Slaughterhouse Five

[Laz116]

So it's a classic I hear.

And on that note I thought I would take it for a spin.

But after finishing it I am somewhat perplexed.

Yes. I get that The Dresden bombings were so horrible so it cannot be approached directly.

Yes, I get the Walter Benjaminian notion of leaving war with a loss of experience.

Yes, I get the notion of fatalistic determinism as an end result of not being able to make sense in ones own narrative (as a consequence of the inability to speak of the horrors of war/ or the horrors of existence).

But still Vonneguts cut up narrative, with his occassional metacommentary, has been done a lot better by other authors imo.

I don't think slaughterhouse five does anything that fx Beckett didn't do much better in Waiting for Godot.

I just don't get it. Why is this a classic?

[CathalMagus]

I only read Slaughterhouse-Five about a month or so ago, and I must say it left a deep impression. It's tricky though, I can't explain exactly why it affected me, but it's a book I'd definitely recommend, and I'd probably call it a modern classic. To my mind it works as a powerful anti-war book in the same manner as Catch-22, but where Catch-22 personalizes the horror and absurdity as experienced by Yossarian, Slaughterhouse-Five detaches us from the same thing - as if we're receiving sense data but no emotions, the cold, numb sense you get when you experience something through shock.

At first, I thought the science-fiction aspect was intended as a device or metaphor, but it really makes more sense literally. The Tralfamadorians believe in fatalistic determinism, as you say - and this reflects the fact that no matter where in time Billy Pilgrim ends up, the war remains an unspeakable waste of life either lurking in his past, or numbly experienced all around him. But the real purpose of this is to level the scale of the deaths with the dreadful yet poignant Tralfamadorian refrain "So it goes". I knew the refrain (from an arts show on the wireless) before I even picked up the book, and the fact that it's repeated for individual executions, accidents, illnesses (during and after the war) and then the barely-referred-to events in the massacre in Dresden, gives each death the same kind of weight, whereas the deaths of thousands tend to blur into statistics. But this is only possible if you give barely any weight at all to any individual death. Hence the alien perspective.

Your comparison with Waiting for Godot was unexpected. Apart from trying to express something of existential absurdity, I don't see that the authors were trying to accomplish remotely similar goals. And Slaughterhouse-Five is not self-consciously literary in the same way, it's more self-consciously 'pulp' on the surface, but with the weirdness of time-travel and the depth of the Dresden theme shaping the telling.

I'd be interested in other perspectives on the book, because I'd like to understand more clearly why I like it so much. I'm sure half an hour of discussion would tease it out, but it was something of a chore for me to attempt to explicate the few descriptions above by myself. (I would say I'd lost the knack since college, but actually I always discussed books for my courses face-to-face with my fellow students, so I suppose nothing's changed!)

[BlackVoid]

It's a great book, Vonnegut is one of a few authors who GETS IT. He understands what is really going on and still manages to retain enjoyment of life despite the pointlessness and rudeness of it.

A good article by him, explaining his points more explicitly:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/cold_turkey/

Waiting for Godot - I do not understand how that relates to Slaughterhouse Five. It does not.

[Renaldo]

I'm also kind of confused on the Godot comparison, FWIW.

I don't think anyone's going to be able to explain to you why you like, dislike or are ambivalent towards Slaughterhouse 5 (or anything else for that matter). I do like the book (I'm a big fan of Vonnegut, met him twice before he expired), and would suggest that you give it a year or so, then read it again. Do this 3 times. I'm guessing that each time your opinion of the book will have changed.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by Renaldo

I'm also kind of confused on the Godot comparison, FWIW.
...

For what it's worth, I've heard the word/theme "existentialism" used in relation to both. I'm not saying it's appropriate, merely offering the potential that this is where some might see the comparison.

Cheers,
Marc

[Patricia]

My mother was a child in Leipzig at the time of the Dresden bombings. She remembers seeing groups of refugees from the bombed-out city. Among them were women who were ashen and mute. The others explained that their babies had caught fire in the bombings and, faced with the most appalling of choices, the mothers had thrown them into the river.

Try making sense of that. Vonnegut probably did as good a job as is humanly possible.

[Laz116]

Ok let me try to explain why I find the analogy between SlaughterHouse 5 and Waiting a valid one (although I admit perhaps not the best one).

Both tackle the trouble of narrative in a kind of post-war scenario, which seems to have shattered the possibility of narrative. In Slaughterhouse 5 the Dresden bombing is the point of destruction. In Waiting even the destruction is hidden. There is only the present which seem to stretch it self indefinitely into the past and future (unless some difference comes from outside of the characters). Likewise time in Slaughterhouse 5 is entirely outside of the characters. The experiences of past, present and future has been preordained in some mysterious way. The difference is that the author of Slaughterhouse resigns to an acceptance of the eternal status quo of everything, thus in the end justifying the bombing (and future bombings) as inevitable, while Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot tries to make time go, to start some sort of narrative by their own doing.

Both tackles the trouble of language: There are no words to express the horrors of the Dresden Bombings, so in fact it becomes a loss of experience. The author can only come to terms with the events by narrating a universe where all determining agents in life is outside of people themselves (and so is narrative it seems... after all everything exists in both the past, present and future). We are all bystanders to our own life. "So it goes" as he again and again puts it.

In the same sense Vladimir and Estragon are caught up in their own futile language games, which may pass time, but cannot do anything else than that. They too are caught up in events (or no events happening) by some sort of will outside themselves. Past, present and future are all the same for them, unless the mysterious Godot moves it along.

But where the characters of Waiting for Godot wants to find meaning, make time go, evolve, the impression I got from Slaughterhouse 5 is much more an acceptance of powerlessness. It's an acceptance of "so it goes". The Dresden bombings are ultimately just a peculiarity of no importance in Slaughterhouse 5s notion of time. Because nothing ever dies, and everything exists to all time. Of course I do read the scifi dimension of the novel as a way for the author to come to terms with his own experience of powerlessness (both as a writer, who can't find the words and as a man who can't integrate the experiences in an understanding of his own life (because the experiences are at its core void of meaning)). So the experience of the bombings ultimately leads to the idea that no experience matters at all, because they just are a part of this determined universe, you can do nothing about. That may be a survival strategy for the person, who has experienced unfathomable tragedy. But for the notion of learning from the mistakes of the past or for a respect for the victims, it does absolutely nothing. So goes it.

Theodor W. Adorno said that after Auzschwitz no one could ever again write poetry. That doesn't mean that he thought, we shouldn't try.

[Laz116]

Of course I reserve the right to mean the opposite, when I read it again.

There must be something I've missed.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Patricia

My mother was a child in Leipzig at the time of the Dresden bombings. She remembers seeing groups of refugees from the bombed-out city. Among them were women who were ashen and mute. The others explained that their babies had caught fire in the bombings and, faced with the most appalling of choices, the mothers had thrown them into the river.

Try making sense of that. Vonnegut probably did as good a job as is humanly possible.

Thanks, Patricia, for that moving anecdote. It would be enough to turn me into a pacifist if I hadn't been one for quite a while now.

So far as I can tell Slaughterhouse 5 is not on the MR library, nor Feedbooks. I'll have to make another search to see if I can find it.

Regards, Alex

[neilmarr]

Sorry to hear you weren't impressed. So it goes. But it's well worth another crack o' the whip, Laz. I've read the book (and all Vonnegut's other novels, essays, etc) a dozen times over the years and I come away with something new every read. It's almost as though you grow into them. What always sticks in my mind from *Slaughterhouse 5* is a tiny scene in which the author himself briefly enters stage left. He can do nothing but vomit. Nowhere else does Vonnegut intrude personal feelings that aren't projected onto his fictional characters. Quite brilliant in what can loosely be described as autobiographical to subtly remind the reader: "Hey, but this ain't MY story." Cheers. Neil

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

So far as I can tell Slaughterhouse 5 is not on the MR library, nor Feedbooks. I'll have to make another search to see if I can find it.

Kurt Vonnegut survived until 2007.
His work is under copyright everywhere, for a long time yet.
The exceptions are a few short stories which accidentally fell into the US public domain because their copyright wasn't renewed.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Kurt Vonnegut survived until 2007.
His work is under copyright everywhere, for a long time yet.
The exceptions are a few short stories which accidentally fell into the US public domain because their copyright wasn't renewed.

Yes, of course. I bought the book from Fictionwise.

Regards, Alex

[andyafro]

Slaughterhouse Five is a Fantastic book, keeps you thinking long after you have finished reading it, Much like "All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein. Another Classic.

Just Watched MOON as well one of the best films this year, as you watch the film the implications and consequences of what's going on sink in and its brilliantly done, One of them films you wish was a book.

[chlorine]

Haem... I'm ahamed to say that I probably read Slaughterhouse 5 at a time when my mastership of the english language was far from sufficient. Though I read and enjoyed the book (and thought I understood it, although I remember having difficulties understanding some parts), the words 'science-fiction' and 'time travel' do not ring even a tiny bell in my mind.

Duh. I feel like a fool.

The good news is, I will have to read it again!

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by chlorine

Haem... I'm ahamed to say that I probably read Slaughterhouse 5 at a time when my mastership of the english language was far from sufficient. Though I read and enjoyed the book (and thought I understood it, although I remember having difficulties understanding some parts), the words 'science-fiction' and 'time travel' do not ring even a tiny bell in my mind.

Duh. I feel like a fool.

The good news is, I will have to read it again!

The time travel was so passive that it strikes me more as a psychological novel than a scifi novel. So don't feel so bad. But, by all means, please read it again.