointing to a board that I, in hopelessly haggard state, gaped, as it read,

n  n    So it goes.n  n  

n

FIRST REVIEW: Everyone has sung the praises of this book to me -- as well as those of Vonnegut in general -- for as long as I have been aware of reading. However I found both it and Vonnegut tiresome and excessively labored. He tries SO HARD to be hip and quirky and ironic, but the humor (such as it is) and the commentary (such as it is) just wind up feeling like dated relics of their time. The book has not aged well. It lacks the timeless feel of great literature, and doesn't even function for me on a nostalgic level. I think the only genuinely original and creative aspect of this book that I recall was the description of the aliens. Otherwise it was a complete waste of my time and brain cells.

SECOND REVIEW: Nope. This book is the literary equivalent of easy, empty calories and heartburn disguised as a full four-course Italian meal. This book is so convinced of its own cleverness and depth and meaningfulness, but is utterly lacking in all three. The aliens, while neat, also turn much of this into a less-ambitious Stranger in a Strange Land -- and while i have many complaints about Heinlein's manifesto-cum-sci-fi-novel, i cannot deny that it is ambitious. The characters here are weak and thin; the pacing is dreadfully slow (making a tiny book feel as long as "Stranger" actually was); and the "messages", such as they were, are hollow, smug and facile. The fact that this lost both the Hugo and the Nebula to The Left Hand of Darkness proves that there is some justice in the world. This book is literary Frito pie -- but without the seductive tastiness of that dish.

I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.

What is it about?

It's about war.
It's about love and hate.
It's about post traumatic stress.
It's about sanity and insanity.
It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).
It's about life.
It's about death.
so it goes.

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

This is how I live my life. This is how I get through the day. Most days I am successful, some days I'm not. Today is one of the "not" days. Like so many Americans these days, I feel I'm in a rut. Like so many Americans I don't understand why I am where I am. This was not the plan. This was not what I had in mind......

Oh poor me....boo hoo.

This book. This book got me thinking. So much about life sucks, true, but not many of us want to give up on it that easy. Why? because of the "good ones". And what makes "good ones" is our ability to create and enjoy creating.....at least I think so.

"Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
— Joss Whedon

If you make something, a painting, a poem, a novel, a good meal, a person.....you continue to live even after death. I think that's what Mr. Vonnegut was getting at. Maybe.

At least that is how he has remained alive for me.

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years.

It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نوزدهم ماه می سال 2011میلادی

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج»؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه‌گات؛ انتشاراتیها: (روشنگران و مطالعات زنان)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش نوزدهم ماه می سال2011میلادی

عنوان: سلاخ خانه شماره پنج؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم: علی اصغر بهرامی، تهران، روشنگران، 1372؛ در 263ص؛ چاپ دیگر 1380؛ چاپ بعدی سال1381؛ شابک 9646751490؛ چاپ ششم سال1389؛ موضوع: جنگ جهانگیر دوم - از سال 1939میلادی تا سال 1945میلادی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

کورت ونه گات: (زادروز: یازدهم ماه نوامبر سال 1922میلادی، ایندیاناپولیس، ایالت ایندیانا، درگذشت: روز یازدهم ماه آوریل سال 2007میلادی) در شهر «نیویورک، ایالت نیویورک»؛ ملیت: آمریکایی؛ پیشه: نویسنده از سال 1950میلادی تا سال 2005میلادی؛ همسران: «جین مری کاکس» از سال1945میلادی تا سال1971میلادی، «جیل کرمنتز از سال 1979میلادی تا سال 2007میلادی)، دارای چهار فرزند؛ والدین: «کورت وانگات سینیور، ادیت لیبر»؛

آثار: رمان‌ها: ‍«پیانوی خودنواز (1952میلادی)»، «آژیرهای هیولا (1959میلادی)»، «شب مادر (1961میلادی)»، «گهواره گربه (1963میلادی)»، «خدا شما را حفظ کند، آقای رزواتر (1965میلادی)»، «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج (1969میلادی)»، «صبحانه قهرمانان (1973میلادی)»، «اسلپ استیک (1976میلادی)»، «محبوس (1979میلادی)»، «مجمع الجزایر گالاپاگوس (1985میلادی)»، «ریش آبی (1987میلادی)»، «زمان لرزه (1997میلادی)»، «مرد بی‌وطن (2005میلادی)». مجموعه داستان‌ها: «قناری در خانه گربه (1961میلادی)»، «به خانه میمون خوش آمدید (1967میلادی)»، «انفیه ­دان باگومبو (1999میلادی)»، «خدا شما را حفظ کند، دکتر کورکیان (1999میلادی)»، «جوجو را نیگا (2009میلادی)». نمایش‌نامه: «تولدت مبارک وندا جون (1971میلادی)».؛

کورت وانگات جونیور، در رشته زیست‌ شیمی، از دانشگاه «کورنل» فارغ‌ التحصیل شدند، در ارتش نام‌نویسی کردند، و برای نبرد در جنگ جهانی دوم به «اروپا» اعزام شدند؛ ایشان خیلی زود به دست نیروهای «آلمانی» اسیر، و در «درسدن» زندانی شدند، پس از پایان جنگ و بازگشت به «ایالات متحده آمریکا»، در «دانشگاه شیکاگو» به تحصیل «مردم‌شناسی» پرداختند، و سپس به عنوان تبلیغات‌چی در شرکت «جنرال الکتریک» مشغول به کار شدند، تا سال1951میلادی که با نهایی شدن انتشار نخستین کتاب ایشان، «پیانوی خودکار»، آن کار را ترک کردند و تمام‌ وقت مشغول نویسندگی شدند؛ آثار ایشان ترکیبی از طنز سیاه، در مایه‌ های علمی‌ تخیلی ه­ستند؛

از آثار ایشان: «گهواره گربه»، «سلاخ‌خانه شماره پنج» و «صبحانه قهرمانان» بیشتر مورد ستایش قرار گرفته‌ اند.؛ در سال1999میلادی آستروئید یا سیارک 25399، را، برای بزرگداشت ایشان «ونه گات» نامیدند.؛

چکیده این داستان: «بیلی پیلگریم»، قهرمان داستان، در زمان خدمت خود در آرتش «آمریکا» در جنگ جهانگیر دوم، قابلیت حرکت در زمان را پیدا می‌کند، و از آن لحظه به‌ طور همزمان در زمین، و در یک سیاره ی دور، به نام «ترالفامادور»، زندگی خویش را پی می‌گیرد؛ او به فلسفه سرنوشت «ترالفامادور»ی ها باور پیدا می‌کند؛ آنها قادر به دیدن محیط خود در چهار بعد هستند؛ بنابراین از همه ی رخدادهای بگذشته و آینده باخبر هستند؛ واکنش او به رخدادهای ناخوشایندی که رخ می‌دهد، گفتن این جمله است: «بله! رسم روزگار چنین است.»؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 31/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 07/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

A classic from surrealist Vonnegut that should be ob everyone’s TBR. The story of Billy Pilgrim (what an awesome name for a character!) and Dresden echos in Gravity’s Rainbow by Pynchon and Catch-22 by Keller and is truly on of the monumental anti-war characters in American if not world literature. In these days of renewed global conflict with the also renewed threat of nuclear exchanges (Korea, Middle East...), it is especially poignant and a must read.

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
Slaughterhouse-Five ~~  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.



My junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved  Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ~~ no, he worshiped  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.. It’s ironic since everything Har Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Har Don insisted I read Vonnegut's  SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I was wrong. I wasn't. But, I was done with Vonnegut; there were authors I was craving to read and Vonnegut was not one of them.

Skip ahead to my joining Goodreads. Friends here, people whose opinions I truly respect, kept telling me I had to read  Slaughterhouse-Five. So, I broke down, and picked up a copy. And? Well, it is hard to put into words how much I loved the world ~~ no worlds ~~ inhabited by Billy Pilgrim.

I can honestly say I have not read anything like  Slaughterhouse-Five. That's a good thing. I had just finished  NORWEGIAN WOOD and  LIE WITH ME, two tales of young love gone wrong so I was looking to inhabit an entirely different world.  Slaughterhouse-Five definitely was that world, or should I say worlds???



Slaughterhouse-Five is based on Vonnegut's experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.  Slaughterhouse-Five is considered a modern literary masterpiece, as it should be. It propelled Vonnegut, who had been largely ignored by both critics and the public, to fame and literary acclaim. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-Five follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time," and brings together different periods of Billy's life ~~ his time as an ill-fated soldier, his post-war optometry career, and a foray in an extraterrestrial zoo where he served as an exhibit ~~ with humor and deep insight.

Slaughterhouse-Five was published on March 31, 1969 and became an instant and surprise hit. It spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times best seller list and went through five printings by July of 1969.



Slaughterhouse-Five has not been without controversy. The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century. "It was banned from Oakland County, Michigan public schools in 1972. The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” No wonder I loved it!

“My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene," Vonnegut told the Paris Review. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put  Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to  Slaughterhouse-Five?” I'm starting to like this Vonnegut character!

"In 2011, Wesley Scroggins, an assistant professor at Missouri State University, called on the Republic, MO school board to ban  Slaughterhouse-Five. He wrote in the local paper, 'This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.' The board eventually voted 4-0 to remove the novel from the high school curriculum and its library."

In response to this ban, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis gave away 150 free copies of  Slaughterhouse-Five to Republic, Missouri students who wanted to read it. As a kid who was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class because my reading choices were "morally questionable" I now officially love the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library!



Slaughterhouse-Five is the strange tale of Billy Pilgrim. As I said previously, Billy becomes "unstuck" from the linear nature of time and takes us along on his journey. Billy Pilgrim is the anti-everyman while engaging in love, ethics, war, science, and aliens.  Slaughterhouse-Five's main theme is man’s inhumanity to man throughout history.

Slaughterhouse-Five> is not without its own heartfelt themes. It is most definitely an anti-war book. It is in many ways an anti-death book. It presents a philosophy questioning the purpose of life amidst determinism. Ayn Rand would have hated  Slaughterhouse-Five ~~ yet another reason to love this book.

Slaughterhouse-Five is often insensitive and dark, and yet, you can't help but laugh at the world Vonnegut has created.  Slaughterhouse-Five is full of contradictions that only serve to make Vonnegut's points.

Slaughterhouse-Five doesn't end with the death of Billy Pilgrim. That would far to simple an ending for something as brilliant as this; Billy lives on reliving this strange existence, learning and relearning the lessons of his life, unstuck from time.



So, have I revised my opinion of Vonnegut? Most definitely. Will I read more Vonnegut in the future? Yes, but selectively. Will I reread  SLAPSTICK? NEVER ...