Book Notes: Slaughterhouse Five

World of the Strange

I have just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel "Slaughterhouse Five". After having it highly recommended and it sitting on my Amazon wish-list for a few years, I have finally bought it and read it, thanks to some birthday money from my Grandma.

I have read several rather odd books in my life, and this is certainly one of them! If someone had told me that a 150-page novel could contain, autobiography, time-travel, alien abduction, war, sex, concentration camps, optometry conferences, authorial cameos, a theory of time being concurrent rather than linear, mental illness, the illusion of human free-will, and death (lots and lots of death, so it goes) all revolving around the firebombing of Dresden I would have thought them mad. Yet here it is.

In fact, madness might be exactly the point. The author appears it at times, the central character Billy Pilgrim is accused of it by his family and the narrative told without reference to the normal conventions of chronology is frequently chaotic. In fact this method of storytelling would drive anyone who delights in tidy narratives without loose ends, completely nuts! But aside from the author presenting us to himself as maybe mad, the central character likewise and the maddening effect on the uptight reader; the real madness only becomes apparent if the lense is pulled back from the individuals to see the madness of humanity - especially as demonstrated at Dresden.

Written as "rolling thunder" bombing raids flattened vast areas of North Vietnam; it was quickly seen as a powerful anti-war book, gained cult status and was made into a film in 1972. I can't imagine how any director could do justice to the constantly changing mental landscapes with which Vonnegut bombards the reader. I have heard that a remake is planned for the near future and would love to see it.

Among the many, many highlights in the book are the famous reverse-bombing raid in which Pilgrim travels through time backwards and watches Dresden being "un-bombed", with aeroplanes sucking the fire up into their bomb bays, compressing it into canisters to be safely dismantled in factories. There was also the savagely ironic moment which during the firestorm Billy and his German captor both spot some naked women in the showers - and for a brief moment all enmity between them is forgotten as they are united together in sheer lust. There is also the lovely take on the famous prayer of St Francis: "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Among the things that Billy couldn't change were the past, the present and the future". The soldier executed for the theft of a teapot, while tens and tens of thousands lie all around torched by bombing is another key moment. Each death in the narrative is followed by the words "so it goes" and the inevitability of death and the lunacy of killing is mocked, whether it be murder or genocide.

Never was comedy so black and funny, or so deeply disturbing. I wonder if ebay have the 1972 DVD going cheap anywhere?