Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Book Review: A painful, beautiful look at history, violence, and humanity
Summary: 5 Stars
It's probably been over a decade since I last read Slaughterhouse Five, but after recommending it to a student who's been excitedly reading through it, I got the urge to dive back into Vonnegut's world again. There are few who don't know what Slaughterhouse Five is about, but for the unaware, it's the tale of Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran who was present at the fire-bombing of Dresden and now finds himself "unstuck" in time, catapulting around through his life. Of course, it's also the story of Vonnegut himself, as he deals with his memories of Dresden and tries to find some meaning behind it all. There's so much beauty and honesty in Slaughterhouse Five that it's hard to know where to start. Vonnegut's rambling, train-of-thought style isn't for all tastes, but for those who lose themselves in his world, it allows for marvelous asides and powerful moments, as well as Vonnegut's typically cynical optimism. As much of a contradiction as that sounds, it's the only way I know how to describe Vonnegut's work - there's no doubt that he's deeply cynical about the world and humankind, but he nonetheless hopes for better, hopes for improvement and wishes that people could learn from the past. And there are moments of stunning beauty and hope here - for instance, the quiet and profoundly moving sequence when Pilgrim watches a war film unfold backwards, watching as American and German planes slowly suck wounds and shrapnel from the cities and soldiers before delivering the bombs home to be dismantled and taken away where they will never be used again, or the overwhelming pain of the Dresden bombing itself. As much as Slaughterhouse Five is known for its humor, it's a quiet, dark humor, more of a bemusement at the world around it as a satire. But what lingers is not the humor; it's Vonnegut's inimitable, wonderful world view, one that I miss as the world continues to change on a daily basis. But, as the man himself wrote: So it goes.Book Review: WWII, Vietnam, Iraq -- Classic Antiwar Books Never Go Out of Style
Summary: 5 Stars
Well-read in the Vonnegut oeuvre, I somehow had missed SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE and, put in the mood for an anti-war book by the relentless news from Iraq, I remedied that this week. Unfortunately, readers the world over recently lost Kurt Vonnegut (and so it goes); reading this book makes me miss him more than ever.
What's most amazing is how the book slides through time and space effortlessly and without distracting the reader. No one's about to condemn it for its "episodic" nature, in other words. Beyond Billy Pilgrim, there are no important characters... just this looming presence of unstoppable, unexplainable, unethical authority. That can be government, the military, or a single person (a whole cavalcade of them come and go in Billy's life). For instance, how powerful is it that few Americans -- even among the most educated -- realize that the bombing of Dresden, Germany, killed more people than the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The German civilians were torched with "conventional" weapons. The Japanese, of course, with an atomic bomb ("unconventional" weaponry?).
And so it goes.
Included in this classic-for-a-reason anti-war book is the high arc of Vonnegut's signature humor and creativity. Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by extraterrestrials from Tralfamadore. They know a thing or two about life (it goes on) and death (it doesn't). Somehow the mix of horrifying history, science fiction, and pitifully funny (humorously pitiful?) morality tale come together like a symphonic orchestra made up of disparate parts. Only Vonnegut, it would seem, could pull it off.
Inspired by World War II, given momentum by Vietnam, and kept aflame by Iraq, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE will never lose relevance because it hinges on the absurdity that is man and his addiction to power and war. Like Billy Pilgrim, it will slide through time and space effortlessly and forever.
Book Review: Still crazy after all these years...
Summary: 5 Stars
Kurt Vonnegut's death made me think about Slaughterhouse-Five, and I read it again for the first time since the early '70s, not long after it was published. I discovered that it's now a much better book, or maybe I'm now a much better reader...
This book is often called an "absurdest classic," and it is both of those things. It relates the life of Billy Pilgrim, who's become "unstuck" in time, by describing what is happening-- and what has and will happen-- to him simultaneously. The focal point for all of this is the shattering experience of Billy's life, his presence as a prisoner of war in Dresden when it was destroyed by the allies in World War II.
Of course, Vonnegut himself actually experienced the events he creates for Billy, surviving only because the Germans housed their prisoners in concrete slaughterhouses, and it had a similarly shattering effect on him. He says the book is his attempt to deal with the experience.
The book could have been impossibly confusing or just annoying, but it's not. That's because of Vonnegut's style. His central thesis-- that the survivors of the horrors of war are sick because they realize that they are "...the listless playthings of enormous forces"-- is developed with both humor and humanity. The book is a condemnation of savagery committed as a service to authority; it's also warm and deeply funny. That might seem like an unlikely or even impossible combination, but Vonnegut pulls it off. That's why the book is regarded as a classic.
This book is easy, quick reading, but it's most certainly not an easy or quick task to forget it. It's often compared to Joseph Heller's Catch- 22, probably because they are both appreciations-- celebrations, really-- of the absurdity that can be found in the tragedies of life, particularly the tragedy of war.
Book Review: Five stars because I saw the movie first
Summary: 5 Stars
Sandwiched between two of the "boomer" generation's biggest hit movies, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting," the director of those, George Roy Hill, found time to make the film version of "Slaughterhouse Five." It became one of my favorite films over time. Yet I had never read anything by Vonnegut. With the advent of his death, I figured it was finally time. I enjoyed the book but am happy I saw the movie first.
The story revolves around a man who does not live his life in a normal aging sequence but instead, thanks in part to some strange extraterrestrials, lives by being "unstuck in time;" he jumps randomly from time period to time period. So, like the movie "Pulp Fiction," we get a current event and go into the past to undertstand how he got there or we see the past and eventually it ties into the present.
I believe the film captures the spirit of the book very well yet there are enough differences between the two for me to be very satisfied with both. The parts that differ from the movie really added to my enjoyment. The novel also alerts you to the fact that some of the action may have been taken directly from Vonnegut's life and the message Vonnegut was trying to get across is maybe a bit clearer than the movie can make it.
Funny, I am not sure I would have enjoyed the book without seeing the movie. Why? Well, I am not a big fantasy/sci-fi reader so it is quite possible the subject would have been difficult for me to embrace. I am not sure I would have "gotten it" without the film to provide the framework. I could also visualize the characters and their predicaments with the film to fall back on.
So my overall point is that this is a book you should enjoy immensely if you have seen the movie. Of course, I can't tell you otherwise.
Book Review: Interpretations Abound
Summary: 5 Stars
Though Kurt Vonnegut's most popular work has been called both Science Fiction and an an alternate view of how we should view time, I'm not so sure.
I don't think Pilgrim was ever actually unstuck in time, but he did have flashbacks to his life in Dresden and often lapsed into fantasies about aliens keeping him captive with a playmate. As Pilgrim is unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, he believes that the aliens who have him under their control are able to propell him back into the past as well as forward into the future.
But it's hard to pin down the ideas of the genius who authored the work, and each reader will take what he or she will from the dark humor and social insights of the author. So it goes.
This work stands out as both a pioneering work of modernist steam-of-consciousness techniques and a work of post-modernist chaos. It is ironic that it was a candidte for censorship in many school systems, in that Vonnegut was one of the twenty first centuries strongest champions of free speech.
I also found the continuation of Hemmingway's portrayal of the "Great American Boyman" in the descriptions of the American POWs to be an important criticism of our culture...one that we should be aware of in the age of metrosexualization. I often suspect that Vonnegut's relation of how the American POWs dealt with their imprisonment in Dresden and his observance that success is "damn hard" in America, despite our being taught that it's the "Land of Opportunity," were the real reasons why political factions wanted it banned.
Like many of his old time fans, I was saddened to hear of his death today and a resurgence of the love for his work has once again awakened in me. I'm dusting his books off now, as I'm sure many others are as well all around the world.