Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Book Review: The Value of a Good Introduction
Summary: 5 Stars
Unlike most novels, "Slaughterhouse-Five" begins with an introduction that you have to read. That is to say, most introductions are interesting and informative, but if you skip them you haven't really missed anything. Not this one - if you want to read the novel, you are required to read the introduction. That's just the way it is.
I'm pleased to see that Kurt Vonnegut is now receiving the acknowledgment due him as a great American writer, and indeed received at least a part of that acknowledgment during his lifetime, but not as much as he will over the next few decades. That's one reason you have to read the introduction. Another is that Vonnegut's reputation rests primarily on a series of interconnected novels he published in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the last and probably best of these. And finally, you have to read the introduction because it explains how and why he came to write the novel, and pretty much gives away the whole point of the piece.
Under ordinary circumstances we would probably say that if we already know the point of a novel (or anything else), there's no reason to read it, but this is Kurt Vonnegut, remember. In addition to everything else that was unique about him, he loved to talk to his readers, in person or in print. You certainly read his novels because they're great, but you read them at least as much for the opportunity to hang out with the guy.
Not to rehash the whole business, introduction or novel, but as the opening line declares, "Slaughterhouse-Five" is primarily about a man named Billy Pilgrim who has come unstuck in time. He does not experience his life in a linear fashion, like you and I do. Rather, he jumps around from event to event in his life randomly, and may find himself in any place or any period at any moment. Which would be fascinating in and of itself, and made all the more so by the unbelievable things that Billy has been through, including the moments before his birth and after his death.
You get to be with him as he works his way around Europe during World War II, eventually being captured by the Nazis and imprisoned, like his creator, in Dresden, just in time for the Allied bombing of the place. You get to be with him during a perfectly normal upper-middle-class postwar lifestyle where he becomes an optometrist, marries the boss's daughter, prospers, and survives an airplane crash on his way to a convention. You get to be with him when he's kidnapped by the alien Tralfamadorians for observation purposes, which is not as bad as it sounds when you consider that his captors are kind to him, teach him a great deal, and provide him with a companion in the form of a gorgeous adult-film star named Montana Wildhack.
And you also get to be with him as he comes to realize from the Tralfamadorians that everything is eternal and immortal. The aliens don't go through time in a linear fashion either, but unlike Billy, they are constantly present to every moment of time, from the creation of the universe to its destruction. This is how Billy can be present on Tralfamadore with his gorgeous mistress and on Earth with his devoted wife both at the same time, and why he attempts to teach the world that nothing is ever lost. He doesn't succeed, of course, but one of the best things about "Slaughterhouse-Five" is that his failure doesn't bother him in the least, exactly because nothing is ever lost.
Now, in some ways, this is kind of depressing, since it implies that the universe is going to go the way it goes no matter what we do, but Vonnegut's deliberately simple style somehow turns it into a comforting doctrine. And that's the final reason you have to read the introduction.
In it, as I said, he describes how he came to write "Slaughterhouse-Five". Briefly, he wrote it in this particular manner at least in part because of the wife of his old Army buddy, a man who had lived through the bombing of Dresden with Vonnegut. This woman worried that Vonnegut would make war sound like fun, and thus make children like hers want to go out and fight and die. She needn't have worried - I can assure you there is nothing fun about war as presented here, although it is kind of amusing when Billy encounters a couple of characters from Vonnegut's previous books. The important point, though, is that the author structured his book to not only claim, but demonstrate, that nothing is ever lost.
One way he did this, and the most obvious, comes at the introduction's end, where he points out that "Slaughterhouse-Five" begins with the line "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time" and ends with the line "Poot-tee-weet?" That's his transcription of bird song, a sound Billy hears at a rather horrible moment. The sound reminds him once again that no matter how dreadful life can get, the birds still sing, and their song, like everything else, is never lost.
So in his introduction, Vonnegut brings the opening and closing of his novel together and shows us what it can teach us. And now that you know that, you still have to read the introduction. You have to read the novel, too, because there's more in it than just that. I'll let you find it for yourself. I'll tell you one thing, though; Vonnegut was a master prose stylist, and in "Slaughterhouse-Five" he found a style that matched his theme just about perfectly. And that's rare enough that I can't allow you to miss it. So what are you waiting for? Go read it!
Benshlomo says, Every word from the mouths of the wise is like gold.
Book Review: Poo-tee-weet
Summary: 5 Stars
As a young man fighting in World War II, Kurt Vonnegut was captured by the Germans and taken as a prisoner to Dresden, where he witnessed the bombing of the city by the Allied Air Forces. He only survived because he and his fellow-prisoners were being held deep in the cellars of an abattoir known in German as "Schlachthof Fuenf", or "Slaughterhouse Five". Hence the title of the novel, which tells the story of a young American soldier named Billy Pilgrim, who is captured by the Germans and taken as a prisoner to Dresden, where he witnesses the bombing of the city, only surviving because he and his fellow-prisoners are being held deep in the cellars of an abattoir.
Although the book is partly autobiographical, it is by no means a realistic depiction of the horrors of war. It is highly experimental in style, with a strong element of science-fiction. Billy is described as being "unstuck in time", which means that he is an inadvertent time-traveller, who can suddenly find himself whisked from one point in his life to another without warning. (Billy's surname is probably meant to have a symbolic meaning- he is on an uncertain, random pilgrimage through life).
Vonnegut's writing is similarly unstuck in time. There is no smooth linear narrative progressing logically from one event to the next; the narration rather hops, seemingly randomly, from one part of Billy's life to another. We learn (but not necessarily in that order) about his marriage after the war to a girl named Valencia, about how he becomes a successful optometrist in upstate New York, about how he survives a plane crash and about his wife's death shortly afterwards, and about his own murder in the 1970s. (The book itself was actually published in 1969). Most bizarrely, we learn how he is kidnapped by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who take him back to their world to keep him in a zoo and mate him with a porn star named Montana Wildhack.
Experimental novels often have the reputation of being wilfully obscure and difficult to read. "Slaughterhouse Five" is neither. Vonnegut's prose is wonderfully lucid, and although his narrative may lack strict chronological logic, the sequence of events has a logic of its own. For example the bombing, which is in chronological terms one of the earlier events in the novel, is placed near the end, because it is the most powerful event in emotional terms and therefore makes a suitable climax.
Because of the central role played in it by the bombing of Dresden, "Slaughterhouse Five" has often been described as an anti-war novel. Yet in the opening chapter Vonnegut relates a (possibly invented) conversation with a friend who asks him why he doesn't write an anti-glacier book instead of an anti-war book, implying that wars are as easy to stop as glaciers and that anti-war books are therefore futile. This attitude fits in with the Tralfamadorian philosophy of life, something frequently referred to in the book. Unlike humans, who can see only one point in time at once, the Tralfamadorians can see the whole of their lives, past present and future. This means that they know about future events before they actually occur and therefore believe that there is no point in trying to alter or avoid them. After his return to Earth, Billy becomes hugely popular and successful by preaching this philosophy to his fellow Earthlings.
At times it seems as if Vonnegut himself is preaching a similar philosophy. This attitude is emphasised by his frequent use of the phrase "so it goes", used here to mean something like "that's the way things are" or "that's life", every time someone dies or something unfortunate occurs. It did, however, seem to me entirely possible that Vonnegut may not have intended his apparent advocacy of passive fatalism to have been taken at face value. This may simply have been an ironic way of putting an anti-war message across. This is not an anti-war book in the sense that it makes an intellectual case for pacifism, nor does it address the strong counter-argument that the Nazi regime was so aggressive and brutal that the war against it was morally justified. Vonnegut rather attempts through the use of irony to reveal the absurdity of war, just as Joseph Heller does in that other great American satirical anti-war novel, "Catch-22". Billy and his fellow-prisoners only survive the bombing because they are protected by a slaughterhouse, a building normally associated with killing. After the destruction, one of those prisoners is executed by the Nazis for the risibly minor crime of stealing a teapot from the ruins. The last words in the book are given to a bird: "Poo-tee-weet". Perhaps that is the only meaningful comment possible.
Book Review: Anti-war Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Vonnegut's mother committed suicide, and Vonnegut himself was prone to severe depression, but it was his experiences in World War II that had the most dramatic effect on American letters. Marching across occupied Germany in December 1944 -- six months after the Allied D-Day invasion -- Vonnegut's Infantry division was pressing the advance into German-held territory when he somehow became separated from his comrades. For several days he wandered alone behind enemy lines until he was discovered and captured by Nazi troops on December 14. They transported him to the ancient and beautiful German city of Dresden, where he was imprisoned in an underground meat locker -- Slaughterhouse Five -- with six other Americans.
On February 13th, the 60th day of his captivity, Allied forces began the legendary fire-bombing of Dresden. Generally speaking, Allied bombing raids targeted German infrastructure -- especially anything having to do with manufacturing or transporting munitions. If they knew the geographic source of munitions, they would obliterate the entire area -- this being decades before satellite surveillance and "smart" bombs. The bombing of Dresden is something of an anomaly in the Allied efforts: there was no manufacturing to speak of in Dresden, so it was not really a "rich" military target.
It was, however, in a little valley, and over the course of the bombing, which went on without pause for two days, the bombs and the fires they started changed the weather in the valley; it became a chimney of sorts, sucking fire through it, and the destruction of Dresden was nearly as complete as was the destruction of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the Japanese cities incenerated with atomic bombs the next year.
Vonnegut witnessed the whole thing, and survived. After the bombing stopped, the Germans had their few remaining prisoners gather corpses until this proved futile; they then went in with flame throwers and reduced the civilian dead -- numbering in the tens of thousands -- to ashes. In disarray, the Germans fell to the Soviet Union's troops three months later, and Vonnegut was liberated.
This series of experiences fed into all of Vonnegut's writing, mostly in the form of a grim appreciation for the way an idea, social or scientific, can take on a life of its own, and demand that it be completed, no matter what the consequences. Most of his novels involve events that hurl forward even when no one seems to know why; they just accept it and deal with it. Regarding the bombing itself, Vonnegut once wrote, "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre."
Vonnegut was prolific, writing essays and stories throughout his life. He was also a tormented soul who once tried to commit suicide, but after his death at 84, in 2007, his friends and family mostly remembered his warm humor.
Considered a classic of twentieth century literature, and included in both Time Magazine's and Modern Review's list of Top 100 Books , Slaughterhouse-Five showcases the idiocy of war in an original and darkly humorous way -- a feat that few authors have ever been able to accomplish. The story seems funny because it has no linear time line, and thus no ending; Billy Pilgrim, the main character, has "come unstuck in time", and he experiences times of his life -- and death -- in random order.
Pilgrim survived the WWII bombing of Dresden in a meat locker, of course, called "Slaughterhouse Five", and his experiences in the war are juxtaposed with his marriage to the obese daughter of the optometrist he works for and with his drunken, late night attempts to re-connect with people who long ago forgot about him. He has also been abducted by aliens from the distant planet Tralfamadore, where he is kept on display under a geodesic dome in a zoo, making love to his fellow captive, the movie star Montana Wildhack, as the aliens watch in fascination.
Throughout much of the novel, Pilgrim is deranged, either from shock at the horrors he witnessed in the war, or from the disorienting effect of being unstuck in time. At the end of the book, as an old man, ruminating on the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and distressed by the carnage of war in Vietnam, the time comes for Pilgrim to go public with his "unstuck-ness". He does so on the radio, which makes him out to be an old fool. But the reader knows better. We know what he's talking about; we know what's happened to him. Pilgrim is not un-stuck in time; his world is un-stuck from morality.
Book Review: Buy It For The Kid of the Kid You'll Have In 30 Years, It'll Still be Good
Summary: 5 Stars
It's quite difficult to throw a few stars and some constructive criticism at Slaughterhouse Five and call it a day. It feels a lot like reviewing the toothpick stuck through an impeccably-made, piping-hot corned-beef sandwich served on rye in Ireland on Saint Patrick's Day; it's just the tool used to consolidate a solar system's worth of meaty goodness. Slaughterhouse is the toothpick that keeps Kurt Vonnegut's epic account of life as a man in the 20th century from reaching critical mass and swallowing him whole, turning him into the 1974 equivalent of a Britney-venerating, codine-snarfing vegetable. Slaughterhouse is the Narnia in the back of his closet, where specters of his experiences with life, death, time, war, nature, and people can run circles around each other, freed from a chasm in his brain that required far more than savvy with a typewriter to extract. This review is tough, because I'm not fussing over a neat little book filled with numbered chapters and linear mumbling. I'm reviewing a man.
Nothing about the book can be described "in a nutshell." Without getting specific, Slaughterhouse Five is the story a man named Billy Pilgrim, whose life is documented by in-story Kurt Vonnegut, whose documentations are arranged and edited by real-life Kurt Vonnegut. Yikes. Well, what does Billy Pilgrim do? He lives his life: goes to war, marries, has children, becomes an optometrist, gets in a plane crash, is abducted by aliens, travels through time, et cetera. Okay... What does in-story Vonnegut do? He witnesses Billy's life. But... What does Kurt in the Flesh do? He uses in-story Kurt's witnessing of Billy's life to tell his own story about the hellacious firebombing of Dresden during World War Two, which only exists between the lines. The quirkiness is relentless. The kicker is, it takes careful reading of the entire book just to be aware of the three entities' coexistences; they're seamlessly integrated. They have to be, or else Vonnegut wouldn't have been able to detach enough to pick his life apart and call it art. Slaughterhouse Five is the grain alcohol of literature: frighteningly potent and impossible to drink without three people and a whole lot to mix with. Take one part Vonnegut, one part imaginary Vonnegut, one part Pilgrim, three parts Dresden Vintage Neutral-Grain Spirit, and a dash of bitters. Shake vigorously.
Instead of providing his readers with food for thought, he gives them his thoughts for food. Vonnegut does not want to discuss Dresden, the (aesthetic) topic of the book; he wants readers to come to a certain understanding about it without directly saying a word, like leading a thirsty horse toward water using a puppet. He understates most major events in Billy's life with the catch-all statement, "so it goes." Dead baby? "So it goes." Going to war? "So it goes." Reflecting on some of the most cruel synapses ever fired by human brains? "So it goes." When he does go into detail, though, his rhetoric sometimes makes Shakespeare's Sonnets read like street signs. I'm not sure if I've seen a more pleasing balance struck among eloquence, articulation, power, and brevity in 15 years of literacy.
If I had to guess when Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, and I was born at any point in time after March of 1945, I'd probably say yesterday. Its relevance will barely even be diminished when we're all speaking Chinese in 2013, and even then I'm sure the translation will be fairly poignant. Vonnegut is an old man with a young mind; an old dog who learns new tricks and then offers Ph.D-level classes in them. It's a book about duality and paradox: a perpetual moment in time, overstating the shadow and understating the substance that casts it; life and death. The preface provides the operative definition by which I am reviewing this book: "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." He didn't try to. He said something true about a massacre, and then wrapped his entire life around it. In doing so, he said something true about all that is sacred to mankind. And he said it well. Five stars.
Book Review: Essential Vonnegut, still relevant today...
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't care who you are, you absolutely need to read this book. It's justly considered a classic. The thing about it is that it isn't really a "humor book" like some of Vonnegut's other, justly famous works (Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater). Parts of it are funny - I especially like the segments with the bitter Kilgore Trout, a sci-fi author reputed to be one of the worst ever - but humor isn't the focus of this book. Rather, it focuses on creativity and a solid message. Most if not all of Kurt's work is topical to some extent, but here his message comes to the fore.
Vonnegut's view of time here is fascinating. Rather than present it as a straight line, as most other authors do, he explores its more abstract natures. To him, time is not a line, but a complex network of points that anybody at any time can travel arbitrarily amongst. This is prime creativity. Some of the most memorable segments of the book involve hapless hero Billy Pilgrim becoming "unstuck in time." The first time he describes it, he takes a beautiful, "poetic-prose" approach. He floats freely through ideas, ideas that intentionally don't connect but are still beautifully written. Billy actually experiences both his birth and his death over the course of the book.
But here is the REAL reason why you need to read Slaughterhouse-Five. It's very much an anti-war book, and the central message it communicates is that there are no heroes in war. The war Vonnegut focuses on is World War II, specifically the Allies' firebombing of Dredsen, Germany, an event that killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's clear that Vonnegut holds Nazi Germany in the utmost of contempt. But he also makes the claim that the Allies were not flawless, wonderful supermen. It's obvious that he believes in their ideals, but he also argues that they could be just as bad as their enemies. After all, countless German civilians were killed during the Dredsen firebomings, and I'm going to guess most of them had nothing to do with the Axis powers. In today's world, in today's wars, things aren't so black-and-white, and I think our President desperately needs a reminder of that. This conviction of his that America is the heroic cowboy, shooting down them no-good varmints with a gun in every holster, then mounting his horse and riding off into the sunset, is simply delusional. Don't get me wrong, I have as much if not more hatred for the terrorists our soon-to-be-ex-President (hopefully to be replaced by Barack Obama, but that's irrelevant) is so staunchly opposed to. They certainly are psychopaths, and the world would be a better place without them. But I can at least see where they're coming from. After all, hasn't America stolen their culture with its obsession with a globalist economy? There are no clear-cut heroes or villains in this war. Both sides have understandable motives, and while I admittedly side with the U.S. on this matter (though the Iraq War is at least as unnecessary as the Vietnam War, and has arguably done more damage to our country's reputation), the terrorists do have a point, I suppose. And that's why you need to read this book. Because war isn't as simple and clear-cut as certain presidents would like to believe it is. This is a fine example of preaching to the choir, since I'm a pacifist (except in extreme cases, like World War II), but I simply love this book on many, many levels. Vonnegut's masterpiece. If you wanted proof that he was an author of real literary merit and not just some weirdo - though if that's the case, you can't be my friend - this is a sure bet.