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.

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.

2.5? Mam wrażenie, że koncept był genialny i strasznie duży tu był potencjał, ale koniec końców niezbyt to wybrzmiało. Albo po prostu byłam za głupia

|| 3.5 stars ||

There are absolutely no strong personalities or big events in this book, and nobody even feels like a truly living person, which, surprisingly, is exactly what makes the anti-war message this book wants to portray so strong.

n  

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

n

Instead of another story filled with brotherhood and heroism that one often finds when it comes to these kinds of stories, this shows a (more realistic?) side of war where all people have turned into empty, weak shells and are all just staring gloomily ahead, trying to live day to day without a single thought going on inside their brains. This book shows how war truly destroys people; not through fear, rage or tragedy (which are the stories we already know), but through utter and complete emptiness.

n  

How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

n

When I started this book, I was expecting a story exactly as I have just mentioned we have seen plenty of times before; I expected a story of fear, rage and tragedy. Afterall, it’s about one of the biggest massacres of European history, namely the Bombing of Dresden during World War II. Obviously I would expect a grand and emotional and intense story with that, but instead… I got this. And somehow, that might be exactly the kind of war stories we actually need. Even if they aren’t as “entertaining” as the stories we are used to… After all, why would we like to see beauty or bravery or entertainment in war? Isn’t that, in a way, romanticizing the very thing we proclaim to hate and loathe?

n  

”You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”

n

In any case, I think this book definitely brings forth an interesting thing to consider about how we write war stories.

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.

Listen:

This reviewer is stuck in time. He is unable to escape the narrow confines of the invisible, intangible machinery mercilessly directing his life from a beginning towards an end. The walls surrounding him are dotted with windows looking out on darkened memories and foggy expectations, easing the sense of claustrophobia but offering no way out. The ceiling is crushing down on this man while he paces frantically through other people's lives and memories in hopes of shaping his own and forgetting the enormity of oblivion looming above his head. He reads book after book after book. He reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He gets immersed, he gets lost in the pages. He smiles. He wonders. He tumbles. He laughs a laugh that seems to come from somewhere deep within him, telling him that everything is beautiful. A laugh that shoots up from a dark place and illuminates the universe, bathing it in colour, showing all the hidden threads in a fraction of a second. The man is consoled, recognizing that fraction as an eternity. He closes the book and looks around him. The space got bigger, the windows show a clearer picture. He sees his situation with a new light emanating from his own eyes and, looking up, notices the oppressive ceiling is no longer there. It made way for the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes painted with stars and clouds. He ruminates on this new canvas for his thoughts as a bird flies by and calls to him.
Poo-tee-weet.

Listen:

Welcome everyone, to my 450th review!



I debated for quite a while what I wanted to choose for my 450th review and I decided to go with one of my favorite novels.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a short novel. The sentences are often short, simple and to the point. It seems like it should be an easy read. It is… and it isn't. This is a book that defies explanation, it requires you to think about it for quite a while and the more you do, the more you see.

The book doesn't fit into any category easily. It's a science fiction because there's aliens and aspects of time travel. It's an anti-war novel, as few books show the atrocities of was quite as well as this one does. It's a comedy because it's darkly funny, but it's also a tragedy because when you live through a moment so absolutely horrific, your brain can become "unstuck in time" as you'll always be in that moment even as you try to escape it.

This novel is frequently listed on the "greatest of all time" lists, and I fully agree that it belongs there. It's a fascinating read, insightful both in terms of Vonnegut's own perspective and how he presents it to the world. It's a book that practically demands to be revisited, and each time I'd give it a perfect 5/5 stars.

And thus we end review 450.

"And so it goes…"

i can appreciate it, but i'm not sure how much i enjoyed it

Am I glad I read this book?
Yes.
Did I frequently wish I was reading something else while reading this book?
Yes.



Slaughter-House Five is...
Well, Kurt Vonnegut tells us a story about the firebombing of Dresden during WWII, which he lived through as a soldier. But this isn't about him. Oh, no.
It's about this guy, Billy. Who has maybe been abducted by aliens, and maybe continually slips through time.
But definitely was in World War II.
Maybe.
It's a non-linear story, with an unreliable narrator, and strange subject matter.



However, while I was reading it, I realized that even though Billy's life didn't make much sense, Vonnegut was still managing to say almost profound things about war. And life. About things you sort of think about all the time, but don't really think about.
Does that make sense?
No? Well, neither does this book.
So it goes.



2025
I listened to the Audible Audiobook with James Franco as the narrator for my second go-round with this one. Several times I wished that they had chosen someone different because I just didn't care for the way he read it, and I didn't think his accents (especially the British accents) were very good.

It was still quite an experience to listen to Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical account of what it feels like to come unstuck in time. What war is like for the people with boots on the ground. His experience wasn't everyone's experience, but it was a version of his experience.
A weird version, but an important version.

Recommended.

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you - Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters."

Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy - and humor.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to select your very favorite American novel in honor of the Fourth of July. Well! That would take a few zillion hours of internal debate, creation of endless lists, rebellious actions like breaking things down into genre lists, muttering over who counts as American (Teju Cole is, but Henry James isn't: Discuss), etc. etc.

Decision made for me, in this case, by the fact that I'm trying to strong-arm myself into making a dent in the embarrassingly long list of things I've read, re-read, or abandoned since I got all grumpus. And here we are!

If anyone has not read this book, and is under the age of 90 while over the age of 17/senior year of high school, go immediately forth, procure this book, and read it.

Why? Beacuse:

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

That is all.

Kurt Vonnegut experienced the WW2 fire-bombing of Dresden as a private in the US army.
He says of the experience: "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" - and this is effectively communicated in the deliberate anti-climax to Slaughterhouse 5.

I seem to find myself pretty ambivalent towards Vonnegut. I like his pacifist leanings, and I find his use of an anti-hero and anticlimax as well as his ideas on time interesting.

Vonnegut manages to convey the disorienting effect of horror pretty effectively with his impressionist style. Bernard Schlink and others examine in an intellectual fashion how the horrors of WWII slipped by everyone so effortlessly at the time, but Vonnegut makes the numbing effect of the horror easier for the reader to understand on a gut-level, by portraying how powerless the 'little people' must have felt when it came down to the nitty-gritty.

Interesting to note is the bleak fatalistic leitmotif "So it goes" whenever something or someone in the novel dies. (You hear the refrain quite often, and it creates a chilling tally of how often death rears its head.

The bleakness of Vonnegut's subject matter is offset by his offbeat black humor. An example of the playful quality of Vonnegut's sense of humor is demonstrated when he even adds the "So it goes" leitmotif to a bottle of Coca-cola going 'dead'. ( or flat)

But... his method of employing an anticlimax also made me feel a bit deflated with regard to the ending of Slaughterhouse 5, which, in a sense, is, I suppose part of what he tries to achieve, especially given the bit of background regarding the feelings of his friend's wife that Vonnegut gives in the informal prologue to Slaughterhouse 5.

In the end, I feel a bit confused as to if I should read more work by him, wondering if he will have more to say - not quite sure how to express this... on the other hand, the fact that he is more subtle in what he has to say, also makes him pretty appealing, since I don't particularly value authors who are in your face and whose work reads too 'easily', or who don't say anything that leaves you with something to chew on.

I do enjoy Vonnegut's dark humor; it's almost worthwhile reading him just for that alone. So.. like I said, - I feel pretty ambivalent.

“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 ...