Adapted for a magnificent George Roy Hill film three years later (perhaps the only film adaptation of a masterpiece which exceeds its source), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW, who has in the later stage of his life become “unstuck in time” and who experiences at will (or unwillingly) all known events of his chronology out of … out of order and sometimes simultaneously.
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut’s usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralmafadorians who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
The “unstuck” nature of Pilgrim’s experience may constitute an early novelistic use of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; then again, Pilgrim’s aliens may be as “real” as Dresden is real to him. Struggling to find some purpose, order or meaning to his existence and humanity’s, Pilgrim meets the beauteous and mysterious Montana Wildhack (certainly the author’s best character name), has a child with her and drifts on some supernal plane, finally, in which Kilgore Trout, the Tralmafadorians, Montana Wildhack and the ruins of Dresden do not merge but rather disperse through all planes of existence.
Slaughterhouse-Five was hugely successful, brought Vonnegut an enormous audience, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller and remains four decades later as timeless and shattering a war fiction as Catch-22, with which it stands as the two signal novels of their riotous and furious decade.
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I’d never been interested in picking up Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five because, honestly, I was judging it by its cover (and ominous-sounding title). However, it was going for $2 on Amazon. Naturally, my love for bargains overcame my aversion.
I was BLOWN AWAY by how insightful and funny this book is, and would definitely recommend it to anyone …
I think Slaughterhouse-Five is the strangest book I’ve ever enjoyed. Everything that happens is totally bizarre: the aliens, the abductions, the zoo with the hot actress. The structure is wacky: nothing happens in order. And it’s hilarious! Which is really odd for a book about Dresden.
That is, I think, the strangest thing about this book – it’s …
My favorite assigned books in high school were Slaughterhouse-Five and The Great Gatsby, and the latter is still my all-time fave to this day.
My fave unassigned books were Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I cried like a 17-year-old baby all summer) and anything by Meg Cabot!
Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)
(Just for fun, I have decided to write this book review in the form of Questions & Answers. I ask your indulgence, but not too seriously.)
Question:
Why should I read this book? Why should I read any of Kurt Vonneguts books?
Answer:
Those are very good …
My favorite science fiction novel and one of my favorite books stylistically. The daring structure, the unique voice, and the repetitive, hypnotic effect of “so it goes” make this one of the most important books ever written about mortality. It’s one drawback is that most of the characters are shown in broad, comic strokes and never feel very …
Suffice it to say that Kurt Vonnegut Jr had a very different experience of WWII than most GIs and he saw what happened differently, not merely as a profound experience or a tragic one but as an absurd one. The absurd is a special brand of human experience that is situated on the very outskirts of Comedy. As we travel away from Comedy toward …
Read Slaughterhouse Five this week. Here’s a good interview w/ Kurt Vonnegut that provides more context: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut
Absolutely in my top 10 all-time favorites
A completely different WW2 story, with light science fiction, philosophy, and lots of humor. I think everyone should read this book.
I read this novel as a young man and again later in my 30s. I thought I’d give it another read to see if it’s as strange as I’d remembered. What a weird and quirky novel. Part war story, part science fiction, and part bizarro, observational comedy, I couldn’t explain it concisely if I tried. The disparate plot (what little there is) tells the …
Vonnegut, the master, reaches new heights of creativity and originality with this cross-genre fantasy/reality book. He recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war in WWII Germany where he was locked away beneath the city of Dresden, to eventually emerge to find the beautiful Gothic city razed to the ground by allied bombers. The fantasies he …
Iconic novel about the bombing of Dresden seen though both a realistic and science fiction lens, with the usual Vonnegut wit.
Vonnegut’s deserved reputation as a twentieth-century Mark Twain obscures the fact that Slaughterhouse-Five is a perfect document of someone trying to deal with post traumatic stress disorder years after the events that caused the PTSD.
A masterpiece; a novel that has everything you could want or imagine; a gem that continues to surprise, page after page; a book that actually improves with age, just as it becomes more relevant in these odd and difficult times. Read it again, or for the first time. It doesn’t disappoint.
Hello,out there! It is a appalling narrative about the massive massacre brought about by allies in Dresden ,february 1945,ending war.They burnt up alive about on 100,000 people merciless. An execrable crime against Mankind.It was brought to light by Kurt Vonnegut.
The style reveals the many possibilities of how to write, in particular that a ‘plot’ need not necessarily be chronological, or that language can be simple and straightforward. A classic and not just for a ‘set’ book.
Vonnegut manages to write about a tremendous human tragedy in a way that is utterly unfacile. Read between the lines of this dark, strange, meandering little “sci-fi” novel and you discover a truly remarkable achievement: the capture on the page of something beyond words.
This was one book in the rare category of being better in the movie interpretation of the book than the original novel by Vonnegut.
The time tripping was better accomplished by cinematic effects and therefore providing more impact for the viewers than for the readers
One of my favorite novels of all time and possibly the most humane, profound thing I’ve ever read. It’s the only book I read and then started again immediately after completion.
“So it goes…”
This book follows Billy Pilgrim – a soldier who believes he was abducted by aliens. He believes that through these aliens he has learned to time travel forward and backward throughout his life. Many times he travels back to World War II where he was a prisoner of war and held in slaughterhouse five in Dresden, Germany. We learn about his life …