Just the same, I suppose this means I have been writing a lot of serious stuff lately. Hey - I'm trying to throw in more fiction reviews! Instead of all "boring" history texts and deep thinking stuff. I may not be completely succeeding (see my review below) but I'm trying. Some people just can't be happy, I guess. Sigh... It's tough being married an intellectual Neanderthal as I am. Tough as all get out, I tell ya. Can't even discuss anything more interesting than a manicure without getting out a white board and some graphs.
...
Ain't it great when you can be all dramatic and yank somebody's chain? I get a kick out of that. She's a good sport, kids, let's give my wife a hand.
Anyway, here's that review.
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| Source: Amazon.com |
From the book’s cover:
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.
Synopsis:
I’ve said it before (well maybe not in as many words, but the meaning was present) that I’m not a literary critic. I may have pretentions to critical analysis, but at the bottom of the jar, I’m just a hack who likes to read himself written, so to speak. I really don’t know enough about the nuances of literary criticism to give a scholarly overview of books that can be dissected with abandon by such a critic as I have described. That’s why from time to time, I help myself to the words of other people whose analysis is more astute than my own. Also I’m lazy, but who’s counting here?
All this leads me back to the book I just read, which is Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. A cursory Google search reveals that it is a highly esteemed and yet somewhat controversial anti-war novel. Ok, I got that. But can I go into great expositions on the subtext and the use of symbols and the relative merit of this character or that character? Yes, but would it be right? Probably not. As with most books, I’m going to give you the down and dirty, as I see it. Others may (and probably would) tell you differently than I. In my opinion, that is how it ought to be. Like the man said, I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.
Speaking of Google, I used it to find some material fit to print on Slaughterhouse Five. Here is what Andy’s Anachronisms say over at the website TimeTravelReviews.com:
In Slaughter House Five, Billy Pilgrim finds himself unstuck in time jumping between several periods of his life. Travelling between his experience as a prisoner of war in World War II to his suburban family life in the 1950s and 1960s, and his experience as a human specimen in an alien zoo on a distant planet, Billy seemingly has no control over these transitions.
That sums up the basics of the Pilgrim's story quite well. The reviewer here (presumably Andy of Andy’s Anachronisms) goes on to say more on the subject:
Vonnegut's writing has always defied traditional classification and Slaughterhouse-Five is a prime example of this as it combines a mix of social satire, science fiction, anti-war sentiment as well as great deal of autobiographical detail... Billy Pilgrim's "telegraphic schizophrenic" shifts from one period of his life to another is his own defence mechanism in dealing with (or avoiding dealing with) the traumatic experiences in his life. Vonnegut has acknowledged that the only way in which he could tell his story of surviving the fire-bombing of Dresden was in this fragmented manner and that it refused to come out as a linear story when he attempted to tell it as such.
Here is the link to Andy's Anachronism's (on TimeTravelReviews.com) review of Slaughterhouse Five
Want more? Here’s a snippet of a review from an unnamed source on the New York Times Book Review website:
The odd combination of fact and fiction forces a question upon the reader: how did the youth who lived through the Dresden bombing grow up to be the man who wrote this book? One reads "Slaughterhouse-Five" with that question crouched on the brink of one's awareness. I'm not sure if there's an answer, but the question certainly heightens the book's effects.
Here is the story: Billy Pilgrim, "tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola," was born in Ilium, N.Y., the only child of a barber there. After graduating from Ilium High School, he attended night sessions at the Ilium School of Optometry for one semester before being drafted for military service in World War II. He served with the infantry in Europe, and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was in Dresden when it was firebombed.
After the war, he went back to Ilium and became a wealthy optometrist married to a huge wife named Valencia. They had two children, a daughter named Barbara who married an optometrist, and a son named Robert who became a Green Beret in Vietnam.
In 1968, Billy was the sole survivor of a plane crash on top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. While he was recovering in the hospital, Valencia was killed in a carbon- monoxide accident. On Feb. 13, 1976, Billy was assassinated by a nut with a high- powered laser gun.
Here is the link to the review of Slaughterhouse Five, on the New York Times Books review
You’d think these two synopses would give away the book’s impact, but that’s the funny thing about Slaughterhouse Five. There is so much more to it than just the basic tale of Billy Pilgrim. For the rest, you’ll have to read the book for yourself. I’ll leave something to the imagination, after all.
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| The author, Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the quote. / Source: ApvOnlineBlog.Wordpress.com |
What I liked about it:
The scattered nature of the book was sometimes a hindrance to clarity, but at the same time it helped give the book a feeling of desperate verisimilitude. The nature of the Tralfamadorians and the jumping back and forth in time - being “unstuck in time” as the author puts it - was fascinating. One moment Billy Pilgrim in in Dresden prior to the firebombing, and next he is in the geodesic dome on Tralfamadoria with... what’s her name? Oh yeah, Montana Wildhack. What a name. Speaking of names, Kilgore Trout is another one that really makes me grin. That paints quite the image, doesn’t it. Vonnegut seems to be poking fun at his own rather striking moniker, I’d say.
Another thing I quite liked about the book was that, throughout the story, we keep hearing about how poor Captain Derby gets put up in front of a firing squad outside Dresden after the bombing and shot. But I don’t remember it ever being actually described as happening. It’s one of those instances where the author keeps telling you that something is going to happen, and so gets the idea so much into your mind as an undisputed fact that when he doesn’t actually give you the scene he’s been alluding to, you take it at face value that it happened anyway. A rare thing, that.
Last, I especially liked one of the more memorable scenes in the novel. I speak of the one in which Billy Pilgrim watches the documentary on TV about the U.S. Army Air Corps bomber going over Germany to bomb it, but he’s watching it in reverse. Of course we can do that pretty easy these days, but do you ever really watch what happens when you play something in reverse? Vonnegut describes how the bombers get their battle damage sucked away by now friendly German fighter planes, and how the explosions that ravage cities are actually drawn up into the planes into canisters (bombs) which hold the destructive power at bay. The planes fly backward to England and land backwards, and the crews turn in their uniforms and go back home and everybody rewinds to being a baby. Even Hitler, Vonnegut says, though it isn’t a part of the documentary that he has Pilgrim watching. Everybody goes backward to a point where Adam and Eve are on the Earth and we are in a state of innocence, rather than strife and war. An interesting point of view. I’d never really thought about it before in the way that the author describes it, though I must confess that I do laugh when I see a movie playing in reverse and everybody is doing things backward and things are being undone. But I never really saw it the way Vonnegut describes it, and the effect was... well, good job on that.
What I didn’t like about it:
Nothing. I didn’t absolutely love the book, but I found nothing to be particularly noteworthy in any negative sense. It is a bit disjointed, but that is clearly intentional, so the discomfort of bouncing about is part of the ride. There’s nothing really other than that to say on the subject of dislikes, for me. I can’t really understand why some schools have banned it. Well, I can, but I can’t understand why some people are that uptight. If you’re so scared your kids will read something controversial, you must not have much faith in having taught them right and wrong in the first place.
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| The firebombing of Dresden, Germany, during the concluding months of World War II. It was hard to find an image of the scene that wasn't full of dead bodies. Given the recent events at the U.S. Embassy in Libya and the horrific images that came from that, I didn't feel it anywhere near appropriate to show that. That and what I said on September 11th. I don't openly try to be a hypocrite, though it does happen, just the same. / Source: ThisIsn'tHappiness.com |
What I learned, if anything:
The book has eerie resonances to Stephen King’s works. I suppose that is why a former co-worker, when I told him I was reading a King book at work on my headphones, inquired if I’d read and then suggested I pick up Slaughterhouse Five.
Recommendation:
Yes, I’d recommend this one. It seems to me, though it has been a long time since I read either, that this was more interesting a book than Catch 22, or A Farewell to Arms. I think that Hemingway one was the one I’m thinking of. Could be wrong, though. Not that Hemingway was much of an antiwar guy. And it’s been years since I read either. High school. My point is, Slaughterhouse Five, despite adult situations and language, and some controversial subjects being brought up, is a pretty good book all around. Worth a quick read, to say the least. And it makes you think, which is always worth the effort, as far as I’m concerned.
Learn more about Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, on Amazon.com
Well, if my wife hasn't greased the keys of my computer with hemorrhoid cream or otherwise found some way to get back at me for calling her - even in jest - an intellectual Neanderthal (there I go again, bring that back up - I'm so dead) - I might post again in a day or two. I've got an Opinion/Editorial piece at work in the back of my head, but I also have a bunch of homework coming up these next few days. Gonna be a busy weekend.
The parting comment:
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| Source: LolSnaps.com |
I gotta remember this one. Probably get big laughs at my Women's Studies class I'm taking this semester.
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