Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

What a strange book. I'm scratching my head as I wonder why it's such a revered classic. There are many good technical aspects, good insights on human psychology, and the fluctuations in time and place are surprisingly easy to track. The story itself, though? And Billy Pilgrim? He's the very definition of a passive character, bumbling along in his very manly world. I haven't read any of Vonnegut's other novels and this certainly doesn't encourage me to do so. ( )

I really liked this book! The dark humor is way better than Chuck Palahniuk, and it had some very profound insights into the self-loathing American. Definitely would read again. ( )

I'm a fan of KV. The more books I read from him, the better I like them all: some characters appear at least in mention in a few different ones, and people taking secondary roles in a book may be the main characters of others.

Nevertheless, each of the books I've read form him stands tall on its own. There is something about Vonnegut's sense of humour I appreciate very much. Maybe it is that for him nothing is sacred, or that he will surprise you with an odd side story, or very ironic outcome.

There are very well defined biographical and fictional components in the book. Vonnegut himself was in Germany as during WW2, and witnessed several of the events in the book, such as the bombing of Dresden and being locked up in a pig slaughterhouse (room V) as a POW. The book is not about him though, it deals with Billy Pilgrim, an odd individual that also gets deployed to the same area. Billy Pilgrim isn't strong, isn't smart, and isn't heroic. And neither is much of what happens in the book. Vonnegut warns you about this in the prologue. On the fictional and fantastic components are Billy Pilgrims wanderings through time. While I found the idea of travelling a bit lame, it does give rise to interesting secondary stories.

Another component of this fantastic side of the story are the Tralfamadorians and their philosophy. I don't think I found it very understandable. What I felt I understood and could piece together was their main premise: that Tralfamadorians can see past and future as vividly as the present. Hence, for them the concept of present is not meaningful. They don't see a snapshot of space every instant, but rather they perceive a static, 4-D space with time being just like another dimension of space. Any act in time in the past or in the future is within perception. A consequence of this is that a person is not dead or alive, in the sense that in some point in time the person is dead, and in another a person is alive. There is no sense in assigning a time dependent state to a person. The way this ties into the story is weak, imo, because the narrations about the two aspects feel a bit disjoint (a segment of the real world is interrupted by a segment of life in Tralfamadore, and so on). The only connection I saw was maybe Pilgrim's use of this way of thinking as a way of keeping calm during tragedy. ( )

Interesting story about a man picked up by aliens and able to travel back and forth through time. An anti war novel that shows the inhumanity of war. ( )

Not my favourite Vonnegut though it certainly had moments. ( )