novels

When the movie based on the book was presented in Italian cinemas, I was in my pre-teens and, being it rated NC-14, all I was allowed to look at was its trailer. Even it, alone, left me a strange impression, as a result of an usual mix of war, science fiction and sex (very few, however, but then considered enough for rating). The book has been a full confirmation of that boyhood memory: strict language, dark humour, plenty of references (The Execution of Private Slovik is an interesting historical note), an underlying structure uncorrelated events are attached over, build up an environment logical and confused at the same time. All books by Vonnegut I have read so far are someway related to previous references or boyhood memories, so I sensed a hint of completion of old knowledge by their reading. So considering him as the best author in science fiction may be an exaggeration, but I am glad I have read this book now: I think I could have not appreciated the random jumps in the thread when I was used to the "fairy tale" SF.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a great anti-war masterpiece. Vonnegut takes readers on a journey of life both pre-war and post-war as experienced by Billy Pilgrim. The psychological characteristics that define Billy are a direct result of his war experience and eye witness account of the bombing of Dresden.
Billy's 'ability' to travel through time allows him to view the dramatic events of Dresden several times, it also allows him to view his own birth, death, and everything in between. Some discredit Vonneguts writing as containing little to no focus; however, he wrote in such a jumbled fashion for a reason. Vonnegut is quoted as saying " it is jumbled and jambled, moves all around, it doesn't make sense, nor does war."
After reading Slaughterhouse Five I re-evaluated my personal opinion on war; Vonnegut paints a vivid picture of the traumatic effects of war on the individual in combat that war no longer seems justifiable by any means.
I began reading this book at an ironic time, immediately before the events of September 11. As I continued to read and gain an understanding for the novel, the devastation that the United States is currently dealing with can in no way compare with the devastation as a result of the bombing of Dresden. In both events the side taking action effectively made a point; however, they did not do so without claiming the lives of several innocent civilians. The bombing of Dresden is a part of American history that cannot be erased and puts a damper on American pride.

I know this novel fairly well having read it several times (once aloud to my students). It is about all time being always present if only we knew, or could realize it, or had a sense about time in the same way we have senses for light and sound.

It is also about the Allied fire bombings of Dresden which killed more people than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. (And so it goes.) Kurt Vonnegut begins as though writing a memoir and advises us that "All of this happened, more or less..." Of course it did not, and yet, as with all real fiction, it is psychologically true. His protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, an unlikely hero, somewhat in the manner of unlikely heroes to come like Forest Gump and the hero of Jerzy Kosinski's Being There, transcends time and space as he bumbles along. This is a comédie noire--a "black comedy"--not to be confused with "film noir," a cinematic genre in which the bad guys may win or at least they are made sympathetic. In comédie noire the events are horrific but the style is light-hearted. What the genres have in common is a non-heroic protagonist.

This is also a totally original work written in a most relaxing style that fuses the elements of science fiction with realism. It is easy to read (which is one of the reasons it can be found on the high school curriculum in our public schools). It is sharply satirical, lampooning not only our moral superiority, our egocentricity, but our limited understanding of time and space. And of course it is an anti-war novel in the tradition of All Quiet on the Western Front and Johnny Got His Gun.

Vonnegut's view of time in this novel is like the stratification of an upcropping of rock: time past and time present are there for us to see, but also there is time future. Billy Pilgrim learns from the Tralfamadorians (who kidnapped him in 1967) that we are actually timeless beings who experience what we call the past, present and future again and again. And so Billy goes back to the war and forward to his marriage, and to Tralfamadore again and again. He learns that the Tralfamadorians see the stars not as bright spots of light but as "rarefied, luminous spaghetti" and human beings as "great millepedes with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other." So time is not a river, nor is it a snake with its tail in its mouth. It is omnipresent, yet some things occur before and some after, but always they occur again.

And so it goes.

What I admire most about this most admirable novel is how easily and naturally Vonnegut controls the narrative and how effortlessly seems its construction. It is almost as if Vonnegut sat down one day and let his thoughts wander, and when he was through, here is this novel.

In a sense, Vonnegut invented a new novelistic genre, combining fantasy with realism, touched by fictionalized memoir, penned in a comedic mode as horror is overtaken by a kind of fatalistic yet humorous view of life. Note here the appearance of Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter-ego, the science fiction writer who is said to have invented Tralfamadore.

Bottom line: read this without preconceptions and read it without regard to the usual constraints. Just let it flow and accept it for what it is, a juxtaposition of several genres, a tale of fiction, that--as fiction should--transcends time and space.