Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Lila R E

Slaughterhouse Five Or, The Children's Crusade

Beau

This was my first Vonnegut read, and won't be my last. This guy...is on a different level. Some people call him 'counter-culture's novelist' - which I completely understand and respect from this fine piece of literature. Slaughterhouse Five is near impossible to categorise - so all I'll say is pay attention as you read. The amount of social and humanist commentary throughout this book is impressive - and demands a second read, which I'll definitely pay it at some point in the future. I feel as though Neil Gaiman, a favourite author of mine, would have read some Vonnegut stories in his early days. They both have this staunch sense of surrealism and quirkiness in their writings - yet the non-linearity of Vonnegut (in this book, at least) is a unique characteristic that may intimidate some. Hang in there. It's worth it.

Slaughterhouse Five

natalie

couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in this book bc i was confused the whole time

Kurt Vonnegut

Fraser Simons

Love how theme and structure are unified for what is being said about war and veterans. Prose are excellent, of course. Expected no less. And interactions were great. I did not really connect with the characters due to the structure and the constant jumping around. The psychic distance is pretty far away, and I think that’s on purpose. It just makes it so it felt more academic than emotional. Its also something I think most people agree with already, knowing what we know about the effects of war on the human body and mind, just as it’s widely accepted that various administrations have perpetuated the forever war the US needs/wants for its imperialism. 

I imagine this was very very subversive and mind blowing when it was published. It’s probably a testament to its publication, and works like it, that these notions are in the cultural consciousness and taken for granted. That should give the text more added weight. But I rate books as it relates to my expectations, which I think is very fair and scales with popular books, classics, or indies, etc. it allows me to rate things favourably compared to emotional reaction or other things. And this does exceed my expectations. There’s just no room in my rating system for marking something as an important text. Maybe I’ll make a text. But I think classic status applies to this for that reason anyways. Maybe my reviewers opinion on the matter has no baring regardless. The culture has spoken!

Side note: I was about to slap someone if I heard “and so it goes” or “and so on” again. 95% of the time it wasn’t needed. It became really annoying.

Slaughterhouse-Five

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