Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the more polarizing of the " great" twentieth century authors. To be honest I have never been a fan of his work. I have attempted to read a story here or there and have often found him too out there for my taste.

Recently I did read a couple of short story collections that were free on Ibooks, included in those were Harrison Bergeron. This story, which I reviewed earlier, was one that I originally read in college. After reading these stories recently I was more receptive to trying Vonnegut again and where better to begin than with his most popular and certainly his most controversial work Slaughterhouse Five. Our friends at Amazon made this easy by making this book the Kindle Daily Deal a couple of weeks back.

The story centers on Billy Pilgrim. An optometrist from Illium, Illinois Billy is a former prisoner of war who survived the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II. Billy has come unstuck in time. The story is told in a non linear fashion because Billy's life is anything but linear.

Throughout the story we see Billy as a young boy, we see him in the war, we see his capture, his time in a POW camp with British soldiers, and of course his fateful time in Dresden. This experience in Dresden changes his life and haunts him. Billy returns home and marries a successful optometrist daughter, he goes to college and unexpectedly becomes a very successful optometrist. Billy is the only survivor of a plane crash and perhaps strangest of all Billy is captured by aliens. The aliens treat him well but put him in the zoo on their planet and mate him with an Earth female.

Throughout the book Billy visits these scenes in his life as well as others. It takes some getting used to. I had tried the book before but at the time needed it to be more literal and less of a satire. However taken now the book is actually quite good.

Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war in Europe and he was greatly affected by the firebombing of Dresden, perhaps the most controversial part of the European War on the Allied side. The book uses some interesting techniques including Vonnegut addressing the reader in both the first and last chapters.

The most striking and recognizable part of the book is the authors use of the phrase " So it goes." This is used any time the subject is death or dieing. Over 100 times do we see this.

This book takes a little work but it is not a hard read. Nothing like the Cormac McCarthy book I am currently reading and hope to finish very soon. This book just requires you to let the story come to you as it comes to you.

Once you do this you surely see the appeal of a book that by attempts to show that there is no way to write a coherent book about a massacre which is what he considered Dresden to be.

I am glad I attempted it again.

5 Short Stories by Kurt Vonnegut

I have never been a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut. I have found his stories to be a little too farcical for me. Slaughterhouse Five is considered a great story but my attempts to read it have never gotten very far.

Still I was pleasantly pleased with a few short stories that I was able to download for free from IBooks. These too were out there and certainly not as much flesh and bone stories. There is not a sense of realism in Vonnegut stories but these were interesting.

The first story I read was The Big Trip Up Yonder. This story takes us to a future where no one dies. Anti-Gerasone is a medicine that has been developed allowing the aging process to start. Gramps is the head of his family which gets larger and larger as no one dies. How he deals with the crowd in his house is told.

In 2 B R O 2 B Vonnegut takes us to a world that is overpopulated. In order to to deal with this the worlds population has been set to a fixed rate. What this means is that in order to have a child one has to find a volunteer to die. What a Dad has to do when his wife gives birth to triplets is seen.

Where I Live is a nice little story tells about the town of Barnstable on the Cape where Vonnegut lived part of the year.

Who Am I this Time tells of a small town play company.

Best of all is the story of Harrison Bergeron. I recognized it from having read it in college. The story tells of another time in the future where equality is the most important element in life. If one is beautiful they must wear masks, if graceful they wear weights, if intelligent they must wear devices which blast into their ear so that they cannot ponder anything too long. George and Hazel are a married couple living in this time and watching television one night see a man try to take off his handicaps and start people to think for themselves. They do not comprehend that it is their son Harrison, a 7 foot tall genius with amazing strength. How Harrison is dealt with by society is shown.

The futuristic writings are interesting. In small doses. They are a good example of much of his writing. I am not sure a full novel told along these lines would hold me, but these were interesting.