Slaughterhouse-Five at Forty

[lame54]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5348/slaughterhouse-five_at_forty

Slaughterhouse-Five at Forty
Why Vonnegut’s classic novel transcends the ’60s.

By GREGORY SUMNER

Beneath the book's structural gimmicks and childlike prose lies a kind of humanism, and even patriotism, more enduring than some of its early readers might have suspected.
Between 1995 to 2005, Kurt Vonnegut contributed to In These Times. All articles he wrote for the magazine this decade are collected here.

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Slaughterhouse-Five first appeared in bookstores forty years ago, and it remains the signature achievement of Kurt Vonnegut’s long and distinguished writing career. Long in gestation, it oscillates between realism and science fiction, mordant humor and grief, relieved by moments of unexpectedly lyrical imagery to convey the author’s experience as a young soldier in the Second World War.

He recounts for us his trials after capture by the Germans during their last great counter-offensive, in the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge just before Christmas 1944. Through the tragicomic alter-ego “Billy Pilgrim,” we learn about Vonnegut’s six months as an object deprived of free will.

We are with him standing in boxcars bound, in mysterious stop-and-start fashion, for unknown destinations. We encounter the baseness to which people can descend, as well as the nobility to which they sometimes rise, in the most extreme situations. Then we find out what it is like to go through the apocalypse—the firebombing of the city of Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945, which Vonnegut and about one hundred other Americans interned there miraculously survived.

Then followed days and weeks when the prisoners were deployed in the process of corpse disposal—imagine that task, that surreal landscape. When he got home, Vonnegut was shocked to find almost nothing about the raid and its ground-level consequences in newspaper archives, and came to the conclusion that his government, abetted by the press, could lie. The impulse to somehow tell his “untellable” war story, to expose it to the light, would drive him for decades, and it became the focus for his most ambitious work of art...

[CTyankee]

1. Thank you for this. This novel is one that I had not read due to ignorance.

I intend to get it from my library now that I have read this posting. It sounds like something I should have read years ago but did not. My loss. I need to read this book.

Thanks again...

[lame54]

2. I may have to read it again

[tkmorris]

4. It really is a great book

I found it in the 70's, read it, and promptly read everything else Vonnegut had written and continued to pick up subsequent books as soon as they came out. He felt like an old friend to me even though I never met the man.

[TroglodyteScholar]

17. That is EXACTLY how I've always described him...

..."like an old friend."

[ShamelessHussy]

8. thats the cool thing about books, you can discover them at any time, and KV is a hero of mine

ever since i discovered him.

you won't regret your relationship with him, as he has a LOT of wisdom to share that will last a lifetime.

:hi:

[CTyankee]

14. You are so right!

I went back to school at age 59 to get a Master's in Liberal Studies. It was a great adventure, since I took courses in a wide spectrum of choices...art, music, literature, history, political science, religion, philosophy, even economics (my least favorite course). It opened up a lot to me...now I just continue it on my own since I am retired...

[ixion]

3. Vonnegut is one of my all-time favorite writers

and of the best story tellers American fiction has ever produced, in my opinion.

[rfranklin]

5. My favorite character was Montana Wildhack...

I thought she carried the novel.

[panader0]

6. I read this years ago

along with most all Vonnegut stuff. My son just got back from a student exchange to Dresden, where there are many signs still of the firebombing.

[Jim__]

7. Thanks. Great link to some of Vonnegut's essays too.

Like:

Dear Patrick,
The shoe thing at the airports and Code Orange and so on are world-class practical jokes, all right. But my all-time favorite is one the holy, anti-war clown Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) pulled off during the Vietnam War. He announced that the new high was banana peels taken rectally. So then FBI scientists stuffed banana peels up their asses to find out if this was true or not. Or so we hoped.
Kurt

[mopinko]

9. one of the few things for which i am grateful to my ex- he introduced me

to the good mr vonnegut. a lifelong friend.

[murielm99]

10. Early in 2007, my son came home and borrowed all my

Vonnegut books. I couldn't figure it out. I had tried for years to get him interested in Vonnegut.

His girlfriend liked Vonnegut, so they were going to a Vonnegut lecture and book reading. I think it had been scheduled for May 2007, in Indianapolis.

Then I read that Vonnegut had fallen and injured his head. He never recovered. I called my son who had not yet heard the news. What a disappointment it was for him.

It's hard for me to believe he is gone, too. He seemed indestructible.

I remember years ago, reading his Playboy interview. Vonnegut warned the interviewer before they started that he did not regard himself as some font of wisdom. He began by stating, "Everything I say is bullshit."

[lame54]

18. Everything everybody says is bullshit

[murielm99]

20. Of course.

Vonnegut had the wisdom to know that.

[TexasObserver]

11. A superb book.

[longship]

12. I recommended this book to a friend this evening...

and then I see this on DU.

This has to mean that there must be some sort of chronosynclastic infundibulum going on here at DU.

Hello... Good-bye... Hello... Good-bye... Hello... Good-bye...

So it goes.

:evilgrin:

on edit: Oh... and by the way:

:kick:ed

Recommended... both the post and the book.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. Kurt was one of my favorite humans

And Slaughter House Five is one of his best. I love all of his books and essays.

[JPZenger]

15. Here's Vonnegut's Letter to His Family After His Release As POW

http://www.archive.org/stream/KurtVonnegut1945LetterToFamily/VonnegutLetterHome#page/n0/mode/1up

A copy of this letter was mailed by Vonnegut many years ago to a fellow POW. His son posted it on the above link.

[TroglodyteScholar]

16. God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut

We desperately need more of your kind. :hug:

[EFerrari]

19. Why do critics like Sumner have to claim insight that early readers' didn't have?

That's silly. How old was Sumner in the 60s? 5? 10?

In any case, it's always nice to get attention for this work.