Bibliofreakblog

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I consider myself fortunate in both reading this book as a teenager and not for school.  While some literature is arguably best studied closely, often in a classroom setting with lectures, secondary sources, and lit crit (Shakespeare comes to mind here), academia can really suck the life out of some works.  Since I have never read Slaughterhouse-Five  for school, I don’t know if that is true of it or not, but I’m guessing it is.  I think that it would lose its fluidity by being picked apart.  At least on a first read.

The thing about having read it as a teenager was that I could replace my (in retrospect appallingly annoying) “whatever” with “so it goes” (somewhat less annoying, if still sophomoric).

But there’s more to it than that.  This was one of those books I read and pondered for months.

There’s the obvious, which I will attempt to cover with this poignant Google Search Results for Books on Dresden, Germany.  Back?  (If you skipped clicking on the link, the point is that there’s nothing out there about Dresden).

Moving on then.  What is it about this book?  Becoming unstuck in time?  Or is it simpler than that even?  I think the specialness that is Slaughterhouse-Five comes from the idea that there are events that shape our lives on such a scale that it is necessary to just move on as best you can.  

Sure, your life will still be complicated as shit.  

You will never be the same.

You were moving in one direction, and now you’re going 90° to the left.

But there’s a sort of transcendence there.

A transcendence to be found despite the shit baggage you will always carry with you.  The wincing pain that will come and go, threading itself through your life.  It’s that memory that unsticks you in time.   

If I had to break it down the metaphor, I’d say this:  ”so it goes” is living in the moment.  Acceptance.  Transcendence.  Becoming unstuck in time, is the flash of memory that takes you out of the here and now and back to something else.  A  feeling more than the memory itself.  And then, you’re back.

That might be a pile of shit.  Like I said, I’ve never studied this book.  I have never read any lit crit on it.  I’m just giving my own little interpretation of what it meant to me reading it as a depressed teenager.

So it goes.
Buy Slaughterhouse-Five on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Vintage Book of War Stories by Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen (editors)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
The Good War: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Turkel
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Flight by Sherman Alexie
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Thin Red Line by James Jones
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Heart of Darkness  by Joseph Conrad
Sula by Toni Morrison
The Time-Traveler’s Wife  by Audrey Niffenegger
About Time: 12 Short Stories by Jack Finney
Kindred by Octavia E Butler
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows 
Collected Poems, 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot
The Body Artist by Don Delillo 

Other Works by Kurt Vonnegut:

Player Piano
Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday!
Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
Cat’s Cradle
Bagombo Snuff Box : Uncollected Short Fiction
Jailbird
Mother Night
Hocus Pocus
Armageddon in Retrospect
The Sirens of Titan
Deadeye Dick
Timequake
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Fates Worse Than Death
Slapstick or Lonesome No More!
Bluebeard
Canary in a Cat House
Welcome to the Monkey House: Stories
A Man Without a Country