Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5

[Guest Anonymous]

Kurt Vonnegut

[Freewheeling Andy]

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.

[knitnurse]

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

[Philip Stein]

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.

[knitnurse]

I finished it yesterday and I absolutely LOVED it. I am not good at reviews so will leave it there, but it moved me.

[Guest cda]

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?

[Philip Stein]

Yes, we need to know! I say that as a Vonnegut fan who hates Slaughterhouse-Five, so I need reasons to like it!

[knitnurse]

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.

 

 

[Philip Stein]

That's good enough for me, knitnurse. Thanks!

[knitnurse]

I hate talking to clever folk - I get frightened

[Kell]

No need to, Knitnurse - you did just fine there & who's to say anyone's any cleverer than you anyway?

[knitnurse]

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

[Kell]

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!

[Michelle]

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!

[BlueMoon]

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.

[knitnurse]

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?

[magdadh]

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.

[Raven]

. . . 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!

[Kylie]

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!

[Hyrox]

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."

[Binary_Digit]

"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.

[LinRobinson]

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.

[Smay]

Does anyone listen to the Podcast Experts & Intermediates? They had an episode about this book and it really made me want to read it.

[Raven]

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?

[Smay]

http://expertsandintermediates.podomatic.com/

 

Episode 24!