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| Slaughterhouse-Five | 
 enlarge | Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $5.78
You Save: $8.22 (59%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $4.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  (708 reviews)
Sales Rank: 568
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0385333846
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385333849
ASIN: 0385333846
Publication Date: January 12, 1999
Release Date: January 12, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 random June 7, 2008
I can almost imagine the author sitting at his typewriter, his wallpaper outline in yellow crayon tacked on the wall, typing a line at a time--all the while wondering if this book would ever be finished.
Because that is how it reads. It's random, with moments of brilliance. The first and last chapters were actually intro and epilogue, while Chapters 2 and beyond were the real "story". Characters may or may not play a part. A frozen hobo is a stark image, but what does it mean? Words and colors are interwoven - beginning with breath that reeks like mustard gas and roses, only to find it again in an underground tomb in Dresden. Like I said, brilliant--but random.
I read it twice, and liked it better the second time.
The Genius of Reverse Psychology June 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Set during World War II, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a humorous antiwar book. Billy Pilgrim is a war veteran who becomes "unstuck in time." He seems to be obsessed with the aliens, called the Tralfamadorians, that supposedly abducted him and could see in the fourth dimension. Right off the bat, Slaughterhouse-Five has caught our attention. As we read through the novel, the way we experience it is the same as Billy sees time, disconnected and random. The book keeps jumping from time period to time period, thoroughly confusing the reader. In some places, Vonnegut makes himself a character in his own novel. It is confusing to the point that the reader has no idea if Billy or Vonnegut is talking.
The novel makes us slightly disillusioned in the fact that we don't know the difference between real and fake. We are convinced (as is his family) that Billy is crazy and what he tells us about the Tralfamadorians is obviously untrue. But how are we to know if everything else he tells us of the war is true? The satire and irony in this book add comic relief to what would usually be a depressing scene, to our enjoyment.
The genius of Slaughterhouse-Five is that Vonnegut seems so apathetic about war in places that we wonder why this is even considered an antiwar book. But the reality is that his use of understatement and reverse psychology arouses feelings in us. When he says war cannot be stopped, we think (more passionately than if he was agreeing with us) that yes, it can. When he says there is no such thing as free will, we say yes, there is. All in all, Slaughterhouse-Five is an enjoyable way to use one's time.
Poo-tee-weet? June 5, 2008
Despite its international acclaim and enormous cult fan base, Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel that by conventional standards should not have been. "This book was written by a pillar of salt," author Kurt Vonnegut remarks in the prologue as he attempts to relive the Dresden firebombing; and from that moment on the reader goes on a time warped journey through the past, future, and fourth dimension always returning to the horrific massacre during World War II that he can never explain because there can be nothing to say.
After serving in the war as one of the worst soldiers ever, he marries a rich fiance he doesn't love and works a job he doesn't deserve. Although he has enough wealth to give him security, he has no control over his life because he has become "unstuck in time," fast forwarding and rewinding to different moments in his life, never knowing which one he will visit next.
At some point he is kidnapped by plunger-shaped aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and adopts their fatalistic views that time is not linear but a moments that you can visit any time. In this way, the structure of the novel reflects this Tralfamadorian ideal, jumping out of order instead of going chronologically. Billy claims to draw comfort from this but the reader is ultimately struck by the impotence of this character.
Although Vonnegut died last year at age 84 (so it goes), his masterpiece is still considered one of the most remarkable anti-war books to be published; bizarre and humorous yet subtly heartrending, this novel boldly strips down the glorified war epic, ultimately concluding that there are no words for such a senseless experience with the destruction of war.
Poo-tee-weet?
 I can see why it's a classic, but . . . June 4, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Okay--so the juxtaposition of war, time travel, and alien abduction was certainly inventive, and Vonnegut's deadpan frankness in dealing with the book's subject matter would have been fairly revolutionary for the time. The book is also brilliantly structured--jumping from fragment to fragment of Billy Pilgrim's life with masterful control and timing--all without a boring or confusing moment. I can see why the book is considered a classic, and it's probably deserving of that label. I still didn't like it.
A label of which the book isn't deserving is "anti-war." I was surprised to see several reviews rhapsodize about Vonnegut's "screaming rage" against the absurdity and tragedy of war, so much so that I began to wonder if I had indeed read "Slaughterhouse-Five" and not some other acclaimed novel involving the Dresden firebombing and Tralfamadorians. If anything, the book is about accepting war and tragedy as part of life and trying to deal with it. The book is depressingly (and, after a while, rather annoyingly) blase about death, no matter how horrible or unjust. Death by assassination? So it goes. Death by gangrene? So it goes. Death by torture? So it goes. Thousands killed in the firebombing of Dresden? So it goes. I realize that Vonnegut experienced the firebombing firsthand and that the subject is probably one of great personal importance to him--which only makes me wonder why the event isn't given any more emotional weight. The novel almost feels like an attempt by Vonnegut to ameliorate the tragedy, rather than to make any meaningful statement about it. Or maybe the amelioration is his statement. At any rate, I also missed the apparently abundant black humor. There is an almost overwhelming amount of tragedy within the novel's slim frame, with the only ray of "hope" being that, in the big picture, the life of the individual doesn't really matter anyway. If you find that notion funny, you'll probably pick up on the humor. And like the book.
As a side note, I found "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami, while wildly different in many aspects, to be oddly similar to "Slaughterhouse-Five" in both subject matter and in its juxtaposition of war brutality and fantasy. While Kurt Vonnegut undoubtedly displays a finer control of lanuage, I found Haruki Murakami's approach funnier, more affecting, more emotionally satisfying--and, if possible, even weirder.
 An anti-glacier book... May 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Following "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut swore off novels. In the introduction to his 1970 play, "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," Vonnegut quotes himself: "I'm left-handed now, and I'm through with Novels. I'm writing a play. It's plays from now on." Thankfully he didn't keep this promise. "Breakfast of Champions" appeared a mere three years later. An eye blink in time. Maybe Vonnegut thought he couldn't outdo his 1969 masterpiece? His Everest was conquered, so to say. Understandable, because "Slaughterhouse Five" remains his most quoted, chatted about, and revered book. And though it fits square-peg square-hole right into his body of work, he never wrote anything else quite like it. Next year it turns 40. It has had a difficult life. Some potty-mouthed irreverent language made it anathema to didactic schoolmarms and the straight-laced. But controversy usually bites back, and the book entered the national spotlight. Censorship has always fueled sales. Even back then. Business 101.
"Slaughterhouse Five" tells the story of a secular messiah optometrist, Billy Pilgrim. Like Vonnegut, who appears as the "I" and "me" throughout the book, Pilgrim was in a bomb shelter when Allied forces firebombed the cultural haven of Dresden to absolute smithereens. Historical descriptions are ghastly. Though the German government later revised the initial estimates of 135,000 dead to around 35,000, it remains a brutal massacre nonetheless. Pilgrim comes to Dresden via the Battle of the Bulge where he and his companions are captured and shipped in miserable rail cars to a prison camp. There, proud and hearty British officers feed and entertain them until the Nazis transfer Pilgrim's unit to Dresden as laborers. Once there, they sleep in "Schlachthof-fuenf," or "Slaughterhouse Five," where meat was once processed. Soon after, the city gets drenched in flames as the prisoners sit helplessly in subterranean bomb shelters. Horror awaits them when they emerge. Dresden now looks like the surface of the moon.
Though Dresden's destruction undoubtedly provided the inspiration for Vonnegut's magnum opus, the story focuses more on the life of Pilgrim and his revelations on temporality. But being a "witness" to Dresden carries far-reaching implications. And there is nothing linear about this narrative or its implications. It begins, famously, with the line "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." Like Christ, on who he's loosely modeled (hints abound throughout the text, though this is by no means a religious book), Pilgrim has "good news" for humanity. Good news about time and the impact of death. We've been wrong all along, it turns out. After surviving Dresden, becoming a rich and successful optometrist, Pilgrim gets abducted by aliens in 1967. They take him 446,120,000,000,000,000 miles from earth. There he becomes the center of attention, the supposed "perfect specimen" of humanity. Even his urinating causes cheering. In short, he's in an alien zoo. These aliens, known as Tralfamadorians, give Pilgrim a new view of time. Time isn't linear, they tell him. It's total. Every moment has always existed and always will exist. So we live forever. On top of that, in the zoo Pilgrim gets to mate with a human hottie: Montana Wildhack (as opposed to Valencia, the unattractive woman he marries for money and stability). All of his dreams come true. He no longer fears death (presented as violet light and a hum). He's free, and he wants to tell the world. Of course humanity, including his own daughter, consider him nuts. Pilgrim has internalized this philosophy of time, and he jumps from one episode of his life to another, seemingly at random. Only Kilgore Trout seems to understand.
Pilgrim's view of time provides the novel's main tension and theme: the old hoary question of free will and determinism. The Tralfamadorians are deep determinisists. In fact, Earth represents the only planet they know of where talk of "free will" occurs. They provide the mouthpiece for one of Vonnegut's most poignant lines: "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." Such passages have led to debates concerning the novel's view of free will. Was Vonnegut denying free will? Does he think we have any control over our destiny? The novel doesn't take sides. Instead, it presents a middle path in the form of a brilliant Vonnegut cartoon. A locket hangs between two potato shaped breasts - Montana Wildhack's breasts. It reads: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference." So are we free or determined? Both. The most important thing humans can do is know the limits of our powers. Some things we can change, other things we cannot. With this masterstroke, Vonnegut also helps redeem the often disparaged medium of cartoons.
Finally, no discussion of "Slaughterhouse Five" can ignore the book's most ubiquitous phrase: "So it goes." Vonnegut inserts this laconic quip whenever a death occurs. Some have interpreted this move as making light of or as dismissing the impact of mortality. But this repetitive leitmotif can also produce the opposite effect: it can magnify death's impact by simple repetition. After finishing the book, "So it goes" will likely linger in the head for days. Though "so it goes" represents and calls attention to death, it nonetheless reads as humor, but as "naughty humor" evoking hesitant or guilty laughter. Many critics have described Vonnegut's work as a perfect combination of funny and sad. This aptly describes the effect of "So it goes." Likely "Slaughterhouse Five," a deceptively easy read, will stand as Vonnegut's major work as long as people continue to read twentieth century literature. Sadly, Vonnegut passed away in 2007. One is tempted to say "so it goes," but unaccompanied by laughter. All one can say is thanks for this book, Kurt, and everything else.
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