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 :)

Soon after Vonnegut died quite a few stories were circulated about his real-life experiences as a POW in Dresden during WWII. Billy, the book’s main character, survived the firebombing just as Vonnegut did. Both recognized the good fortune of their underground prison vantage point when the flames incinerated the city above. Both had plenty to cope with, too. In telling Billy’s story, Vonnegut connects several themes. Not surprisingly, “war is hell” is one of them. Some of the other points set this work apart, though. For one, there's a feeling among many of those involved that you might as well just resign yourself to--or disengage yourself from--your situation. There’s a strong sense of the inevitable. (I don’t imagine prisoners feel much power to change the circumstances of their war.)

I suppose you could label this work science fiction, even though the elements that make it so are clichéd and simplistic. The sci-fi angle is one Vonnegut uses to good effect, though. It points out how otherworldly a war scene can feel, how memories can be real enough to throw the time continuum out of synch, and how some superior intelligence in the universe can explain, almost deterministically, why things are as they are and people do as they do.

Does Vonnegut himself believe in free will? If his brainy little space creatures serve as proxies, I’d say no. Something tells me he has a more active, moral role in mind for humankind, though, and this book was meant to suggest that by counterexample. Still, it’s a good question to ponder.

کتاب رو دو بار خوندم. یه بار خلاصهٔ کتاب رو که برای رادیو تنظیم شده بود، با اجرای بهروز رضوی گوش دادم. و حس کردم داستان بی نظیرتر از اونه که فقط اجرای رادیوییش رو گوش بدم. به خاطر همین برای تولد برادرم کتابو براش خریدم. خودش هنوز که هنوزه کتاب رو نخونده اما من همون موقع خوندمش.

کتاب بی نظیره. لحن طنز برای توصیف کشتارهای وحشتناک، ترکیب داستان جنگ با داستان علمی تخیلی و فانتزی، و وقایع و شخصیت های زیاد. همه و همه کتاب رو تبدیل به یه اثر لذت بخش کرده‌ن. یه جای داستان صحنه‌اى فوق العاده هست که راوی داستان که در زمان پخش شده و ناخواسته به عقب و جلو میره، یک فيلم مستند راجع به تولید بمب تماشا مى کنه، اما همون موقع در زمان به عقب حرکت می کنه و فیلم رو از آخر به اول می بینه: كارگرها بمب ها رو به مواد اوليه تجزيه مى كنن و معدنچى ها اين مواد اوليه رو به زير زمين مى برن و با دقت زير سنگ ها مخفى مى کننن تا اين مواد خطرناک به كسى آسيب نزنه.
بعد از چند سال مرور این صحنه هنوز برام لذت‌بخشه.

This book in a nutshell:


After just reading another classic, my son came up to me and asked me to buddy-read this one with him. Then, my daughter said she would join us. What am I supposed to say to that? "I'm sorry, my children. I know that you would be greatly enriched by reading classic literature and having a literary discussion with me, but I would rather read about vampires having sex. Now, go get mommy some wine and then lock yourselves in your rooms to play video games." Seriously? Like I would ever do that! (Although... do you think it would work? I'm not going to do it or anything. I'm asking for a friend.)

But, surprisingly, or maybe not so much, I always end up enjoying these classic books and usually understand what all the hoopla over them was. This book was freaking amazing. Like many of these type of books, it was weird as hell, but still amazing.

Here's what you need to know:



Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens and learns that time is not linear at all. This gives us the reason for why the story is constantly jumping from past to present to future.

We revisit many events in his life with a major focus on his time in the war. He was a POW and was witness to the bombing of Dresden, which actually happened to Kurt Vonnegut. It is very obvious that he lost his marbles during the war, so we have a case of an unreliable narrator. Personally, I love unreliable narrator books when they are done well, and this one is.

There is so much meat in this book. So much symbolism. So many deep thoughts. So much philosophy, that I felt like my brain might explode. Let's face it, on a normal day my deepest thought is wondering what my dog is thinking.


This dog has seen some things.

Of course, my dogs probably have less going on in their heads than this guy. They haven't seen things. I close the bathroom door so they don't see me naked. They don't need that kind of stress in their lives.

Anyway, if you were expecting a literary review and thoughtful analysis of this book from me, I'll just ask you if you even know me at all. Of course I was going to go off on rabbit trails, put in gifs and memes and basically bring it all back to being about my dogs or food. That's what I do. If you want something in depth and thoughtful, go to a smart reviewers review. If you want to know what some shlub with a potty mouth and a sense of humor thinks - I liked it. But, now it's back to trashy romance.

BOW DOWN, BITCHES.

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.

Another classic I fail to fully understand and appreciate. People can discuss as much as they want the deep meaning of it: free will, the illogical nature of human being, etc. To me, "Slaughterhouse-Five" is a story of a man deeply traumatized by war who attempts to make sense of his life through delusional ideas involving alien abductions and time-travel. The only message that came though clearly to me is the one against war. Billy's memories of Dresden massacre were the most notable ones, but even they failed to capture my interest, probably due to an extremely detached tone of the narration. Ethan Hawke's whisper-like reading didn't help either. As for writing itself, I didn't mind the constant shift in perspective. I just wish I cared at least a little bit about the characters or the story.

Have no interest in reading any more of Vonnegut's books. Barely got through this one and can't quite understand its acclaim and classification as dystopia or sci-fi. So it goes, I guess...

Reading challenge: #23, 1 of 2.

A stunning piece of science-fiction audaciously centred around the Allied fire bombing of Dresden at the end of World War II. Slaughterhouse five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim as he time travels back and forth within his own lifetime, a life forever marked and tainted by his experience of being a POW and then being stationed in Dresden at the time of the fire bombing. A postmodern, meta-fictional satirical novel, that has often been censored (especially in the United States) for being seen to be so laid back about homosexuality and being perceived as being disrespectful to American soldiery. A true modern classic. 7 out of 12

2010 read

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

Like, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids like us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion like us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, like I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.

Update: I decided to upgrade the rating to 5*. Still on my mind after more than 1 year.

This was such a pleasant surprise. This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not like it since: 1. I am not a fan of books/movies about war and 2. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those (modern or not). This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure.

Oh, I judged this book so wrongly. Actually, I liked it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever.

This was more than I could have ever expected!!!
A new favorite!
Can’t wait to continue on my Vonnegut journey!

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-g