Guest Anonymous Posted May 19, 2006 Share Posted May 19, 2006 Kurt Vonnegut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 Ah. It's a great book. Although his best is Cats Cradle, and if you want a better anti war satire, you're almost certainly better off with Catch-22. I'm not sure a book like Slaughterhouse 5, which is all about the ideas and the concept of death and how life becomes trivialised really wants to build the characters too far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted May 29, 2006 Share Posted May 29, 2006 When I joined BCUK some people offered to send me books and I plumped for this one as I had heard good things about it .... so I'll come back when I've finished it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 9, 2006 Share Posted June 9, 2006 Stewart: don't be put off reading more Vonnegut by one bad experience. His books are extraordinarily variable in quality, and his later ones in particular are weak. Having said that, Slaughterhouse-5 is earlyish (1969) and as you say, is his most widely acclaimed and known book. Nonetheless I couldn't get on with it either. I would recommend The Sirens of Titan, Player Piano (if you can find it: his first novel), Mother Night or - at a push - Cat's Cradle. He also does sentimentality very well, particularly in mid-late stuff like Slapstick, Breakfast of Champions and Timequake. Avoid the likes of Deadeye Dick, Jailbird or Hocus Pocus unless you're a completist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted June 9, 2006 Share Posted June 9, 2006 I finished it yesterday and I absolutely LOVED it. I am not good at reviews so will leave it there, but it moved me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cda Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 I finished it yesterday and I absolutely LOVED it. I am not good at reviews so will leave it there, but it moved me. Why did it move you? In what way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Yes, we need to know! I say that as a Vonnegut fan who hates Slaughterhouse-Five, so I need reasons to like it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Ooh, this is hard for me. I am not good with words. Right. I am interested in quantum physics and the whole idea of time and in this book the aliens see time in a completely different way. We are like people standing in the Grand Canyon with tin helmets on which are obscuring our view, only looking one way and not seeing the whole picture. The aliens can see the whole of the canyon, up, down, front and back, side to side. They see the whole picture. In the same way, they do not focus on death as it is one moment from a life. They say why focus on that small bit, when we should see the whole picture. It's that suggestion that all of time is happening 'at once' and not in a linear way as we perceive it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 That's good enough for me, knitnurse. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 I hate talking to clever folk - I get frightened Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kell Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 No need to, Knitnurse - you did just fine there & who's to say anyone's any cleverer than you anyway? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 Thanks Kell. When I had my daughter I felt as if my brain kind of shrivelled, but that could be an excuse :? I need to start using it again - exercising it has to help Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kell Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 They do say that your brain shrinks when you're pregnant. My colleague has been joking that the baby is sooking out her brains through the umbilical chord - LOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 Well, I've had 2 little ones, so I have a good excuse! Playing with a toddler all day, making animal noises and the such, must have an effect on me too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueMoon Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 I've been meaning to read Slaughterhouse 5 for a while now, but haven't yet found a copy in the local library. I did think that Timequake was quite well done indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knitnurse Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 BlueMoon I would have sent it to you but I have already sent it to somebody else who was interested. I know that it feels that the baby is having every last spare bit of everything you have to offer Now that mine is nearly 10 .... do you think my grey matter should have regenerated? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magdadh Posted September 6, 2006 Share Posted September 6, 2006 Ah. It's a great book. Although his best is Cats Cradle, and if you want a better anti war satire, you're almost certainly better off with Catch-22. . I couldn't agree more!!!!! Cat's Cradle used to be in my personal top 5 in my late teens/early 20's; and the Slaughterhouse 5 in my top 10 (if it makes sense). My favourite Vonnegut was actually God Bless You, Mr Rosewater. Now at 35, I am too scared of disappointing myself to read any of his again as I suspect his violently sentimentalist streak might be just too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted September 29, 2008 Share Posted September 29, 2008 . . . and if you want a better anti war satire, you're almost certainly better off with Catch-22. I'd agree with that. Major Major Major Major . . . Brilliant stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted September 30, 2008 Share Posted September 30, 2008 Major Major Major Major . . . Brilliant stuff! I love that. I was explaining that name to someone at work recently. What a terrific book - one of my faves. I must get around to re-reading it soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyrox Posted January 21, 2009 Share Posted January 21, 2009 I also the way time was presented in Slaughterhouse. Certain passages stuck with me, in particular the firebombing of Dresden scene, as a previous poster has said: "The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. And Hitler turned into a baby. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Binary_Digit Posted March 22, 2009 Share Posted March 22, 2009 "The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. And Hitler turned into a baby. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed." Amazing. I really need to pick this book up. The passage you've quoted works on my spirit at so many different levels. What beautiful, vile, hateful, and loving creatures we humans are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinRobinson Posted March 23, 2009 Share Posted March 23, 2009 if you want a better anti war satire, you're almost certainly better off with Catch-22. Can't agree. For one thing, to class Slaughterhouse 5 as a "anti-war satire" misses a lot of big points. But beyond that, Catch 22 is just really a little silly. Has a whole Hogan's Heros, M.A.S.H. feel to it. Slaughterhouse 5--apart from its literary innovation--isn't really an attempt to be "anti-war" (neither was Catch 22) though it got interpreted as that in the Sixties and it seems to have stuck. And is not a satire by any means. Anybody reading Vonnegutt as "satire" is missing out big time. Don't let the tone fool you, he's serious as a heart attack and he doesn't bother satirizing: he indicts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smay Posted April 14, 2009 Share Posted April 14, 2009 Does anyone listen to the Podcast Experts & Intermediates? They had an episode about this book and it really made me want to read it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 Does anyone listen to the Podcast Experts & Intermediates? They had an episode about this book and it really made me want to read it. Do you have a link? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smay Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 http://expertsandintermediates.podomatic.com/ Episode 24! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.