Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

I could take the easy way out (and help catch up on my growing backlog of reviews to write) by summing up this book in one word: torture. And half way through the book, that's about what I was ready to do, but I persevered for your sake, dear reader. (or was it because I'm too stubborn for my own good? I always forget :-p )

Oh well, I wasn't actually expecting to enjoy Slaughterhouse 5; I'd heard it compared to Catch 22 far too many times for that. But I'll give most books a try, especially if they are as influential as I've heard S5 to be. On the whole, I definitely don't consider my time wasted and I'm glad I finished it--the ending (and particularly the afterward) made it worth reading.

Overview
The book's introduction tells of an encounter between Vonnegut and the wife of his old war buddy, when he visited their home to pick up material for his book. She accuses him of writing another war story that will be turned into a Hollywood thriller, with dashing, heroic men playing the lead roles, when in reality the soldiers were nothing but scared boys. She fears that his story will inspire more babies to run off to war and spill their blood needlessly, but he promises her that there will be no role in his book for John Wayne or any other Hollywood hero. He kept his promise, and there is nothing in his book to inspire war lust or heroic fantasies. But neither is there anything to inspire a reader to love his fellow man, cherish his family, or care for anything in the world.

Plotwise, the book follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has become unstuck in time. Billy experiences his life in stops and starts--his wedding night one instant, and a night in a German prison camp the next. This tends to make Billy very detached, and we watch his experiences in WWII Germany running side by side with his life before and after the war. His war experiences are more or less linear though, so we follow him up to and through the fire-bombing of Dresden. Oh, and somewhere along the line, Billy gets abducted by time-traveling aliens. Well, not really time-traveling, more like time-exempt--they can see and move in the fourth dimension as easily as we can move through the third. (Yeah, it's supposed to be random)

Recommended for: Anyone interested in reading Important Books. (not a bad reason, that's why I read it :-p )

Parental Worries: Lots. Sex, violence and utter despair, in detail.

Audiobook Comments: Read by Ethan Hawke, which goes to show that if your book is famous enough, you can get a big name to read it. Hawke has a beautiful voice and he does a good job, but for some reason it makes me smirk.

Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Moderate)
The thing that gets me about this book is the utter detachment. There is no affection between any of the characters, the closest we get is brief recognition of a kindred spirit in passing. Billy has no love for his wife, his children, nothing. He probably loves the porn star that the aliens bring him as a mate, but I'm pretty sure that was all a delusion anyway, so it doesn't count. The main theme of the book is inevitability; Vonnegut isn't calling for an end to war, he merely illustrates its horror. The theme of inevitability is at least partially responsible for the book's detachment--since Billy knows what is going to happen throughout the span of his life, he has no drive to change things or react in any way.

One device Vonnegut uses that really gets under my skin is the use of the phrase "so it goes". Supposedly, that's what Billy's aliens say whenever someone dies, because they not only see the event as unavoidable, but they also see all time at once, so that the person is never really gone. On the surface, it's a beautiful sentiment--death is inevitable, so accepting it and remembering the person's life is a good response. However, he uses it ad nauseum--any time death is mentioned, whether its a person, an animal, an insect, a figure of speech. This takes it from a beautiful idea to a way of belittling human life and the magnitude of its loss, of making it insignificant.

I have to say though, despite all my whining, that this book probably wasn't meant to be enjoyable. It describes horrible events, but for the most part events that actually happened and should not be forgotten. I'm slightly torn as to whether the stark, bleak way the entire story is presented was unnecessarily morbid, or if it the tone was needed to convey the actual shock and horror involved in the WWII events. I'm not referring to the descriptions of the war, (I have no problem with those being as stark and ugly as they really were) but the events in Billy's life afterwards and their juxtaposition with the war stories evoke a special kind of horror and disgust all their own. For instance, we flip between Billy's night in a prison camp to his wedding night and back again. I'm leaning towards unnecessary.

Again, I don't consider my time wasted, but I won't be re-reading S5 if I can possibly avoid it.