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.

No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon.

I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than physics because it is so closely related to the complete termination of life, spirit, & earthly happiness.

"Maus" reminded me of this because it mixed humor with tragedy... something super hard to pull off because the events are real. The Children's Crusade is still being fought today & this personal statement cannot go out of style-- maybe presidents/dictators/rulers/monarchs should read it as a by law prerequisite?

All this happened, more or less.

I forgot how weirdly awesome this book is. I haven’t read it in a few years but remember enjoying it every time I would read it. It’s just so odd and magical. I feel that way more now as an adult than I did when I first read it many years ago. I think as we get older we see all the subtleness of this book. It actually an adventure in itself. The theme is just so psychological and sociological that as an adult you appreciate this novel more.

So it goes.

My quick and simple overall: always fun and weird to read.

☠️

Contains spoilers
Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man called Billy Pilgrim who time-travels frequently. He was in the Second World War and, captured, was sent to Dresden to work in a malt syrup factory before the city was bombed. He studied optometry and had a nervous breakdown. He married the daughter of a rich optometrist, and became rich as well. He was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a young porn actress, Montana Wildhack, whom they also abducted. He had a daughter called Barbara and a son called Robert. He was in a plane crash that killed everyone except him and the co-pilot. Rushing to the hospital in frantic worry, his wife Valencia dies in a car accident. He gets to meet his favourite author, an unsuccessful sci-fi writer called Kilgore Trout. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the name of the building where the American POWs lived in in Dresden.

Because the narration jumps around as frequently as Billy does, you learn everything early on and then simply revisit it all. The fractured narrative is worse than watching ads in a commercial break, or those horrible pop songs where the scenes and costumes change every two seconds - it gives you a headache. It's extremely boring, and hollow, and unsatisfying.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know. But I do like time-travel stories. Billy is nothing like Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. For a start, not even a second seems to pass in "real" time while he is travelling - no one ever notices. It seems less like time-travelling than like reliving the past, present and future of your life, all at once, because it's his consciousness that does the travelling. What isn't clear, at all, is which is the real Billy? He moves so much, you have to wonder how he doesn't become completely dislodged from his own corporeal self and go mad.

The time-travelling predates the abduction-by-aliens, but the aliens themselves see the past, present and future simultaneously, and teach Billy their philosophy of not really caring about anything, since nothing can be changed etc. etc. Fatalism.

I think I hated this book, but not quite. Hate is a strong emotion and I don't think it brought that out in me. It wasn't even frustrating, nor even particularly confusing, though the repetition of the Tralfamadorian expression "so it goes" was so irritating I saw red a few times. The bits about the 100 American POWs being welcomed by the British POWs in a German prison camp was delightful, though boldly stereotyped, and I loved the excerpts from the work on American soldiers and prisoners-of-war by the American-turned-Nazi, forget his name, something Campbell. A lot of it - and it's a small, short book - could easily be skipped. The temptation was very strong.

In short, it's a very "postmodern" story, and like all things postmodern, it's impractical, disjointed, a bit wanky, tries too hard, is extremely out-dated and, at the end of the day, rather useless. Vonnegut is also very heavy-handed and bangs you on the head with his messages. It doesn't really inspire me to read more of Vonnegut's work. I guess he's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of story-teller.

I finally read Vonnegut. I finally read a war novel. And after a long time I finally read something with so many GR ratings and a decent number of reviews which is precisely the reason I have nothing much to add to the already expressed views here. So I urge you to indulge me to state a personal anecdote. Thank You.

My Grandfather was a POW during Indo-China war and remained in confinement for some six months. By the time I got to know about it I had already watched too many movies and crammed endless number of answers about when and where such n such war was fought. But I was naïve and let’s assume innocent and someone who was yet to learn to ask the right questions. So the fact that someone so close in the family had witness something I only read in schoolbooks was utterly fascinating for me. Thus began my streak of stupid questions.

Me: Did you kill someone? Did they torture you? Did you dig some sort of tunnel to escape? And so on.

My Grandpa gave this hearty laugh he is famous for and said that I’m missing one important question: Why the war happened at first place? I thought for a while and answered: Because it always happens.

I can’t recall properly what he replied to that but it was something on the lines of this: I wish the answer changes when you’ll grow up because as of now that’s exactly how it is. War always happens.

With books like Slaughterhouse-Five (Schlachthöf-fünf), it’s not the writing which matters but simply the ideas and thoughts it carries which transgresses the literary boundaries and create a place in the heart of the readers as a humble reminder that Love happens, Hate happens, Life happens, Death happens, Peace happens, War happens and sometimes Shit happens.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut begins with a forward that is really a first chapter. In it he talks a little bit about the war, about his life after, the time between and trying to remember. Just before chapter 2, he says a couple of things that resonated with me. I knew then I had become a fan of Vonnegut’s writing. He mentions Lot’s wife during the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, who was told not to look back. “But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human”. For the writing of this novel, Vonnegut is indirectly comparing himself to her. Maybe he did not want to look back at the painful memories, but sometimes we are just human.

“Billy Pilgrim had become unstuck in time.’ Like memories in a life, this novel about Billy is completely non-linear. It is so satirical, yet at the same time very real. And it’s so damned funny. If there weren’t so much reality underneath the black humor, I would have continually laughed out loud. Actually, I did at times. I couldn’t help myself. It is the way of Vonnegut’s writing.

“He told about having come unstuck in time. He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from planet Tralfadamore, he said…”

Yeah, Billy is a time-traveler. He was also kidnapped by aliens from Trafaldamore. Can that be true? Well, no. Suspend disbelief here. His event occurred shortly after a plane crash that cracked his skull and killed everyone else on board. Billy may have been broken before this. A most sane of broken men. I grew to like Billy Pilgrim for all that he was.

Central to this story (much of it based on Vonnegut’s real experience in WWII), is the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany where 135,000 people were killed, mostly civilian, during the American-English air raid. Billy was one of the one hundred American prisoners of war captured and brought to Dresden in January 1945, just in time for its total destruction.

“He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked.”

Uncannily, most of these men lived, although their time as prisoners of war was not without peril, hardship and death. You see there was really very little food for the POW’s by this point, so late in the war. Yet even things are most bleak people have a will to live. n  So it goes.n

Σφαγείο Νο 5. Εκατομμύρια νεκροί απο τον
Β’ΠΠ. Επιστημονική φαντασία. Υπαρξιακή λογοτεχνία. Ασάφεια και απόλυτη ρεαλιστική φρίκη. « Έτσι πάει».
Γράφεται ένα βιβλίο για τον πόλεμο, στον πόλεμο οι στρατιώτες μάχης είναι στην ουσία νεαρά παιδιά.
Σε κάθε απώλεια, σε κάθε δολοφονία, σε κάθε θάνατο που ανήκει στις χειρότερες στιγμές/ αναμνήσεις απο τη ζωή των όντων στον πλανήτη γη, πρόκειται για μια φρίκη που εξελίσσεται σε αφανισμό υπάρξεων, ιδεών, προϊόντων, ατόμων. «Έτσι πάει»και αυτή είναι η επωδός του συγγραφέα μετά απο κάθε δηλητήριο φλεβοτόμο, αίμα και πτωμαίνη, αέριο λοβοτομημένο, απαγορευμένο για χρήση στην ανθρωπότητα, κι όμως, χορηγήθηκε σε υπερβολικές δόσεις στην εισπνοή για επεκτατισμό και εκφυλισμό συνειδήσεων σε εθελοντές τρελαμένους δήμιους, σε παρανοϊκούς σκλάβους που πήραν το αξίωμα του διακινητή ζωντανών πτωμάτων και λαμπρών πνευμάτων με
χαλασμένες απόψεις για τη ζωή.

Εκατόμβες σκαμμένες βαθιά πίσω απο την παγωμένη ψυχή του συμμάχου σε κάθε πολεμική επιχείρηση και κάπου κοντά στο Βιετνάμ των κομμουνιστών και των δημοκρατικών σφαγέων, ώστε να διατηρούνται σε άριστη κατάσταση οι πολεμικές συρράξεις, αιώνιες και επαναλαμβανόμενες σαν την παγιδευμένη ύπαρξη των παγόβουνων, σαν την κλιματολογική πρόβλεψη των παγετώνων. Έτσι πάει.
Στον Δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο που επηρέασε βαθιά τον Βόννεγκατ η διαταραγμένη ευφυΐα του παραπαίει όταν αγγίζει νοερά την μαζική δολοφονία ανθρώπων είτε με πυροβολισμούς και βομβαρδισμούς (Δρέσδη, Τόκιο, κ.λπ.) είτε με τον πυρηνικό τρόπο της ατομικής βραβευμένης ενέργειας στον αφανισμό πόλεων (Χιροσίμα, Ναγκασάκι). Ήταν θάνατος σε μεγάλη κλίμακα και είχε βαθιά επίδραση στο μυαλό του.
Έτσι πάει.
Όταν υπάρχουν εκατοντάδες, χιλιάδες αναφορές στο θάνατο και κάθε μία συνοδεύεται από το
"Έτσι πάει».
Αυτό το βιβλίο παίζει με το μυαλό και κινείται σε πολλές διαστάσεις χωροχρονικές.
Η αλήθεια είναι πως αρχικά με παραξένεψε, με εξέπληξε, με συντάραξε, με εκνεύρισε και πέρασε πολλά στάδια μέχρι να κερδίσει την αποδοχή και το θαυμασμό μου.
Γοητευτικά κυνικός, ονειροπόλος, κωμικοτραγικός και εξαιρετικά έμπειρος μαέστρος συνδυάζοντας την ιστορία με την πολεμική κριτική και την επιστημονική φαντασία.ο Βόννεγκατ γράφει ανησυχητικά και ενθουσιώδη με ένα δίπολο ανάμεσα σε τρέλα, σοφία - διαστημική, συμπαντική κοσμοθεωρία και εξωκοσμική γενιά απο άλλους πλανήτες.

Αρχικά έχουμε την κεντρική ιστορία, που αφορά τον Billy Pilgrim, έναν βετεράνο και οπτομετρητή που φαίνεται να πάσχει από κάποιο είδος ψυχικής ασθένειας ,από την εποχή που στάλθηκε στον πόλεμο, καθώς και κάποιου είδους πιθανή εγκεφαλική βλάβη που υπέστη από ένα αεροπορικό δυστύχημα.
Αυτά τα στοιχεία συνθέτουν το ένα το άλλο και ο Μπίλι βρίσκει τον εαυτό του να ταξιδεύει στο χρόνο σε διαφορετικά σημεία της ζωής του, σε ευτυχισμένες ή λυπητερές στιγμές, απο αυτές που θάβουμε στη λήθη, μα πάντα ανοίγουν τρύπες στα νεκροταφεία των αναμνήσεων μας.
Όλα αυτά κατά τη διάρκεια του χρόνου που του χρωστάει η ζωή του στον Β 'Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, αλλά και κατά τη διάρκεια του άλλων χρονικών του πολυπαθούς βίου του με τη σύζυγό του Βαλένθια, σε έναν πλανήτη που κατοικούνταν από τους Tralfamadorians (που τον έχουν κλειδώσει ως έκθεμα ζωολογικού κήπου ).
Στον πλανήτη γη έχει άλλη σύζυγο και δυο παιδιά που μένουν πλάι του μέχρι τέλους.

Υπάρχουν επίσης τα αμιγώς υποκειμενικά μα και ξεκάθαρα εμπεριστατωμένα μηνύματα του συγγραφέα σχετικά με τον φαύλο κύκλο του θανάτου σε εμπόλεμη περίοδο της ανθρώπινης ράτσας.
Εν κατακλείδι, το πιο φιλοσοφικό στοιχείο δίνεται μέσα απο τις αναλύσεις των εξωγήινων όντων που έχουν απαντήσεις για όσα οι άνθρωποι τρομάζουν να σκεφτούν μα και μια ακλόνητη αίσθηση με ισχυρά δεδομένα ότι δεν υπάρχει ελεύθερη βούληση,
αντιθέτως υπάρχει μια κατευθυνομένη αίσθηση μηδενισμού, σύμφωνα με την οποία δεν έχει σημασία τι κάνουμε, τα αποτελέσματα είναι σταθερά και το μέλλον αμετάβλητο.
3.5⭐️

کتاب خیلی خوبی بود. من ترجمه‌ی آقای علی اصغر بهرامی را خواندم. من فکر می‌کنم این کتاب به یک ترجمه‌ی خوب دیگر نیاز دارد. البته ترجمه‌ی آقای بهرامی بد نبود و ظاهرا بهترین ترجمه‌ی موجود این کتاب در حال حاضر است. ولی به نظر من بهتر از این هم می‌شود ترجمه کرد. یک فیلم هم آقای جورج روی هیل از این کتاب اقتباس کرده است که اثر متوسطی است و اگر دوست داشتید ببینید شاید برایتان جالب باشد.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) 6.9 Meta:66
********************************************************************************
خدایا
مرا صفایی عطا کن
تا آنچه را توانایی تغییر ندارم
بپذیرم؛
مرا شجاعتی عطا کن
تا آنچه را توانایی تغییر دارم
تغییر دهم؛
و خردی،
تا آن دو را از هم باز شناسم. صفحات 83 و 255 کتاب
تمامی زمان، تمامی زمان است. تغییر نمی‌کند. به اختصار یا تفسیر تن نمی‌دهد. زمان وجود دارد، همین. زمان را لحظه به لحظه نگاه کنید و آنگاه، همان طور که گفتم، می‌بینید ما همگی ساس‌هایی هستیم که در کهربا گرفتار آمده‌ایم. ص 113 کتاب
از چیزهایی که زمینی‌ها، در صورت تلاش کافی، ممکن است بیاموزند این است که: لحظه‌های زشت را نادیده بگیرند و همه‌ی ذهن خود را روی لحظه‌های زیبا متمرکز کنند. ص 150 کتاب
اگر چیزهایی که بیل پیلگریم در ترالفامادور آموخته است راست باشند، که ما، اگر هم گاهی خیلی مرده باشیم، همیشه زنده می‌مانیم من چندان هم خوشحال نمی‌شوم. اما با وجود این- اگر قرار باشد ابدیت را صرف تماشای لحظه‌های مختلف زمان کنم، سپاسگزارم از این که بسیاری از این لحظات زیبا بوده‌اند. ص 258 کتاب

My initial impression was "this sucks--this crap is overrated." Then I began to get a feel for Vonnegut's style, humor, and up-front articulation. Only then did I began to really enjoy the story.

War, the vagueness of war as you're in it, Posttraumatic Stress as the result of war, the longing for escape (both literally and metaphorically), and importance of living in the "here and now" were themes I interpreted in this story. I felt the idea of mindfulness was the overarching motif that linked the entire book together. This was my first Kurt Vonnegut adventure and I will be reading more. Thanks!

This novel has a pretty basic and consistent structure: a few paragraphs of humorous (I think) writing that has the presumed purpose of loosening you up before you get to the sucker-punch paragraph that contains something disturbing/death-related followed by "so it goes." And if the "so it goes" wasn't there to remind you that this is the part where death happens, Vonnegut hammers the point home by relaying it an inhumanly cool, dry, and nonchalant manner. How coy and provocative. Maybe Vonnegut could have helped the reader along a little more with a footnote: "See what I did there? By having my narrator relate stories of war and death in an apathetic manner, I made you really think about these issues. Didn't I? Huh? Huh?" Yes, we get it, Kurt.

Part way through reading this book, I was sharing my disappointment with a friend who mentioned that Vonnegut, like the narrator, had actually witnessed the Dresden bombings. This apologia left me momentarily chastened as I considered the sobering impetus for the story. Then I mentally slapped myself for even considering that sympathy could cover for the stylistic bludgeoning that Vonnegut inflicted. I suppose there was a well thought out reason for making the prose stuttering and choppy, but I can't imagine what that would actually be (nor would I care to). Interestingly enough, Vonnegut may have been aware of this stylistic shortcoming: speaking of Billy's favorite obscure sci-fi author, he writes that "Trout's prose is frightful. Only his ideas are good." Kilgore Trout and his writing apparently feature in other Vonnegut books, and a Washington Post reviewer in the mid 70s contended that "Trout's prose is at least as good as Vonnegut's." Exactly.

And were the philosophical musings on time and fate, revealed primarily through unimaginative and silly sci-fi ramblings, supposed to be novel or even vaguely interesting? It's like he took Tolstoy's ruminations on fate and free will in War and Peace and then removed all the complexities and internal dissonance.

In the second half of the story, I did find myself mildly interested in what was happening. Perhaps I became accustomed to the writing or the pain just dulled after a while. Regardless, this book crossed the overrated line so egregiously that I can't muster a second star. Heavy-handed, prosaic, unfunny. So it goes.

I was eating a hotdog right after reading Slaughterhouse-Five, and as I was contemplating on what to write for my review, I was suddenly attacked by a bunch of three-headed toads. They called themselves "the three-headed toads" and they wore Mexican sombreros and Nickelback t-shirts. They were roughly the size of Peter Dinklage and were colored from neon pink to dark orange. For some unknown reason, their leader named Pedro the Pope decided to declare war on hotdog eating humans. I was tragically their first victim. I wet my pants. As the toad named Lollipop Susanna tried to poke me with a rusty Swiss-knife, Pedro the Pope saw in my hand Slaughterhouse-Five. He read it from cover-to-cover in about 37 seconds. Three-headed toads read very fast. Surprisingly, it was the only fast thing they could do. They read lots of books, and somewhere along one of those books, they read that hotdogs caused global-warming. They despised hotdogs. So it goes.

After reading Slaughterhouse-Five, Pedro the Pope decided that he didn't like wars anymore. He now despised wars more than hotdogs. He was very easy to convince. Hanky-doodle, the neon pink toad with a disposable spork on his hand, suddenly burst out with random shrieks of "Snakes are noodle-pussies! Snakes are noodle-pussies!" He was not right in the heads. I was mortified. I wet my pants again. So it goes.

Pedro the Pope then asked me if whether or not I knew where Tralfamadore was. Three-headed toads did not understand the concept of fiction. I decided to point him in the general direction of my toilet. I said there was a portal there and that all they needed to do was to flush away. After a few moments, I heard some serious flushing. The last thing I heard was "Ribbit!" So it goes.

I waited a few moments to make sure that they weren't there anymore. When I came in, I saw something written using lipstick on my toilet:

"WaRz R nuT kool!"

I wet my pants with a steady stream of urine joy.

OK, I may be the only one on the planet earth, or even on Tralfamadore, not to have read the all-time classic  by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. So it goes.

The gripping Foreword by Kevin Powers spoke to me on so many levels. Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds, a harrowing story of two young soldiers just trying to stay alive in Iraq. In this riveting piece, Powers relates a gruesome act of violence under the cover of war in Tal Afar, Iraq. He tells us of Vonnegut's drive to write this book as an example of his moral clarity. As the book opens, we witness the demolition and devastation of the city of Dresden by the British-American bombing attack on the city. And so it goes.

This anti-war book brings me to reflect on my beautiful friend and neighbor, Harold. Harold was a career U.S. Army soldier serving in World War II with the likes of General Eisenhower and was a very gifted and talented photographer. We loved spending time with him, listening to his stories, and poring over his many unique and timely photographs. Where are you going to again see aerial photographs of Washington, D.C. from the 1940s? He gave me one of his pristine photographs taken after the senseless bombing of Dresden because amid the rubble and devastation, what still stood was Lady Justicia. I was so moved that I had it enlarged and framed where it remained on the walls of my office for many years. I love old photographs in black and white but this will always take my heart because of the message that amid all of this devastation, the scales of justice will prevail.

This one is for you, Harold. So it goes.