/// gentle reminder that this is not the time to read this book ///

This is my first re-read of 2017, and I don't regret it one bit. When I first read this book three years ago, I really d it. Sadly, I didn't write my thoughts down in an elaborate way back in the day, but I know for sure, that I didn't read critically then. Upon my re-read of this book, I honestly don't have good things to say. I am aware that some of my criticism is not a critique of the book itself, but about its perception, and how it is, up to this day, held up as the one true book about race relations in the United States of America.

And that really infiruates me. This book was written by a white woman, from a white perspective, about white characters, for a white audience. This book is a pat on the back for the white middle class. This book gives comfort to the white middle class. Comfort that they, especially back in the 1960s, didn't need, and allow me to be so bold, didn't deserve.

Harper Lee's focus is purely white. While the white characters in this book are the subjects, who take action into their own hands, who suffer and make sacrifices, the Black characters in this book are objects. They have little to no agency. Things happen to them. They are harmless, defenseless, and just there – waiting for the white knight hero, Atticus Finch, to save them. This book is a disgrace in the face of the Black liberation movements that existed back in the day, and the solidarity within Black communities. Black people stood up for themselves and fought for their rights, and only due to their voices, their protests, their sit-ins, their marches, their demonstrations, their conferences, was racial segregation made unconstitutional in the United States.

Black people, back then and now, know that Atticus Finch doesn't exist. And because no one put in better words than the one and only James Baldwin, I will quote a passage from one of his amazing interviews on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968. One could say that this is Baldwin's response to the cry of "not all white people": James Baldwin: I don't know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. [...] I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me - that doesn't matter - but I know I'm not [allowed] in their union. I don't know whether the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don't know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.This right here is what I'm talking about. To Kill A Mockingbird plays into this idealism. Although the book touches on the horrors of racism in the Deep South, it’s a strangely comforting read. A terrible injustice is done, but at the end the status quo is reassuringly restored. The final message is that most (white) people are nice when you get to know them.

As a reader you are never allowed to feel with Tom Robinson, the Black man who is innocently convicted for raping a white woman, because all the Black characters in this tale are sidelined. This story should be about them, because how else would you be able to convince the white moderate (in the 1960s) that Black people are actually people. The closest insight we get to a Black character is the family's cook Calpurnia. Calpurnia is in the fictional tradition of the "happy black", the contented slave – the descendent of the ever-loyal Mammy in Gone With the Wind. And the rest of the Black community is depicted as a group of simple, respectful folk – passive and helpless and all touchingly grateful to Atticus Finch – the white saviour. We never see any of them angry or upset. We never see the effect of Tom Robinson’s death on his family up close – we don't witness Helen, Tom's wife, grieving and Scout never wonders about his children. Their distress is kept at safe distance from the reader.

I was very angry after finishing this book, and I'm still angry up to this day. Not necessarily at Harper Lee, but at our society as a whole, and at our educational system. Why do we constantly uplift white narratives, whilst brushing over marginalized ones? Why aren't our kids reading If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin – a book dealing with the exact same topic (a Black man getting falsely accused of raping a woman)? Why isn't Lorraine Hansberry required reading? Why are we still relying on white narratives, when talking about Black people and their struggles?

Since finishing this book, I started reading The History of Legal Education in the United States and I wanted to share some interesting facts, because I couldn't believe how absurd To Kill A Mockingbird was. This story is, supposedly, set in the Deep South in the 1930s, where Atticus Finch, our white saviour, takes it upon himself to defend a Black man at court. By the end of Lee's novel we are led to believe that Atticus had a great chance of actually getting Tom Robinson acquitted, if the latter had just been a "good n*gger" and didn't try to escape on his own. (Yes, I'm a little petty. I swear, I'm not turning bitter over this.) So, I just wanted to know how realistic that scenario is. All of the information is related to the 1930s Southern setting. Here's what I've learned:

Most Southern lawyers readily accepted Black clients for routine economic cases – property, tort, contract, dept, insurance – and minor criminal cases that did not threaten the South's system of racial hierarchy. It was virtually impossible, however, to find a Southern white lawyer who would accept a major criminal case involving a white victim or a politically charged case that in any way challenged segregation.

Only the combination of direct action, community organizing and legal strategy with the help of Black lawyers, made the defense of Black men and women at court possible. In the Lockett-case, the Black community in Tulsa survived largely because Black lawyers were able to defend the community's interests. In 1934, Black lawyers represented George Crawford, a Black man accused of brutally murdering a wealthy white woman – no white lawyer would take Crawford's case. In the end, Crawford got a sentence of life imprisonment instead of a death sentence. And this verdict had to be seen as an accomplishment by the Black lawyers and the Black community as a whole, because life imprisonment was as good as it was going to get.

Oftentimes, Black lawyers took serious criminal cases without a fee or at a very reduced rate. This was well appreciated by their communities, but also a given. It is admirable how well Black communities were organized. None of that got translated on the pages of Lee's novel. The Black characters do absolutely nothing, except sending Atticus food, because they're so grateful. [*insert snort here*]

This book appears to uphold the standard of racial equality; de facto it is about the white middle class patting themselves on the back for not thinking racist thoughts. I'm sorry to break it to you, Miss Maudie, but you won't get a sugar cookie for that. I am not saying that this is not a realistic portrayal of the white middle class, it is, it totally is. If you do just a little research on the Civil Rights movement, the moral apathy of the white middle class becomes crystal clear. However, we shouldn't portray these characters in a positive light, there is nothing admirable about them. After all... He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against is really cooperating with it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.1,554 s42 comments Stephen1,516 11.6k



6.0 stars. I know I am risking a serious “FILM AT 11” moment and a club upside the head from Captain Obvious for voicing this, but nabbit dog I still think it needs to be said…TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is one of the BEST and MOST IMPORTANT American novels ever written. Okay, I said it, and I will wait patiently while you get your DUHs and DERs out of the way and hang your “no shit” signs outside for Inspector Holmes.

Okay, now given the gruntload of /ratings this book has I know I’m not the first person to wag my chin about how amazing it is. Still, I am going to chance coming off that annoying dingleberry at the tail end of a huge porcelain party because I truly have a pile of love for this book. …(Sorry for taking the metanalogy there just now, but I promise no more poop references for the rest of the review)... So if my review can bring a few more people into the Atticus Finch Fan Club, I will be just flush with happy.

On one level, this book is a fairly straight-forward coming of age story about life in a small Alabama town during the Great Depression. It has a very slice of lifesaver warmth and simplicity to it that I think resonates with a lot of readers. It certainly does with me and I think the adjective “charm” may have been invented to describe the novel.

Despite how easing flowing the narrative is, this book is both extremely and deceptively powerful in its discussion of race, tolerance and human decency. Most importantly, this book shows us by example the courage to stand all up in the grill of injustice and say “Not today, Asshole! Not on my watch.”

That is a lesson that I think we can never be reminded of too often. When bad people do bad things to good people, the rest of us good people need to sack up and be counted regardless of how scary it might be. Easier said then done, I know. But at least that should be the standard to which we strive.

Atticus Fitch is the epitome of that standard. He is the role model to end all role models and what is most impressive is that he comes across as such a REAL person. There is no John Wayne/Jack Bauer/Dirty Harry cavalry charging BSD machismo about him. Just a direct, unflinching, unrelenting willingness to always do what he thinks is right. As Atticus’ daughter Scout puts it so well: It was times these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. I was to make something crystal before going on because it is an important part of my love of this story. Notwithstanding this book's powerful, powerful moral message, it never once…ever…comes off as preachy or heavy handed. There is no lecture to be given here. The only sermon we are privy to is the example of Atticus Finch and the simple yet unwavering strength and quiet decency of the man. Even when asked by his daughter about the horrendous racism being displayed by the majority of the townsfolk during a critical point in the story, Atticus responds with conviction but without: "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." This is a special story. Oh, and as a huge bonus…it is also an absolute joy to read. Lee’s prose is silky smooth and as cool as the other side of the pillow. Read this book. Read it with your children, read it with your spouse, read it by yourself….read it the bigoted assclown that you work with or see around the neighborhood…Just make sure you read it. It is a timeless classic and one of the books that I consider a “life changer.” 6.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!!!

BONUS QUOTE: This is Scout talking to Atticus after getting to know someone she had previously be afraid of:

“ ‘When they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things . . . Atticus, he was real nice. . . .’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’ He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”(Emphasis added)
1954-1969 6-star-books all-time-favorites ...more1,569 s2 comments Miranda Reads1,589 161k

Looking for a new book but don't want to commit? Check out my latest BooktTube Video: One & Done - all about fabulous standalones!

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The Written Review :

If you haven't read this as an adult - pick it up today I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. I (along with millions of other kids) first read this in grade-school. And I (along with those millions) didn't really get the point.

I remember thinking, Well... I already know discrimination is wrong. I don't get why I have to read a book about it...

Oh Lordy, if I could go back in time...

Rereading led to a (unsurprisingly) wholly different interpretation of this novel. I am in awe of Harper Lee and what she's written.

How could I have so completely missed the point back in fifth grade? People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. We follow Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the daughter of Atticus Finch - a prominent lawyer. Scout narrates the great and terrible tragedies of her life - namely the trial of Tom - an upstanding "colored" man accused of raping a white woman.

Atticus is appointed to defend Tom and soon, nearly the whole town turns against the Finch Family. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. Much Scout, I was simply too young to understand much of what was going on the first time through.

I tell you, there were so, so many moments this time through where the light bulb turned on and everything just clicked. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash My entire life, I never truly understood why this was such a classic, why people read it over and over, and why this (of all books) is forced upon kids year after year. I get it now. And I'm disappointed that I hadn't reread it sooner.

P.s. Sorry to my teachers for being such a sulky kid - they sure picked a great one. I was just so enthralled with reading other things that I didn't read this one as well as I should've. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Audiobook s
Exceptionally well-read by Sissy Spacek. I felt I was in the story. If you are itching for a reread - pick up the audio!

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_readsaudiobook933 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 7,528

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird one of the best-loved stories of all time, is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960.

It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature.

The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The story is told by the six-year-old Jean Louise Finch.

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???? ????? ????? ?? ??? ???? ? ???? ??? ?????? ???2015?????? ?? ???? ??? ???? ????? ???1395???? ???????? ???? ?? ??????? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ???2020?????? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ???? ???1398???? ??????? ??? ????? ??4,184,604? ???? ????? ???? «??? ????» ?????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ???? ????? ??? ????? «??? ????» ??? ???? ??????? ???? ?? ????? ??????

???? «???? ??? ????»? ????? ? ????? ??????? «????? ??»? ?? ?? ?????: «???? ??? ????» ?? «?????» ????? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???1960??????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ????? ???? ????? ? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ???1962?????? ???? «????? ???????»? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ??????? ? ?? ???? ???? ????? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ????? ??? ?? ?? ??? ????? ???? ????? ? ?????? ?????? ??? ?? ???? «??????? ??»? ? ????? ??? ?????? ???????? ????? ? ?????? ???????? ? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???????? ???? «????? ??»? ?? ?? ?? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ?? ?????? ?????? ??? (?? ???? ?? ??? ? ?????? «?? ????»? «??????»? ? «?? ???» ?????? ??? ????????? ????? ?? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ???????? ???? ???.) ????? ???

????? ?? ???2007?????? ???? ???? ????? ??? ?? ??? «???? ????? ??????»? ?????? ??????

??? ?? ??? ????: (??????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ???? ?????? ??? ?? «??????» ?????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ????? «????» ????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ???? ????? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ???? ??????? ??????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ????? ???? ????) ????? ???

?????: ??? ???? ?? ???????? ???????? ?? ????? ?????? ????? ????

?????: «?????» ? «???»? ????? ? ????? ????? ?????? ?? ??????? ????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ?? ?????? «??????»? ?? ??? ????? ????? ??????? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ? ???? ???????? ? ??????? ?????? ?????? ????????? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?? ???????? ?? ????? ??? ????? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ? ?? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ???????? ?? ???: «???»? ?? ??? ????? ?? ????? ????????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ???? «???» ?? ??? ?? ????? ???? ? «??????» ????????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? «??????» ?????? ? ????? ?? ????? ?? ???? ???????? ????????? ?? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?????

????? ?????? ????? 18/05/1399???? ???????? 19/09/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Kim286 832

Why is it when I pick up To Kill A Mockingbird , I am instantly visited by a sensory memory: I’m walking home, leaves litter the ground, crunching under my feet. I smell the smoke of fireplaces and think about hot cider and the wind catches and my breath is taken from me and I bundle my coat tighter against me and lift my head to the sky, no clouds, just a stunning blue that hurts my eyes, another deep breath and I have this feeling that all is okay.

Why? Why this memory? I mean, this takes place in Alabama and mostly in the summer, well there is that one climatic scene on Halloween, but I bet it’s still hot enough to melt the balls off a brass monkey.

It must be the school thing, my daughter just finished reading it, prompting me to give it another go, to fall back into Scout’s world and pretend to be eight and let life simply be.

How is that? How can life for Scout be simple? I mean, she lives in the south, during the depression, she has to deal with ignorant schoolteachers and town folk, her ideas of what is right, what is what it should be are laughed at by her schoolmates… man, and I thought my childhood was rough.

Still, she lives in this idyllic town, I mean, except for the racism and the creepy neighbors and the whole fact that it’s, you know, the south…(forgive me… I’m not immune to the downfalls of the north, I mean, we had witches and well, Ted Bundy was born here…) But, there’s this sense of child innocence to this book that makes me believe in humanity… even in the throes of evil. What am I saying here? I guess, that this is a good pick me up.

What I also get from this book is that I have severe Daddy issues. I consume Atticus Finch in unnatural ways. He is the ultimate father; he has the perfect response for every situation. He is the transcendent character. My heart melts at each sentence devoted to him and I just about crumble during the courtroom scene.

Am I gushing? I sure am. I was raised by a man who thought that Budweiser can artwork was the epitome of culture. That drinking a 6-pack was the breakfast of champions. That college was for sissies. He could throw out a racial slur without a single thought, care or worry to who was around. I won't even get into the debates/rantings of a 16 yr old me vs a 42 yr old him... What a role model.

So, I thank Harper Lee for giving me Atticus. I can cuddle up with my cider and pretend that I’m basking in his light. I can write this blurb that makes sense to maybe a handful but that is okay, I am approved of and all is good.
cultured mmix simpatico1,387 s3 comments may ?510 2,374

I had a much longer review written for this book, but the comments were sadly annoying me. so I’ll just make my opinions clear in two sentences, because these are really the only thoughts about the book that matter to me:

I was extremely bored by the majority of this novel and thus I did not enjoy it very much (and no, I will not reread it because I do not care). most importantly, though, I don’t believe a white savior narrative this one is a story that should be so heavily defended by white people or pushed as an essential book in school curriculum today when there are better books about racism by people who have actually experienced it, and especially when this book cares more about the white characters than the Black ones! 2-star adult boring ...more828 s4 comments Eddy Allen8 7

While the plot was very gripping and well-written, the book didn't actually instruct me on how to kill a mockingbird. I bought this book intending to do away with this obnoxious bird that's always sitting in my backyard and making distracting noises. I had hoped this book would shed some light on how to humanely dispose of the bird, but unfortunately it was this story about a lawyer and a falsely-accused criminal. As I said, the plot is great but nowhere in the book does it say exactly how to kill a mockingbird.787 s7 comments Jon599 745

classics coming-of-age favorites ...more3,241 s1 comment Brina1,008 4

With endless books and infinitely more to be written in the future, it is rare occasion that I take the time to reread a novel. As women’s history month is upon us (2019), I have kept revising my monthly lineup to feature books by remarkable women across the spectrum. Yet, none of these nonfiction books pay homage to the writers of the books themselves. Even with memoirs, the prose focuses on the author’s achievements in her chosen field. Last week a goodreads friend and I paid tribute to women authors in a daily literary journal. In one of my friend’s posts, she pointed out that as recently as 1960, the author of the most endearing of American novels had to use a masculinized version of her name in fear of not being published. Nelle Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama published To Kill a Mockingbird under her middle name, so only those well read readers are aware of the author’s full name. It is in this regard, that I included Pulitzer and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Nelle Harper Lee in my Women’s History month lineup. It is as auspicious of a time as any to reread one of America’s greatest novels.

When I was in ninth grade English class, I read Harper Lee’s novel for the first time. At age fourteen I was hardly a polished writer and struggled with many of the assignments. Yet, I do remember that the top essay in the class focused on the overarching theme of courage and how Harper Lee showed how each of the characters, major and minor, embodied this trait in the trying times associated with the novel. It was courageous of a southern woman to write a novel with this subject matter prior to the passage of the civil rights act. It is of little wonder to me looking back now that she chose to publish under a gender neutral name. Perhaps, she feared a lynch mob or being outcast in her home town. It was a trying time as the federal government asserted itself against states still grieving from the war between the states and holding out as the last bulwarks of white superiority. Harper Lee exhibited as much courage as the characters in her novel, and rightfully was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her work. As such, being courageous starts from the top and works its way down to each and every character of this timeless work.

In 1930s rural Maycomb, Alabama people were pretty much set in their way of life. Town folk had received an education and worked as lawyers, doctors, bankers, and businessmen. The country folk may or may not have received an education because they had to work the fields and many were illiterate. Even the majority of those educated white folk still saw themselves as superior to blacks, and few, if any, had the audacity to take a black’s word over a white’s even if it were the correct moral thing to do. Yet, the crux of Lee’s novel is a court case threatening to disrupt this way of life, having the town divide along both racial and moral lines, and having each character step into others’ shoes and view the world from another’s perspective. Maycomb at the time embodied many rural American cities, isolated from progress as town set in its ways with few people who were willing to see the world from another perspective. One man was, however, a lawyer named Atticus Finch who is among the most revered fictional characters ever created. Even though this court case should not have been his, his superiors selected Atticus to counsel a black defendant because they realized that he was the one man in Maycomb who had both the ability to empathize and the courage to do so. His neighbor Mrs Maudie Atkinson noted that Atticus was the same man in the court house as he was at home and had nothing to fear. A widower, he instilled these values to his children Jeremy Atticus (Jem) and Jean Louise (Scout) from a young age, passing a strong moral compass onto his children.

In addition to critiquing southern race relations, Lee’s novel has endeared itself to children with the legend of Boo Radley. From the time they were young, Jem, Scout, and their summer friend Dill had courage to go to the Radley house trying to get Boo to come out even though all the other kids said the house was spooked. Atticus told them to put a halt to these childish games and explained Boo Radley’s background to them. The town claimed that Boo Radley was a ghost, but perhaps the reason he did not leave the house is because he did not want to. As the children grew older, Atticus warned them that there would be darker times ahead and they would have to be courageous in the face of what people said to them behind their backs. From the time Scout began school in first grade, she inhibited Atticus’ ability to stand up for what was right. Her teacher Miss Robinson was new to Maycomb and did not understand people’s ways. Scout explained about the Cunninghams, the Ewells, as well as other families at a personal cost to herself. As Scout grew older and was able to step into other people’s’ shoes more, she grew to understand differences between folks; however, she and Jem realized that differences did not make the world distinctly black and white or right and wrong. During an era when children were looked upon as unintelligent, Scout and Jem were wise beyond their years and following in their father’s footsteps.

Harper Lee created strong archetypal characters and had each embody their own courage. Each’s courage allowed Atticus to teach his children a life lesson that would endure for the rest of their lives. The family’s neighbor Mrs. Henry Lafayette DuBose demonstrates courage as she battles a final illness. Third grade teacher Mrs. Gates exhibits courage as she teaches Scout’s class about the rise of Nazism in Germany and th encourages her students to think for themselves about the differences between prejudices at home and abroad. The African American characters all demonstrate strong courage as well. The Finch’s housekeeper Calpurnia is a bridge between the white and black communities of Maycomb and does not hesitate to teach Scout and Jem life lessons as they arise. The Reverend Sykes welcomes Jem and Scout into his congregation as though they were his own and invites them to sit in the colored balcony at time when segregation was still the law. He risked a lynching and knew that the Finch family could possibly be labeled as negro lovers, yet Reverend Sykes played a small role in proving that one’s skin color should not determine whether someone is right or wrong. Of course, as part of the overarching story line, Boo Radley can be viewed as the most courageous character of them all. It is through the courage of an author to create characters who will stand up for what is morally right at a large cost to themselves that she created an award winning novel that was ahead of its time for its era. It is little wonder that the courage of these fictional characters has made the novel as beloved as it is today.

I believe that the courage exhibited by all these characters has made the town of Maycomb, Alabama stand the test of time and remain the timeless classic that it is. Most people can relate to those who have the courage to stand up for what they think is right or to fight against those tougher than them. This character trait has endeared the Finch family to millions of readers and will continue to do so for generations to come. Whenever a person asks what book would you give as a gift or what is the perfect book, To Kill a Mockingbird is my first choice. I find that it is perfect for any time but most appropriate in spring as in addition to courage there is an underlying theme of hope. Harper Lee won the Pulitzer for this timeless classic, and it also won first place in the Great American Read as America’s best novel. Thus I can think of no better way to honor women’s history month than with a timeless book that has and will continue to capture the hearts and minds of all of its readers.

5+ stars/ all-time favorites shelf500-great-books-women all-time-favorites classics ...more549 s Lit Bug160 468

In the course of 5 years, I’ve read this book nearly 17 times. That adds up to reading it once at least every 4 months, on an average. And I still return to this book a bark seeking a lighthouse in the dark. When I first finished it, I was so overwhelmed by how much I related to it, I read it nearly 8 times before the year ended. By now I’ve memorized almost every scene and I still can’t shake off the feeling that I still have to learn a lot from it. Over the years, I realize that without knowing it, it has become my personal Bible – a beacon to keep me from straying from the path of kindness and compassion, no matter what.

With its baseless cruelty and what Coleridge poetically referred to as motiveless malignity, the world is in need of much motiveless kindness – a rugged determination to keep the world a quiet haven and not the callous, cruel place it constantly aspires to be.

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of those rare books that doesn’t give in to the belief that ”deep down, everybody’s actually good.” Not everybody is. And we must still persevere to see things from their perspective, and though we may not justify their ways, we must strive to understand them – though we might not follow them, we must try to be as kind to them as possible. And yet, there comes a time when some people need to be put down – we must follow the call of our conscience then, and yet be kind to them in the process, as much as we can.

Striving to follow this dictum, I have realized how difficult it is to be kind to others when I find I’m right. It is so easy to put down others bluntly, it is so easy to be critical and fair, but so difficult to consider for a moment what the other might be going through. How convenient it is to dismiss the hardships of others and say, “They had it coming!” and unburden our conscience of the probable guilt that perhaps we’ve been a bit too harsh.

How simple it is to stereotype people, classify them neatly into convenient square boxes and systematically deal with them based on those black-or-white prejudices! Robe a prejudice in the opaque, oppressive garment called Common Sense and display boldly the seal of Social Approval and you’ve solved the biggest difficulty of life – knowing how to treat people.

And yet, nothing could be farther than the truth. Rarely are people so simple as they seem. In Wilde’s words, “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” For you never know when a grumpy, rude, racist Mrs. Dubose might be fighting her own monsters or Ewell be, in fact trying to protect the last vestiges of honor he has, or Aunt Alexandra only trying to advocate the least painful way of life. And though we might not agree with any of them, Atticus, we must see them for their peculiar situations and grant them a little leeway, make a little corner for them too, and yet, stand up for what is right in defiance of them.

It is this tricky rope-walking balance between prejudice and common sense, kindness and firmness, and justice and leeway that spurs me to revisit this little book every time I seem to falter. While I find it difficult to keep my cool in the midst of flagrant injustices and ensuing pain, I strive to strike a balance between giving in to despair and becoming too optimistic; between becoming indifferent, unkind, righteous and being compassionate, considerate. It is what keeps me from becoming paranoid or cynical with the unceasing drone of passivity, callousness, overwhelming prejudice and unyielding customs while still being alive to the pain of those very people I do not necessarily agree with.

In a country India with its bizarre, incomprehensible equations and sequestrations of religion, class, caste, region, language, race, gender, sexuality and education, it takes a whole load of effort not to blow up one’s mind – people will kill each other over anything and everything. They’ll hate each other, isolate each other and cook up stories amongst themselves and leave it floating in the air. It takes every ounce of my energy not to hate my land and its majority people viciously. Yes, viciously.

But you see, I’ve got so much to learn to survive here – I have to stand up for myself when there will be hordes banging upon my door telling me to shut the hell up. And I’ll have to muster all the courage I have to tell them to go f*** themselves if they think I musn’t transcend the limits set for me. But I also have to learn not to hate them. Even if it sounds silly.

I know for one, Lee – I don’t care if you never wrote another work. I don’t care if Capote helped you write it, as many say. I’m glad somebody wrote this book, and somebody assigned this book as syllabus when I needed it the most. Five years ago, I hadn’t even heard of it. I read it in a single sitting. And then I read it several times over, taking my time, pondering over every page. I still do so. It is my favorite book ever.
american favorites fiction ...more539 s1 comment Lisa of Troy499 5,383

This is one book that I think is more relevant today than when it was first published.

I love how Scout is adamant about who she is. Others keep trying to tell her who to be, what it is to be a female. However, she wants to play, get dirty, run around with her brother. She couldn't care less about wearing dresses and sitting perfectly upright in a chair with knees pressed together in shoes you can't walk in.

Incredible to imagine that this was published before the internet.

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Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta523 s4 comments Claudia LomelíAuthor 4 books79.9k

So... I don't really know what to say.

I think I loved this book, but for a reason beyond my understanding, it never hooked me, and it took me AGES to finish it! Some chapters (especially at the beginning) were tedious and hard for me to get through them... but then there were some chapters that I devoured (the whole Tom Robinson trial and the last ones).

I definitely learned a lesson or two from this book. Atticus is my new role model, he is really incredible. I also love Scout and Jem, those kids will be in my heart forever. Oh! And I loved the Boo Radley storyline, it left me in awe.

This book surely deserves 5 solid stars, and I kinda feel bad for giving it 4 stars, but the thing is... I was struggling to finish it, I swear I let out a relieved sigh when I read the last sentence.

But all in all, it was a great read <3. And can't tell you how much I loved the last chapters, the part were Scout stands in Boo Radley's house and realizes the way he sees everything almost made me cry.2015480 s Jayson2,162 3,578

(A-) 83% | Very Good
Notes: On ugly truth, fading youth, dead appeals, courage, morals, community quarrels and fallible humans spoiling ideals.

*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary:

Progress updates:

01/01/2024 - Preamble:
(1) It's been New Year tradition for me to have either my first book of the year or the last book of the preceding year (some years both) be a super-popular novel.
- For 2024 it's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
(2) When I say "super-popular," I don't mean the YA novel de jour that practically no one outside Goodreads has even heard of. I mean books that everyone knows, possibly a classic or due to a hit adaptation.

01/04/2024 - Chapters 1–5
(1) The most striking thing so far has to do with people's names. The brother and sister, Jeremy and Jean, are nicknamed Jem and Scout.
- It's notable that practically everyone calls them by their nicknames, which are both decidedly unisex—I can't be the only one who saw "Jem" and thought "and the Holograms"?
- Possibly it's to underscore a time of innocence, before sexuality kicks in.
- That goes for their friend Dill as well.
(2) Both children refer to and call their father by his given name, Atticus. It just feels wrong, especially for this very antique setting. I mean, these aren't hippies we're dealing with.
- Unless this is explained later in the book, I figure I'll just attribute it to regional or cultural quirks.
(3) Both Atticus and the cook Calpurnia have Roman names. They're the only ones that do, despite being different races. It doesn't seem to be a family thing, Atticus' brother's named Jack.
- It's established early on how these are the book's two moral compasses, so this might be to highlight that idea since Latin is the language of law.
(4) It's an odd inversion of roles, where the teacher, Miss Caroline, is the one comforted, protected by, and at the mercy of the children in her class.
- The children here act more adults and she acts a scared child.
- Additionally, it's her comic unfamiliarity with how things are done locally that reinforces how insular a community Maycomb is.
(5) Atticus' personal morality seems to be distinctly utilitarian: the greatest good for the greatest number.
- He explains how the town allows the Ewell family to break local hunting and truancy laws so their children won't go hungry.
- Scout mentions how Maycomb has its own "ethical culture."
(6) I wish I had an annotated version of this. I'm not doing so well with the Alabama vernacular and phonetic spellings of words.
- I have to keep googling what things mean, which isn't difficult just tedious.

01/05/2024 - Chapters 6–9
(1) "[Jem] went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way."
- Hmm, I wonder if that's where The Bangles got it from?
- Rural American children learning about Egypt just seems odd. Greece and Rome seems more natural.
- I recall reading somewhere that early American education put an emphasis on learning Greek and Latin. Though, perhaps if learning to read hieroglyphs were viable they'd do that too?
(2) One of the big subplots at the start is the knot-hole in the Radley's tree, which is used as a kind of drop-off between the Finch children and some mysterious benefactor.
- My guess is that it's Boo Radley who's been leaving them little treats and trinkets. Which would be ironic, since the main focus of this first part has been the children trying desperately to catch a glimpse of and make contact with Boo. It could well be that Boo's been trying to make contact with them.
(3) We get quite frequent use of the N-word here, and mainly by children no less. I'm not the least bit squeamish about it, but I can understand if people are.
- Possibly I'd feel differently if I were listening to the audiobook version.
- I'm guessing this is why the book's so controversial and banned in many jurisdictions. Otherwise, it's a rather tame story so far: reminds me a lot of Laura Ingalls Wilder books, all quaint rural activities.
(4) So far, the book hasn't struck me as remarkable at all. Though, by the end of Chapter 9 it seems to be ramping up the heat.
- Atticus is conscious that his choices will negatively affect his children. It's the first time we've seen him show any vulnerability.
- It'll be interesting to see how Boo Radley fits into all this. He's so far been the focus of the book and I can't see how he'd naturally tie into the story going forward.
(5) School is canceled because of some unseasonably slushy snowfall.
- I live in Canada, so to me that's totally weak. Though, understandable if they don't have the clothes for the cold, poor as they are.

01/06/2024 - Chapters 10–13
(1) This is an odd sort of novel. So far, it's been more interconnected short stories than anything all that cohesive.
- Perhaps I'm just too used to the pace and plotting of modern books. Halfway through this and I don't really know where it's going, only an inkling based solely on the book's reputation.
(2) The whole First Purchase Church section is a fascinating bit of anthropology.
- It's a very binary environment. There are always two kinds of people. People who can read and people who can't. People who welcome whites attending their church and people who don't. People who meet the Reverend's moral standards and people who don't, etc.
- Also notable is how prevalent public shaming is in coercing desired behavior. Reverend Sykes calls out people by name, in front of the congregation, for their moral failings. He even shames the congregation, keeping them locked inside until the minimum weekly offering's met.
(3) We get a closer look at Calpurnia, who's very much a binary figure herself. She lives among blacks but works among whites.
- In this capacity she acts as a sort of bridge or translator between the two cultures.
- Scout goes as far as to say she's bilingual, the way she changes her speech to fit who she's talking to.
- She brings literacy into her community, having learned from her employers.
(4) It's very important to Atticus to instill in his children a very specific idea of courage. He very reluctantly, but very expertly, puts down a mad dog. His shooting skills having been hidden from his children.
- He goes to great lengths to hide it, in fact, having his out-of-town brother come teach them to shoot instead of himself.
(5) The whole section with Mrs. Dubose is meant as a lesson, to teach Jem the real meaning of courage by witnessing first-hand an old woman persist through morphine withdrawals.
- Atticus tells Jem that he would have made him visit Mrs. Dubose even if he wasn't forced to do so as punishment. That makes me think it was actually Atticus' idea, which he suggested to Mrs. Dubose.
- Of course, this lesson in enduring discomfort and pain is done to prepare his children for the inevitable abuse they'll get once Tom Robinson goes to trial.
- Atticus is sort of doing a Mr. Miyagi on Jem and Scout. Wax-on, wax-off.
(6) Scout says that Jem is all she has in life. Her accompanying him to his daily punishments with Mrs. Dubose is that sentiment put to practice.
- They're the only two children in a neighborhood of old people, which surely played a role in making Dill's visits every summer special.

01/07/2024 - Chapters 14–17
(1) This has been a real slow burn. Not that it's been bad, just it's been going at a leisurely pace and hasn't been at all what I expected.
- The story doesn't really find a clear direction until the jailhouse scene. After that it's been laser-focused on the trial of Tom Robinson.
- From Chapter 17 onward, it's been pretty much a pure law procedural, albeit from a child's perspective.
(2) "I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high."
- Quite a polite way of saying she kicked him in the balls.
(3) Dill runs away from home seemingly because he craves companionship. His parents buy him all the toys and distractions he wants, and just leaves him to entertain himself.
- Definitely shades of the future, how parents leave children to be raised by their televisions and smart devices.
- As well, it underscores a recurring theme of how children need to get out of the house and play with kids their own age.
(4) The scene between Scout and Dill discussing theories on where babies come from really brings attention to how young these kids are.
- Alexandra told Scout God drops babies down chimneys, whereas Dill believes there's a foggy island where a man breathes life into dormant newborns.
- Being so young is an important storytelling element, since it's the justification for a lot of exposition. Them learning things for the first time and all.
(5) Jem seemingly puts Atticus' lessons in courage to practice, openly disobeying his father to protect him from an angry mob because it's the right thing to do.
- You can actually argue either way on this. Though, he seems to be taking directly after Atticus' example, who does the exact same self-sacrificial act to protect Tom Robinson.
(6) Maycomb treats the trial as a cause for festivities. Everyone, regardless of race or background, gathers at the courthouse square for one big picnic.
- I guess small towns will take any opportunity to have a party.
- Reminds me a lot of modern-day football tailgating. The trial being the game everyone's gathered to watch.
- The way it's written, it's everyone's at the theatre. People jostling for good seats and people being shushed for being noisy.

01/08/2024 - Chapters 18–22
(1) Mayella, we learn, has no friends. Even among her many siblings, they're always out with each other while she does the household chores alone.
- Of course, solitary individuals in this book are either taken as monsters (Boo Radley) or prone to making poor and impulsive decisions (Dill). Mayella is arguably both.
(2) Speaking of which, why was Boo Radley the primary focus of Part 1?
- He's barely mentioned in Part 2 except to say that the kids have grown out of bothering him.
- Meanwhile, the trial's barely given any attention prior to the jailhouse scene.
(3) Dill breaks down and cries during the trial because of the double-standard of treatment Tom Robinson faces from the prosecutor.
- Dolphus Raymond makes a point to say it's because only children can understand it, not yet being corrupted by society nor calloused to it.
- Personally, I find the idea terribly cliché, that the purity of children gives them a clarity adults don't possess. I mean, children are capable of terrible decisions and reasoning too, as evidenced in this book.
- Though I do appreciate the point that's being made. Cliché isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it may not have been cliché when this was written.
(4) Atticus gives very good closing remarks. Not that it gave me chills or anything. Just that it felt an excellent school civics lecture.
- He states the year as 1935, which I suppose was right in the heart of the Great Depression.
- The closing arguments are also excellent rhetoric, taking into account the presumed prejudice of the jury and pre-emptively addressing their assumptions and concerns. He handles it in a way that doesn't sound admonishing or preachy.
(5) Throughout the whole book you get a clear dichotomy between people who live in the town and people who live outside it. Townsfolk being more accepting and tolerant of blacks than people who live rurally.
- Even people Underwood, who's said to hate black people, helps Atticus defend Tom Robinson from the mob. Despite his personal feelings, he acts the way he's expected as a member of the community.
- With this in mind, the result of the trial was never in doubt, given what Scout says about townsfolk rarely ever being on juries: how they're always struck or excused.

01/09/2024 - Chapters 23–27
(1) Atticus: "There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance."
- I feel modern audiences reading this line, specifically "a Negro's ignorance," might be quick to label Atticus a racist.
- I know, it's ridiculous given the overall context of the book and of this quote. Though, I've seen harsher reactions to milder words.
- When I hear about this book being banned, and having now read nearly all of it, I can only guess that the controversy is about the language used. Not just the liberal use of the N-word but also of "Negro," the more politically correct term historically.
- The presence of racial language at all, even in decidedly positive usage, is often triggering and a red line for many people.
(2) Following the trial, Jem debates Atticus on the merits of the legal system.
- Here, Jem represents the reader, peppering Atticus with questions of injustice. Atticus, in his answers, defends the legal system as the best instrument that exists for achieving justice.
- It's an interesting conversation because we have Jem's idealism and faith in mankind broken as a result of the trial. Here, Atticus is sort of an idealist, faithful in the legal system to self-correct when the judgement is (inevitably) overturned on appeal. Spoiler: that doesn't happen.
(3) We get an answer to why no one in Maycomb wants to serve on a jury.
- Atticus explains that it's because the community's so reliant on each other that to even appear to pass negative judgement on neighbors might bring about negative social consequences.
- Indeed, we see this later with Atticus, Judge Taylor and Tom's widow, where Bob Ewell pesters, abuses and potentially commits crimes against them in order to get even for seemingly opposing his family.
(4) Jem comes to the understanding that Boo Radley doesn't leave his house because he simply doesn't want to.
- On the face of it, this may seem clear agoraphobia. Though, in the context of Jem's discussion with Scout, you get the sense it's because not all folk are the same, nor treated the same, and Boo Radley doesn't want to come out to face the cruel world.
(5) There's a lot of openly racist talk during the Missionary Society meeting Aunty Alexandra hosts.
- It's a scene to make plain how seemingly civilized and genteel ladies may be done up pretty and polite on the outside, but are ugly on the inside and hypocrites when it comes to helping Africans abroad while persecuting Africans in their midst.
- It's during this that Scout gains a respect for her aunt, who continues to act a lady during all this and particularly upon hearing of Tom's death.
(6) Speaking of Tom's death, it's a curious thing given how confident Atticus was in winning the appeal.
- Could it be the case that he wanted to die, knowing he could never show his face in town again? or to go back to being friendly neighbors with the Ewells?
(7) Jem stops Scout from squashing an insect.
- It's a relatively extreme position to take against the killing of innocents, which is more mental fallout from the trial.
- Scout calls it a phase, which it probably is.
(8) Underwood writes an editorial in the paper, mentioning how it's a sin to kill cripples. He says it's hunters and children senselessly killing songbirds.
- This calls back to Atticus near the beginning of the book when he gives the titular line, "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
- Tom is the cripple Underwood mentions. So, in case anyone didn't figure out already, it's made crystal-clear that Tom Robinson is the book's titular mockingbird.
(9) We get another instance of hypocrisy from another adult woman in Scout's life.
- Her teacher, Miss Gates, hates Hitler for persecuting the Jews, but is overheard by Scout rooting for the persecution of Tom Robinson outside the courthouse.
(10) It's interesting how after the trial the book goes back to short events and anecdotes about the town. It's a trial sandwich.
- It's as if to say that the goings on of the town stopped for the duration of the trial and then continued as it was, albeit with fallout pervading its stories.

*character limit

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300-399-pp author-american era-cold-war ...more436 s15 comments Nataliya834 14k

Life gives you a few things that you can count on. Death (for all), taxes (for most), and the unwavering moral character of Atticus Finch (for me). "What would Atticus do?" is not just a meme; for eleven-year-old me it became a real consideration after I feigned an illness to cut school and stay home to finish To Kill a Mockingbird — while a decidedly non-Atticus- move, choosing Harper Lee's book over sixth grade math was probably a wiser life choice.For my thoughts on the shameless money grab by the money-greedy publishers recently published first draft of the novel inexplicably (or read: cash grab) marketed as a sequel... Well, I think I just said it all.I cannot be objective about this book - I don't think you can ever be about the things you love. I've read it many times as a child and a few times as an adult, and it never lost that special something that captivated me as a kid of Jem Finch's age.


“[...] Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.” To me, this book is as close to perfect as one can get.

It found a place in school curriculum because of its message, undoubtedly - but it's not what makes it so powerful. After all, if you have even a speck of brains you will understand that racism is wrong and you should treat people right and that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

No, what makes it wonderful is the perfect narrative voice combining adult perspective while maintaining a child's voice, through which we glimpse both the grown-up woman looking back through the lessons of years while still seeing the unmistakable innocence and incorruptible feistiness of young Scout Finch. And then there is the magic of the slow measured narration painting the most vivid picture of the sleepy Southern town where there's enough darkness lurking inside the people's souls to be picked up even by very young, albeit quite perceptive children. "If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all a, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.” And then there's Atticus Finch. Yes, there may be countless articles all fueled by Lee's first draft about his 'transformation' into a bigot - but I refuse to jump on that bandwagon. I stand behind him the way Lee developed him in the book she *did* publish. Because I sleep better knowing that there are people out there who are good and principled and kind and compassionate, who will do everything they can with the utmost patience to teach their children to be decent human beings. “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." What shines in this book the most for me is the amazing relationship between parent and child. It's the amazing guidance that the Finch children get in becoming good human beings that many of us would give up a lot for. I know I would. Because to me it will never be a story of a white man saving the world (and some, especially with the publication of that ridiculous first draft, would dismiss it as such). To me, it's the story of a child growing up and learning to see the world with the best possible guidance. It's a story of learning to understand and respect kindness and forgiveness and that sometimes you do right things not just because you're told to but because they are right things to do.

I see enough stupidity and nonsense and injustice in this world. And after all of it, what I often do need is Atticus Finch and reassurance that things can be right, and that with the few exceptions, even if I struggle to see it, "[...] there's just one kind of folks. Folks." and that, disillusioned as we become as we go on in life, "Most people are [nice], Scout, when you finally see them.”

Five stars from both child and adult me.2015-reads awesome-kickass-heroines favorites ...more407 s2 comments Caz (littlebookowl)303 39.9k

Beautiful book. owned384 s Reading_ Tamishly4,802 2,952

First of all, let's forget it's a 'classic' that we all 'must' read for the sake of reading a classic.

Second of all, let's have no inhuman high expectations from this book.

Third of all, it's enough to know that this has been written from the perspective of a six year old girl.

And that's how we should pick up this one and go for it we are picking up a newly released book and seriously that's the way it should be for everyone I would to say... again!

I won't go into details regarding what the book is about.

*Why the 5
Autor del comentario:
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I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, , 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I d it. I d the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I d the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even d the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I d the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I d the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.
historical-fiction modern-fiction north-american ...more803 s11 comments SimeonAuthor 1 book401

There are some terrible of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly odious sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.

This is usually based on the following quote.
"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I know," said Billy.
"That's war."
"I know. I'm not complaining"
"It must have been hell on the ground."
"It was," said Billy Pilgrim.
"Pity the men who had to do it."
"I do."
"You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground."
"It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings Billy exterminated.

On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance

The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything.

It can't be prevented. It can't be helped.

You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events?

Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes.


Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it?

We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them.apocalypse classic literature ...more1,558 s1 comment Stephanie *Eff your feelings*239 1,319

I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.

What is it about?

It's about war.
It's about love and hate.
It's about post traumatic stress.
It's about sanity and insanity.
It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).
It's about life.
It's about death.
so it goes.

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

This is how I live my life. This is how I get through the day. Most days I am successful, some days I'm not. Today is one of the "not" days. so many Americans these days, I feel I'm in a rut. so many Americans I don't understand why I am where I am. This was not the plan. This was not what I had in mind......

Oh poor me....boo hoo.

This book. This book got me thinking. So much about life sucks, true, but not many of us want to give up on it that easy. Why? because of the "good ones". And what makes "good ones" is our ability to create and enjoy creating.....at least I think so.

"Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
— Joss Whedon

If you make something, a painting, a poem, a novel, a good meal, a person.....you continue to live even after death. I think that's what Mr. Vonnegut was getting at. Maybe.

At least that is how he has remained alive for me.
favorites lit re-read ...more1,212 s1 comment emma2,122 67.3k

welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE.

it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment, a project by which i take on classics i've been procrastinating reading in itty bitty sections to make them seem manageable.

this one isn't long, but i did only add it to my want to read list because i somehow have a bookmark that says "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" and i feel a poseur.

so similar in impact.

let's get into it.


CHAPTER 1
i think this book has 10 chapters, so i'll just read one a day till it's done and call it the world's worst project selection in terms of accuracy.

to be honest i just want an excuse to read it immediately.


CHAPTER 2
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

i mean. holy moley.


CHAPTER 3
this book has a character who briefly appears and in his short time with us says that if you're writing an anti-war book, you may as well write an anti-glacier book for how effective it will be. both war and glaciers are here intended as timeless and permanent parts of human life.

with climate change now making glaciers a much more impeachable concept, this statement acts as one of strange and ironic and twisted hope.


CHAPTER 4
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

if i have to get abducted by aliens i hope they're also wise.


CHAPTER 5
it's always fun to see another book you've enjoyed or want to read mentioned in a book you're actively reading and enjoying. a special guest star appearance.


CHAPTER 6
do you know the meme where a book / movie / tv show / romping good time / limited series / human life has to end when they say the title?

anyway. this book would've just ended.


CHAPTER 7
one of those books where you're "i could write a whole paper about this" every other page.


CHAPTER 8
this book is somewhat unique in antiwar books for its admission that war is intended to make shells out of heroic people, and that "one of its effects" is to prevent people from being "characters."

it seems there is an impulse to think antiwar media will be more effective if this truth is ignored, but i've never found that to be the case. the most disturbing part of war, after all, is its anti-humanity.


CHAPTER 9
a while back my boyfriend was flipping through my copy of this book and laughed pretty hard, but i didn't ask why because he appeared to be fairly close to the end and i didn't want to be spoiled.

i have to say, i gave him more literary benefit of the doubt than he was entitled to for laughing at what i now realize was a drawing of boobs.


CHAPTER 10
welp.


OVERALL
this book was mind melting and funny and smart and touching and painful, as was realizing that the quote i love so much that it inspired me to read this book is not meant sincerely.

not everything is beautiful. a hell of a lot hurts. we shouldn't respond to death with nonchalance—we should never accept that that's how it has to go, not all of the time, not right then. war is evil, and things mean things, and we should keep life close to us even when it's tempting to release it, to pull your hand back as if from a hot stove.

and the hurting makes the beautiful more beautiful anyway.
rating: 55-stars classics favorites-2023 ...more498 s13 comments Sean Barrs 1,122 46.7k

Every so often you read a book, a book that takes everything you thought created an excellent novel and tears it to pieces; it then sets it on fire and throws it out the window in a display of pure individual brilliance. That is how I felt when I read this jumbled and absurd, yet fantastic, novel.

The book has no structure or at the very least a perceivable one: it’s all over the place. But, it works so well. It cements the book’s message and purpose underlining its meaning. Indeed, this book is an anti-war novel, which is asserted (in part) through its random and confusing organisation. The story is “jumbled and jangled” such as the meaning of war. It appears pointless to the reader, again alluding to the meaning of war. It also suggests that after the war a soldier’s life is in ruins and has no clear direction, which can be seen with the sad case of Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.

Billy Pilgrim is a poor tortured soul who after the fire-bombing of Dresden is in a state of flux. His mind cannot remain in the present and darts back and forth in time the narrative. He was never the most assertive of men, and after the war became a shadow of his already meek self. The war has left him delusional, which is manifested by his abduction by aliens. This may or may not have happened. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide. What decision they make effects what genre the novel belongs to.

Is it science fiction?

If Billy was abducted by aliens then this is sci-fi, but if it is a figment of his imagination then this becomes something much deeper. It’s up to the reader how they interpret it, but I personally believe that he wasn’t abducted. I think he made it up, unconsciously, as a coping strategy for the effects of war, and that the author has used it as a tool to raise questions of the futility of free will, but more importantly to further establish the anti-war theme.

Vonnegut draws on a multitude of sources to establish this further, such as the presidential address of Truman. He ironically suggests that the A-bomb, whilst devastating, is no worse than ordinary war; he points out the fact that the fire-bombing of Dresden killed more than the nuking of Hiroshima. Through this he uses Billy Pilgrim’s life as a metaphor for what war for the effects of war on the human state.

So it goes.

Vonnegut himself is a character within the narrative as the life of Billy Pilgrim is, in part, an autobiographical statement. The narrator addresses the reader and informs them of this. He tells them that this all happened more or less. This establishes the black humour towards war and the inconsequential deaths of those that are in it. Hence the motif “so it goes” at each, and every, mention of death whether large or small. He ends the book on the line “poo-te-weet.” He even tells the reader he is going to do this, but at the same time demonstrates that there is nothing intelligible to be said about war.

I warn you, if you’ve not read this, it is one of the most bizarre books you will ever read. The main character time travels, in his mind, and has no real present state. The narrative initially appears random and completely confusing. But, once you reach the end you’ll see this book for what it is: the most individual, and unique, statement against war that will ever be written.

_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________5-star-reads reviewed-for-fantasy-book-review sci-fi461 s1 comment Kirstie262 137

I read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.


Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's head by the scattered science fiction plots of Kilgore Trout, experience time as a continuum that is constantly occurring...and when they look at time, even though in their version of history, the world is in a constant state of being destroyed for example, they choose to see the things that make them happy...the good moments.

What Billy learns from these creatures is that each traumatic event that has happened in his life fits very precisely into a state of meticulous nature. It has always happened and always will happen and so it goes (on and on and on). What Billy Pilgrim truly experiences over and over in his life is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He exists throughout his memories traveling back and forth with the knowledge of what will happen and how precise it all is. Dresden is bombed in every moment and his friend Derby is put in front of a firing squad. At every second, he is the only survivor of a plane wreck, he is getting married, and he is fighting a Children's Crusade. It's the only way he can look at the despair that has happened and make sense of it.

When my grandfather died and I read this, I felt as if it was just what I needed because I could escape back into time and remember the good memories of my grandfather...if they existed (even if in some fourth dimension) then he was just as dead as he was alive and eating peanut butter chocolate ice cream. At the same time my grandfather had a heart attack, I was watching him play cards with my grandma at the kitchen table. But which one to think of? Well, that was easy. Death can't be prevented and so it goes but you can always try to change which moment you live in. It's a little bit different than a memory and if you go far into it, you'll end up Billy Pilgrim, which is to say, you will go insane because the rest of the world sees time as linear and counts seconds and minutes and hours.

Once and awhile, it doesn't hurt. I re-read this again on the plane rides home and back before and after my grandmother's funeral on Monday and last night. My grandma was a strong and intelligent woman and she always read everything she saw. My recent memories of my grandmother were of her at the holidays. She always had her mind but her physical condition had deteriorated and she was dependent on oxygen. It made me sad to think of her this a bit.

It's really hard for me to think that my grandma is no more but then I tell myself...well, it's silly for me to keep crying on and on about this. My grandma is right now reading at 4am in her living room chair and I am a child creeping down the stairs hoping she's still up. She is telling me that one day I'll come around and green onions. She is reminding me to keep my feet off of the davenport and about being "tickled" by something. She lives in a jungle of houseplants and watches musicals all of the time, always pointing out when some distant relative of mine appears briefly in The Greatest Show on Earth. My grandma can't be dead and be doing all of those things, can she? It doesn't make sense. She will always be alive in some moments just I will always be seven and nine and twenty eight and perhaps past thirty and forty. So, she'll always be here.

I just wish I could dream about her.
388 s Vit Babenco1,560 4,358

Kurt Vonnegut always had his own unique attitude to society and history. Therefore Slaughterhouse-Five is a special story of man and his place in war and peace.
Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
War is a wonderful thing – it presents a man with a gift of madness. And madness is even a more wonderful thing – it allows a man to travel in time, to go through space to distant planets, to see things others can’t see.
‘Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, here we are… trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.’
So it goes… Then it stops…a-hundred-of-the-best-novels325 s Kenny526 1,284

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
SLAUGHTERHOUSE - FIVE ~~ Kurt Vonnegut


My junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved Kurt Vonnegut ~~ no, he worshiped Kurt Vonnegut. It’s ironic since everything Har Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Har Don insisted I read Vonnegut's SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I was wrong. I wasn't. But, I was done with Vonnegut; there were authors I was craving to read and Vonnegut was not one of them.

Skip ahead to my joining Goodreads. Friends here, people whose opinions I truly respect, kept telling me I had to read SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. So, I broke down, and picked up a copy. And? Well, it is hard to put into words how much I loved the world ~~ no worlds ~~ inhabited by Billy Pilgrim.

I can honestly say I have not read anything SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. That's a good thing. I had just finished NORWEGIAN WOOD and LIE WITH ME, two tales of young love gone wrong so I was looking to inhabit an entirely different world. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE definitely was that world, or should I say worlds???



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is based on Vonnegut's experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is considered a modern literary masterpiece, as it should be. It propelled Vonnegut, who had been largely ignored by both critics and the public, to fame and literary acclaim. So it goes.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time," and brings together different periods of Billy's life ~~ his time as an ill-fated soldier, his post-war optometry career, and a foray in an extraterrestrial zoo where he served as an exhibit ~~ with humor and deep insight.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE was published on March 31, 1969 and became an instant and surprise hit. It spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times best seller list and went through five printings by July of 1969.



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE has not been without controversy. The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century. "It was banned from Oakland County, Michigan public schools in 1972. The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” No wonder I loved it!

“My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene," Vonnegut told the Paris Review. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?” I'm starting to this Vonnegut character!

"In 2011, Wesley Scroggins, an assistant professor at Missouri State University, called on the Republic, MO school board to ban SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. He wrote in the local paper, 'This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.' The board eventually voted 4-0 to remove the novel from the high school curriculum and its library."

In response to this ban, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis gave away 150 free copies of SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE to Republic, Missouri students who wanted to read it. As a kid who was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class because my reading choices were "morally questionable" I now officially love the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library!



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is the strange tale of Billy Pilgrim. As i said previously, Billy becomes "unstuck" from the linear nature of time and takes us along on his journey. Billy Pilgrim is the anti-everyman while engaging in love, ethics, war, science, and aliens. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE's main theme is man’s inhumanity to man throughout history.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is not without its own heartfelt themes. It is most definitely an anti-war book. It is in many ways an anti-death book. It presents a philosophy questioning the purpose of life amidst determinism. Ayn Rand would have hated SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE ~~ yet another reason to love this book.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is often insensitive and dark, and yet, you can't help but laugh at the world Vonnegut has created. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is full of contradictions that only serve to make Vonnegut's points.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE doesn't end with the death of Billy Pilgrim. That would far to simple an ending for something as brilliant as this; Billy lives on reliving this strange existence, learning and relearning the lessons of his life, unstuck from time.



So, have I revised my opinion of Vonnegut? Most definitely. Will I read more Vonnegut in the future? Yes, but selectively. Will I reread Slapstick? NEVER ...

author-author classics desert-island-books ...more316 s Leonard GayaAuthor 1 book1,037

Don’t be fooled: this is a short novel, but a pretty difficult one! Kurt Vonnegut, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, witnessed long ago one of the most dreadful (and now almost forgotten) events during the crepuscular spring of 1945, when the Allies, pretending to eradicate Nazism, utterly destroyed the German city of Dresden and killed tens of thousands of civilians (comparable to the Hiroshima bombing). This event is the bleeding core of the novel. So it goes.

What is more bewildering about this book is its disjointed time structure: very soon in the story, Billy Pilgrim, a former prisoner of war, gets “unstuck in time”, thanks to the intervention of a Tralfamadorian flying saucer. He then keeps travelling in time from one paragraph to the next, going back and forth from the days before the Dresden destruction, to his childhood years, to his postwar life as an optometrist who is writing a book about Dresden and suffers a plane crash, to the time of the Vietnam War and Ronald Reagan (the present time when Vonnegut was writing), to a geodesic sphere on the far-off planet of Tralfamadore, to Times Square, and back to the firestorm of World War II.

In doing so, we get to know a gallery of quaint yet pitiful characters Billy meets along the way: Weary the bully, Lazzaro the enraged sadist, Campbell the American Nazi, Kilgore Trout the crook sci-fi writer, the Spinozist four-dimensional Tralfamadorians, Montana the porn star, the rich and fat Valencia who dies in her car, Derby the teacher who dies before a firing squad, Jesus Christ a “nobody” who dies on a piece of wood. So it goes.

Added to this sense of disorientation (which indeed is that of Billy/Kurt), Vonnegut uses a dry, detached and fatalistic humour, when describing the most unspeakable, even unthinkable, moments of this war experience, that, if amusing, truly conveys a sense of utter despair. So it goes.favorites306 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 157

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years.

It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

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????? ?????? ????? 31/05/1399???? ???????? 07/05/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Fergus, Quondam Happy Face1,125 17.7k

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.278 s Lyn1,919 16.9k

A fun visit with cantankerous old Uncle Kurt.

Vonnegut is on a short list of my favorite authors and this is perhaps his most famous work. Not his best, but most recognizable. Billy Pilgrim is also one of his best characters.

(Kilgore Trout is his best).

I d it as I everything I have read of him. The recurring themes and characters, use of repetition for emphasis and comic relief, his irreverence and postmodern lack of sensitivity shine bright as ever here.

Vonnegut can be funny and grim on the same page, same sentence even, and not lose relevance or sincerity.

** 2018 - My wife and I visited Dresden, Germany this year and I could not help think of Vonnegut as a young POW who miraculously survived the firebombing and lived to tell the tale.

***** 2019 reread

Perhaps his most celebrated and recognized this is also considered one of his best and I’d agree. This 1969 publication was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. I think maybe only Ursula K. LeGuin could also pull that off. This was made into a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting) and the film won the Hugo and the Cannes Grand Prix.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck” in time. We all walk through life with a film of our past raging in our minds, but Vonnegut had Billy go one step further, in that he actually lives random moments in time, from his famous prison time in Dresden to his airplane crash, to his kidnapping and zoo sentence on Tralfamador.

Yes, Tralfamador. And we have another Kilgore Trout sighting, and also Elliot Rosewater and Howard W. Campbell Jr. We are surrounded and encompassed in the world Kurt made.

We must play a drinking game of sorts, every time death is mentioned we must say “so it goes”. In his introduction, we are told that this is to be a novel against war, an anti-war novel, and the ubiquitous phrase is used as an existential (and ironic) reminder that we live in each moment of time but that freewill is an intangible thing, as flimsy as dry rubber bands. The novel is also ripe with situational irony throughout, peppered with his inimitable dry humor and wit.

An observant reader will also note that when Pilgrim’s wife Valencia is in a car wreck, there is a bumper sticker that said, “Reagan for President”. Since this was first published in 1969, seven years before Reagan would be mentioned in the Republican primaries and eleven years before he would be elected, one wonders if KV had some time travel experience.

An absolute must read for his fans, a good introduction to his work, and an excellent book for all readers.

238 s Nataliya856 14.2k

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” Listen:

When you find yourself in the middle of horror, enormity that defies rational understanding, and survive despite everything, can you ever leave that place and that time behind? Can you ever let it go, and can it ever set you free? Can you help looking back, Lot’s wife, at the pain and destruction that are calling to you through time and distance? Can you ever?
“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things “Poo-tee-weet?”
“All this happened, more or less.” In 1945, at the end of brutal World War II, the Allies firebombed the German city of Dresden and almost 25,000 people died in the inferno. Kurt Vonnegut was in the city as a prisoner of war, and years later wrote his most famous book about Billy Pilgrim, an American POW in Dresden who lives through the war and survives Dresden bombing, and gets “unstuck in time”, moving between different periods of his life, seeing “his memory of the future” through the disorienting now, always now.
“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

It’s a book that to me defies explanations. It’s science fiction inasmuch as there are aliens that see all the time simultaneously. It’s an anti-war book insomuch as it shows the absolute atrocity and monstrosity of mindless destruction. “So it goes,” continues the constant refrain — and yes, so it does.

And it is a book about trauma of war that stays with you no matter what else happens, because after such enormity how can life ever be the same? How can you ever come to grips with things that happened? War is absurd, and absurdity becomes reality.
“Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don’t want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.”
This book combines farce and seriousness, surreal experiences and crushing reality, and is perfect example of comedy and tragedy combining into something much greater than the sum of its parts.


“Was it awful?”
“Sometimes.” A crazy thought now occurred to Billy. The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim—and for me, too.”
Vonnegut’s language isn’t wasted in a single line here. It’s economical and spare; it says just as much with words on the page as with the words left unspoken but implied. The sentences are short, the syntax is simple, but beyond the deceiving simplicity lies the world of complex thought and feelings it evokes in the reader. And that quiet feeling of detachment punctuated with “So it goes” at the moments of death affected me more than any number of likable identifiable-with characters of other books have. After all, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

It does it to me, this book. It gets to me.
“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”
5 stars.

—————
—————
Buddy read with Dennis.

——————
Also posted on my blog.2011-reads 2022-reads favorites ...more246 s2 comments Henry Avila497 3,281

Now for something completely different , stating it mildly ...Billy Pilgrim is not just another time travelling man, kidnapped by aliens from the unknown planet Tralfamadore and put in their zoo, he's an eyewitness to the destruction of Dresden, during World War Two. Our Billy an optometrist, (eye doctor) marries the boss's slightly overweight daughter Valencia (who no one else wanted, people are so unkind) . The couple have two disrespectful children, Barbara and Robert, the truth that he becomes very rich through his nuptials, doesn't make him a bad guy, lucky, I guess is the proper adjective . Billy is no prize either , a tall, skinny weakling, an ordinary looking man , with a peculiar tendency for nervous breakdowns... welcome to modern life. The only unique thing about him, is the fact he visits rather reluctantly different stages of his life, by way of an unexplained and altogether involuntary power , by time travel. Yet for a while at least, life doesn't become endless and boring, still not as much fun as you'd think, repeating situations again and again, ouch . IT DOESN'T MATTER HE'D RATHER NOT GO...Past, Present and Future, are all the same to poor Pilgrim, he can be at his daughter's wedding and in a few moments, be back as a P.O.W. in Dresden, Germany on February 13th, 1945, when 1,200 allied bombers from England and America, dropped thousands of explosives on the city. Causing fires to spread quickly and kill (fry) thousands, anywhere from 30,000 to 130,000 humans, nobody will ever know the exact amount. "So it goes ". Then poor Billy is back in Illium, New York, talking to his only friend, Kilgore Trout an unsuccessful science fiction writer, (75 unread novels) I understand you can get his books at the local library, if you are diligent . The cosmic flying saucer that took Mr.Pilgrim secretly to that strange world...(not sure if it's the right word for the weird planet) millions of light years away, through a wormhole, did Billy a favor. The very curious people of Tralfamadore to watch and how. They are not embarrassed by any kind of activity, providing him with a young, beautiful, and eager movie starlet Montana Wildhack, for the prisoner. The salacious activity gives the inhabitants of this planet many hours of entertainment...Billy will never really die, he will always travel through time and space forever."So it goes".224 s Garima113 1,918


I finally read Vonnegut. I finally read a war novel. And after a long time I finally read something with so many GR ratings and a decent number of which is precisely the reason I have nothing much to add to the already expressed views here. So I urge you to indulge me to state a personal anecdote. Thank You.

My Grandfather was a POW during Indo-China war and remained in confinement for some six months. By the time I got to know about it I had already watched too many movies and crammed endless number of answers about when and where such n such war was fought. But I was naïve and let’s assume innocent and someone who was yet to learn to ask the right questions. So the fact that someone so close in the family had witness something I only read in schoolbooks was utterly fascinating for me. Thus began my streak of stupid questions.

Me: Did you kill someone? Did they torture you? Did you dig some sort of tunnel to escape? And so on.

My Grandpa gave this hearty laugh he is famous for and said that I’m missing one important question: Why the war happened at first place? I thought for a while and answered: Because it always happens.

I can’t recall properly what he replied to that but it was something on the lines of this: I wish the answer changes when you’ll grow up because as of now that’s exactly how it is. War always happens.

With books Slaughterhouse-Five (Schlachthöf-fünf), it’s not the writing which matters but simply the ideas and thoughts it carries which transgresses the literary boundaries and create a place in the heart of the readers as a humble reminder that Love happens, Hate happens, Life happens, Death happens, Peace happens, War happens and sometimes Shit happens.funny-funsome-sarcasome its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt my-2-cents210 s Lala BooksandLala517 71.2k

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-gfavourites201 s Annemarie251 881

This book is an absolute masterpiece and it makes it clear in every single sentence. I think it is best to go into it without knowing too much about the plot. You just got to take it as it comes, so to say.

Before reading, I was worried that I might have trouble with the writing style. English isn't my first language and the older a book is, the more trouble I seem to have with the writing (because of obsolete words, unusual sentence structures, ect.). However, my worry was totally for nothing in this case. I found the entire book very easy to read (which is even more surprising considering the heavy topics that get dealt with). I also loved how there were many little passages and repetitions of certain phrases. It seemed fitting somehow.

I would have never guessed that the blend of a war story with Science Fiction could work so well! It gives it so much room for analysing and interpretation.
Honestly, I could write a thousand more reasons why I loved this book, but in the end I would just repeat myself, because I seriously just loved every.single.little.thing! I highly recommend everyone to give it a shot.favorites read-in-english184 s jessica2,576 43.5k

here it is. yet another book that i didnt read in school but decided to pick up later in life. and i think this is one of the rare instances where i think i would have benefited from some educational instruction to supplement my reading, because i did not seem to get this on my own.

i mean, on a surface level, i understood the anti-war tones and commentary on society in general, but anything deeper than that eluded me. so taking this at face value, i think its safe to say this is a really weird book. lol.

also, i wasnt really a fan at how women were portrayed in this. they were always noted as being ugly, or dull, or only good for sex. and i know many people might say thats vonneguts signature satire, but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

overall, i get that this story evokes much needed discussion on several important issues. however, this didnt impact me as significantly as it was probably meant to. so it goes…

? 2.5 stars189 s1 comment BlackOxford1,095 69k

The God of Accidents

Only God knows all of time as if it were the same instant; only God can annihilate the Universe; only God knows our innermost thoughts: so contends Judaic, Christian, and Muslim theology. For God, therefore, there is no cause and effect; everything just is. And because there is no cause and effect, there is no issue of free will. Free will is an idea created by human beings who can't imagine any other way to escape the mechanical inevitability of causality.

In Slaughterhouse 5, the alien race of Tralfamadorians are not just god- in their ability to transit the Universe, they are collectively God in their power over time and existence itself. The book is a subtle and very clever theology that has fundamental implications for morality and ethics.

Billy Pilgrim is the recipient of important revelations from the divine Tralfamadorians. The first revelation is that although death is a real certainty, it doesn't matter because one can revisit moments in one's life ad infinitum; resurrection is part of existence.

Second, God is neither external to the Universe, nor pantheistically distributed throughout it; rather God is a very discrete presence in the Universe, as well as in charge of it. Importantly for the fate of everyone, God is also as hapless as human beings; he can't change himself or his fate.

The most significant revelation is that Kilgore Trout, the famous science fiction writer and newspaper delivery boss, is God's prophet, whose every pronouncement is sarcastic.

It's difficult to say what portion of these revelations come directly from the divine source and what portion comes through Kilgore Trout's explorations into Billy's consciousness. Nevertheless the bottom line is clear: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” In other words, life is so screwy that it can neither be analysed nor rationalised. Not the best of all possible worlds, but the only one possible. Accident willing.american182 s Adina1,056 4,317

Update: I decided to upgrade the rating to 5*. Still on my mind after more than 1 year.

This was such a pleasant surprise. This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not it since: 1. I am not a fan of books/movies about war and 2. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those (modern or not). This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure.

Oh, I judged this book so wrongly. Actually, I d it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever.1001 classics fantasy-sf ...more171 s1 comment ????1,081 1,954

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??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???? ????????.??????-????? ????-????? ????-???? ...more173 s Darwin8u1,638 8,814

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
? Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five



I've read Slaughterhouse-Five several times and I'm still not sure I know exactly how Vonnegut pulls it off. It is primarily a postmodern, anti-war novel. It is an absurd look at war, memory, time, and humanity, but it is also gentle. Its prose emotionally feels (go ahead, pet the emotion) the tug of the tides, the heaviness of sleep, the seduction of alcohol, the dizziness of love. His prose is simple, but beautiful.

Obviously, part of the brilliance of this novel is born from the reality that Vonnegut is largely playing the notes of his own song (obviously, obscured by an unreliable narrator, time that is unstuck, and generous kidnapping aliens). It is the song of someone who has seen horrible, horrible things but still wants to dance and smile (so a Totentanz?).

Emperor, your sword won't help you out
Sceptre and crown are worthless here
I've taken you by the hand
For you must come to my dance

I had to work very much and very hard
The sweat was running down my skin
I'd to escape death nonetheless
But here I won't have any luck

It is essentially art pulled out of the tension between despair and hope, grief and celebration, love and death. It is a classic not because it has a message about war, but because it has a message about life. Vonnegut aimed at war and hit everything. 100-mccaffery 100-modern-library 1001-ante-mortem ...more168 s Fabian977 1,926

No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon.

I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than physics because it is so closely related to the complete termination of life, spirit, & earthly happiness.

"Maus" reminded me of this because it mixed humor with tragedy... something super hard to pull off because the events are real. The Children's Crusade is still being fought today & this personal statement cannot go out of style-- maybe presidents/dictators/rulers/monarchs should read it as a by law prerequisite?159 s Matthias107 377

Listen:

This reviewer is stuck in time. He is unable to escape the narrow confines of the invisible, intangible machinery mercilessly directing his life from a beginning towards an end. The walls surrounding him are dotted with windows looking out on darkened memories and foggy expectations, easing the sense of claustrophobia but offering no way out. The ceiling is crushing down on this man while he paces frantically through other people's lives and memories in hopes of shaping his own and forgetting the enormity of oblivion looming above his head. He reads book after book after book. He reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He gets immersed, he gets lost in the pages. He smiles. He wonders. He tumbles. He laughs a laugh that seems to come from somewhere deep within him, telling him that everything is beautiful. A laugh that shoots up from a dark place and illuminates the universe, bathing it in colour, showing all the hidden threads in a fraction of a second. The man is consoled, recognizing that fraction as an eternity. He closes the book and looks around him. The space got bigger, the windows show a clearer picture. He sees his situation with a new light emanating from his own eyes and, looking up, notices the oppressive ceiling is no longer there. It made way for the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes painted with stars and clouds. He ruminates on this new canvas for his thoughts as a bird flies by and calls to him.
Poo-tee-weet. favorites my- out-of-the-box-166 s Cecily1,198 4,594

A strange and intriguing book that I found very hard to rate: a mixture of wartime memoir and sci fi - occasionally harrowing, sometimes funny and other times thought-provoking.

PLOT
It is the episodic story of Billy Pilgrim, a small town American boy, who is a POW in the second world war, later becomes a successful optometrist and who occasionally and accidentally travels in time to other periods of his life, so he has "memories of the future". Oh, he also gets abducted by aliens, along with some furniture. "So it goes." (That is the catchphrase of the book, and I found rather annoying after the umpteenth time. It's used in Philip K Dick's "Ubik" (review here), which I assumed was a nod to Vonnegut, until I discovered both were published in the same year).

It starts with an old man reminiscing about his life. He is asked about the point of writing an anti-war book, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" After that, it jumps about, much as Billy does, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time... he is in a constant state of stage fright".

The most thought-provoking bits for me were Billy's mother who tried "to construct a life that makes sense from things she found in gift shops", the bathos with which some war events were described (e.g. being executed for stealing a teapot), and the alien Tralfamadorian's multi-dimensional and multi-sexual world. For instance, they have five sexes, but their differences were in the fourth dimension and they couldn't imagine how time looks to Billy (they also told him that seven sexes were essential for human reproduction!).

MESSAGE
A main message is surprisingly positive: if we could only see or feel the fourth dimension, we would realise that "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past".

SPOONS
Spoons are mentioned oddly often, as a description of how people lie (lovers or fallen soldiers). Then, near the end, actual spoons are briefly important. I have no idea whether this is significant.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Matthias on his excellent review (read it here), I have, not an answer, but a great spoon reference in The Matrix:
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon."
Spoon Boy

RELATED BOOKS
It has strong links with several other books: as it's Vonnegut, the "fictitious" sci fi writer, Kilgore Trout, gets several mentions.

The mode of time travel clearly influenced Octavia Butler's Kindred, review here,
and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, review here.

When he watches a WW2 film in reverse, it's very Amis's Time's Arrow, review here.

For a more linguistic and philosophical take on the implications of Tralfamadorians living in all time, simultaneously, see the heptapods in Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, review here.

Also compare it with the Borges short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, which is in The Book of Sand, review here


It also left me wanting to read a Tralfamadorian book with its simultaneous threads, "no beginning, no middle, no end... What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time", which is surely what Vonnegut was trying to create for mere human readers.



scifi-future-speculative-fict time-travel usa-and-canada164 s TK421571 279

There are only a few books that I ever really try to revisit. Sherlock Holmes and his stories are one. Some Shakespeare. And Slaughterhouse-Five.

I have read this book every year since my first reading almost ten years ago. I read it as an undergraduate; I read it as a graduate student. I've written three or four papers about it. And, yes, I have tried to pawn this book off on as many people as I could over the years.

You see, this book does something to me whenever I read it. It takes me places. Sure there is the time travel, other-world element to the novel, but the places it takes me are not physical in nature. I can't rightly say that they are spiritual either. Basically, the best way I can describe it is where I am taken is if my heart, mind, soul, education, fears, desires, and dreams were all placed in a blender and set to liquefy. And then this slosh of material is constructed into whatever semblance of a structure can be created from this amalgam.

This novel gets me to question not only life, but what it means that I was the lucky sperm to reach the egg, or that I was the lucky egg that was implanted. Oh dear, I fear I am convoluting what it is I am trying to say.

Okay, here goes: This book questions war. It questions as to why humans feel it is imperative to destroy. It questions what it might be to live a completely different life than the one you live now. But it doesn't try to give bullshit answers. In fact, it really doesn't try to give answers to anything. And since this book is based on actual experiences Vonnegut suffered during WWII, it might be better said that this novel is really a science fiction memoir.

Dammit, I am screwing this up. I cannot seem to say it is that I want to say.

Enough already! Read the book. Or don't read the book. I know what it does to me.

So it goes.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDEED
sci-fi163 s Shannon 1,216 2,348

Contains spoilers
Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man called Billy Pilgrim who time-travels frequently. He was in the Second World War and, captured, was sent to Dresden to work in a malt syrup factory before the city was bombed. He studied optometry and had a nervous breakdown. He married the daughter of a rich optometrist, and became rich as well. He was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a young porn actress, Montana Wildhack, whom they also abducted. He had a daughter called Barbara and a son called Robert. He was in a plane crash that killed everyone except him and the co-pilot. Rushing to the hospital in frantic worry, his wife Valencia dies in a car accident. He gets to meet his favourite author, an unsuccessful sci-fi writer called Kilgore Trout. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the name of the building where the American POWs lived in in Dresden.

Because the narration jumps around as frequently as Billy does, you learn everything early on and then simply revisit it all. The fractured narrative is worse than watching ads in a commercial break, or those horrible pop songs where the scenes and costumes change every two seconds - it gives you a headache. It's extremely boring, and hollow, and unsatisfying.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know. But I do time-travel stories. Billy is nothing Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. For a start, not even a second seems to pass in "real" time while he is travelling - no one ever notices. It seems less time-travelling than reliving the past, present and future of your life, all at once, because it's his consciousness that does the travelling. What isn't clear, at all, is which is the real Billy? He moves so much, you have to wonder how he doesn't become completely dislodged from his own corporeal self and go mad.

The time-travelling predates the abduction-by-aliens, but the aliens themselves see the past, present and future simultaneously, and teach Billy their philosophy of not really caring about anything, since nothing can be changed etc. etc. Fatalism.

I think I hated this book, but not quite. Hate is a strong emotion and I don't think it brought that out in me. It wasn't even frustrating, nor even particularly confusing, though the repetition of the Tralfamadorian expression "so it goes" was so irritating I saw red a few times. The bits about the 100 American POWs being welcomed by the British POWs in a German prison camp was delightful, though boldly stereotyped, and I loved the excerpts from the work on American soldiers and prisoners-of-war by the American-turned-Nazi, forget his name, something Campbell. A lot of it - and it's a small, short book - could easily be skipped. The temptation was very strong.

In short, it's a very "postmodern" story, and all things postmodern, it's impractical, disjointed, a bit wanky, tries too hard, is extremely out-dated and, at the end of the day, rather useless. Vonnegut is also very heavy-handed and bangs you on the head with his messages. It doesn't really inspire me to read more of Vonnegut's work. I guess he's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of story-teller.2008 history not-worth-it ...more161 s Bram102 302

This novel has a pretty basic and consistent structure: a few paragraphs of humorous (I think) writing that has the presumed purpose of loosening you up before you get to the sucker-punch paragraph that contains something disturbing/death-related followed by "so it goes." And if the "so it goes" wasn't there to remind you that this is the part where death happens, Vonnegut hammers the point home by relaying it an inhumanly cool, dry, and nonchalant manner. How coy and provocative. Maybe Vonnegut could have helped the reader along a little more with a footnote: "See what I did there? By having my narrator relate stories of war and death in an apathetic manner, I made you really think about these issues. Didn't I? Huh? Huh?" Yes, we get it, Kurt.

Part way through reading this book, I was sharing my disappointment with a friend who mentioned that Vonnegut, the narrator, had actually witnessed the Dresden bombings. This apologia left me momentarily chastened as I considered the sobering impetus for the story. Then I mentally slapped myself for even considering that sympathy could cover for the stylistic bludgeoning that Vonnegut inflicted. I suppose there was a well thought out reason for making the prose stuttering and choppy, but I can't imagine what that would actually be (nor would I care to). Interestingly enough, Vonnegut may have been aware of this stylistic shortcoming: speaking of Billy's favorite obscure sci-fi author, he writes that "Trout's prose is frightful. Only his ideas are good." Kilgore Trout and his writing apparently feature in other Vonnegut books, and a Washington Post reviewer in the mid 70s contended that "Trout's prose is at least as good as Vonnegut's." Exactly.

And were the philosophical musings on time and fate, revealed primarily through unimaginative and silly sci-fi ramblings, supposed to be novel or even vaguely interesting? It's he took Tolstoy's ruminations on fate and free will in War and Peace and then removed all the complexities and internal dissonance.

In the second half of the story, I did find myself mildly interested in what was happening. Perhaps I became accustomed to the writing or the pain just dulled after a while. Regardless, this book crossed the overrated line so egregiously that I can't muster a second star. Heavy-handed, prosaic, unfunny. So it goes.
2009151 s J.L. Sutton666 1,087

At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five (now read 5 times) makes it difficult to take seriously.



However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore (and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward). Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time (and how this impacts perceptions of life and death). Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful. I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other . You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps (which are taken to possibly irrational extremes). In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting...And so it goes! 144 s Baba3,774 1,178

I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, , 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I d it. I d the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I d the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even d the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I d the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I d the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.
historical-fiction modern-fiction north-american ...more803 s11 comments SimeonAuthor 1 book401

There are some terrible of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly odious sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.

This is usually based on the following quote.
"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I know," said Billy.
"That's war."
"I know. I'm not complaining"
"It must have been hell on the ground."
"It was," said Billy Pilgrim.
"Pity the men who had to do it."
"I do."
"You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground."
"It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings Billy exterminated.

On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance

The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything.

It can't be prevented. It can't be helped.

You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events?

Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes.


Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it?

We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them.apocalypse classic literature ...more1,558 s1 comment Stephanie *Eff your feelings*239 1,319

I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.

What is it about?

It's about war.
It's about love and hate.
It's about post traumatic stress.
It's about sanity and insanity.
It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).
It's about life.
It's about death.
so it goes.

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

This is how I live my life. This is how I get through the day. Most days I am successful, some days I'm not. Today is one of the "not" days. so many Americans these days, I feel I'm in a rut. so many Americans I don't understand why I am where I am. This was not the plan. This was not what I had in mind......

Oh poor me....boo hoo.

This book. This book got me thinking. So much about life sucks, true, but not many of us want to give up on it that easy. Why? because of the "good ones". And what makes "good ones" is our ability to create and enjoy creating.....at least I think so.

"Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
— Joss Whedon

If you make something, a painting, a poem, a novel, a good meal, a person.....you continue to live even after death. I think that's what Mr. Vonnegut was getting at. Maybe.

At least that is how he has remained alive for me.
favorites lit re-read ...more1,212 s1 comment emma2,122 67.3k

welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE.

it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment, a project by which i take on classics i've been procrastinating reading in itty bitty sections to make them seem manageable.

this one isn't long, but i did only add it to my want to read list because i somehow have a bookmark that says "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" and i feel a poseur.

so similar in impact.

let's get into it.


CHAPTER 1
i think this book has 10 chapters, so i'll just read one a day till it's done and call it the world's worst project selection in terms of accuracy.

to be honest i just want an excuse to read it immediately.


CHAPTER 2
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

i mean. holy moley.


CHAPTER 3
this book has a character who briefly appears and in his short time with us says that if you're writing an anti-war book, you may as well write an anti-glacier book for how effective it will be. both war and glaciers are here intended as timeless and permanent parts of human life.

with climate change now making glaciers a much more impeachable concept, this statement acts as one of strange and ironic and twisted hope.


CHAPTER 4
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

if i have to get abducted by aliens i hope they're also wise.


CHAPTER 5
it's always fun to see another book you've enjoyed or want to read mentioned in a book you're actively reading and enjoying. a special guest star appearance.


CHAPTER 6
do you know the meme where a book / movie / tv show / romping good time / limited series / human life has to end when they say the title?

anyway. this book would've just ended.


CHAPTER 7
one of those books where you're "i could write a whole paper about this" every other page.


CHAPTER 8
this book is somewhat unique in antiwar books for its admission that war is intended to make shells out of heroic people, and that "one of its effects" is to prevent people from being "characters."

it seems there is an impulse to think antiwar media will be more effective if this truth is ignored, but i've never found that to be the case. the most disturbing part of war, after all, is its anti-humanity.


CHAPTER 9
a while back my boyfriend was flipping through my copy of this book and laughed pretty hard, but i didn't ask why because he appeared to be fairly close to the end and i didn't want to be spoiled.

i have to say, i gave him more literary benefit of the doubt than he was entitled to for laughing at what i now realize was a drawing of boobs.


CHAPTER 10
welp.


OVERALL
this book was mind melting and funny and smart and touching and painful, as was realizing that the quote i love so much that it inspired me to read this book is not meant sincerely.

not everything is beautiful. a hell of a lot hurts. we shouldn't respond to death with nonchalance—we should never accept that that's how it has to go, not all of the time, not right then. war is evil, and things mean things, and we should keep life close to us even when it's tempting to release it, to pull your hand back as if from a hot stove.

and the hurting makes the beautiful more beautiful anyway.
rating: 55-stars classics favorites-2023 ...more498 s13 comments Sean Barrs 1,122 46.7k

Every so often you read a book, a book that takes everything you thought created an excellent novel and tears it to pieces; it then sets it on fire and throws it out the window in a display of pure individual brilliance. That is how I felt when I read this jumbled and absurd, yet fantastic, novel.

The book has no structure or at the very least a perceivable one: it’s all over the place. But, it works so well. It cements the book’s message and purpose underlining its meaning. Indeed, this book is an anti-war novel, which is asserted (in part) through its random and confusing organisation. The story is “jumbled and jangled” such as the meaning of war. It appears pointless to the reader, again alluding to the meaning of war. It also suggests that after the war a soldier’s life is in ruins and has no clear direction, which can be seen with the sad case of Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.

Billy Pilgrim is a poor tortured soul who after the fire-bombing of Dresden is in a state of flux. His mind cannot remain in the present and darts back and forth in time the narrative. He was never the most assertive of men, and after the war became a shadow of his already meek self. The war has left him delusional, which is manifested by his abduction by aliens. This may or may not have happened. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide. What decision they make effects what genre the novel belongs to.

Is it science fiction?

If Billy was abducted by aliens then this is sci-fi, but if it is a figment of his imagination then this becomes something much deeper. It’s up to the reader how they interpret it, but I personally believe that he wasn’t abducted. I think he made it up, unconsciously, as a coping strategy for the effects of war, and that the author has used it as a tool to raise questions of the futility of free will, but more importantly to further establish the anti-war theme.

Vonnegut draws on a multitude of sources to establish this further, such as the presidential address of Truman. He ironically suggests that the A-bomb, whilst devastating, is no worse than ordinary war; he points out the fact that the fire-bombing of Dresden killed more than the nuking of Hiroshima. Through this he uses Billy Pilgrim’s life as a metaphor for what war for the effects of war on the human state.

So it goes.

Vonnegut himself is a character within the narrative as the life of Billy Pilgrim is, in part, an autobiographical statement. The narrator addresses the reader and informs them of this. He tells them that this all happened more or less. This establishes the black humour towards war and the inconsequential deaths of those that are in it. Hence the motif “so it goes” at each, and every, mention of death whether large or small. He ends the book on the line “poo-te-weet.” He even tells the reader he is going to do this, but at the same time demonstrates that there is nothing intelligible to be said about war.

I warn you, if you’ve not read this, it is one of the most bizarre books you will ever read. The main character time travels, in his mind, and has no real present state. The narrative initially appears random and completely confusing. But, once you reach the end you’ll see this book for what it is: the most individual, and unique, statement against war that will ever be written.

_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________5-star-reads reviewed-for-fantasy-book-review sci-fi461 s1 comment Kirstie262 137

I read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.


Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's head by the scattered science fiction plots of Kilgore Trout, experience time as a continuum that is constantly occurring...and when they look at time, even though in their version of history, the world is in a constant state of being destroyed for example, they choose to see the things that make them happy...the good moments.

What Billy learns from these creatures is that each traumatic event that has happened in his life fits very precisely into a state of meticulous nature. It has always happened and always will happen and so it goes (on and on and on). What Billy Pilgrim truly experiences over and over in his life is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He exists throughout his memories traveling back and forth with the knowledge of what will happen and how precise it all is. Dresden is bombed in every moment and his friend Derby is put in front of a firing squad. At every second, he is the only survivor of a plane wreck, he is getting married, and he is fighting a Children's Crusade. It's the only way he can look at the despair that has happened and make sense of it.

When my grandfather died and I read this, I felt as if it was just what I needed because I could escape back into time and remember the good memories of my grandfather...if they existed (even if in some fourth dimension) then he was just as dead as he was alive and eating peanut butter chocolate ice cream. At the same time my grandfather had a heart attack, I was watching him play cards with my grandma at the kitchen table. But which one to think of? Well, that was easy. Death can't be prevented and so it goes but you can always try to change which moment you live in. It's a little bit different than a memory and if you go far into it, you'll end up Billy Pilgrim, which is to say, you will go insane because the rest of the world sees time as linear and counts seconds and minutes and hours.

Once and awhile, it doesn't hurt. I re-read this again on the plane rides home and back before and after my grandmother's funeral on Monday and last night. My grandma was a strong and intelligent woman and she always read everything she saw. My recent memories of my grandmother were of her at the holidays. She always had her mind but her physical condition had deteriorated and she was dependent on oxygen. It made me sad to think of her this a bit.

It's really hard for me to think that my grandma is no more but then I tell myself...well, it's silly for me to keep crying on and on about this. My grandma is right now reading at 4am in her living room chair and I am a child creeping down the stairs hoping she's still up. She is telling me that one day I'll come around and green onions. She is reminding me to keep my feet off of the davenport and about being "tickled" by something. She lives in a jungle of houseplants and watches musicals all of the time, always pointing out when some distant relative of mine appears briefly in The Greatest Show on Earth. My grandma can't be dead and be doing all of those things, can she? It doesn't make sense. She will always be alive in some moments just I will always be seven and nine and twenty eight and perhaps past thirty and forty. So, she'll always be here.

I just wish I could dream about her.
388 s Vit Babenco1,560 4,358

Kurt Vonnegut always had his own unique attitude to society and history. Therefore Slaughterhouse-Five is a special story of man and his place in war and peace.
Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
War is a wonderful thing – it presents a man with a gift of madness. And madness is even a more wonderful thing – it allows a man to travel in time, to go through space to distant planets, to see things others can’t see.
‘Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, here we are… trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.’
So it goes… Then it stops…a-hundred-of-the-best-novels325 s Kenny526 1,284

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
SLAUGHTERHOUSE - FIVE ~~ Kurt Vonnegut


My junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved Kurt Vonnegut ~~ no, he worshiped Kurt Vonnegut. It’s ironic since everything Har Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Har Don insisted I read Vonnegut's SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I was wrong. I wasn't. But, I was done with Vonnegut; there were authors I was craving to read and Vonnegut was not one of them.

Skip ahead to my joining Goodreads. Friends here, people whose opinions I truly respect, kept telling me I had to read SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. So, I broke down, and picked up a copy. And? Well, it is hard to put into words how much I loved the world ~~ no worlds ~~ inhabited by Billy Pilgrim.

I can honestly say I have not read anything SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. That's a good thing. I had just finished NORWEGIAN WOOD and LIE WITH ME, two tales of young love gone wrong so I was looking to inhabit an entirely different world. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE definitely was that world, or should I say worlds???



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is based on Vonnegut's experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is considered a modern literary masterpiece, as it should be. It propelled Vonnegut, who had been largely ignored by both critics and the public, to fame and literary acclaim. So it goes.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time," and brings together different periods of Billy's life ~~ his time as an ill-fated soldier, his post-war optometry career, and a foray in an extraterrestrial zoo where he served as an exhibit ~~ with humor and deep insight.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE was published on March 31, 1969 and became an instant and surprise hit. It spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times best seller list and went through five printings by July of 1969.



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE has not been without controversy. The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century. "It was banned from Oakland County, Michigan public schools in 1972. The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” No wonder I loved it!

“My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene," Vonnegut told the Paris Review. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?” I'm starting to this Vonnegut character!

"In 2011, Wesley Scroggins, an assistant professor at Missouri State University, called on the Republic, MO school board to ban SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. He wrote in the local paper, 'This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.' The board eventually voted 4-0 to remove the novel from the high school curriculum and its library."

In response to this ban, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis gave away 150 free copies of SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE to Republic, Missouri students who wanted to read it. As a kid who was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class because my reading choices were "morally questionable" I now officially love the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library!



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is the strange tale of Billy Pilgrim. As i said previously, Billy becomes "unstuck" from the linear nature of time and takes us along on his journey. Billy Pilgrim is the anti-everyman while engaging in love, ethics, war, science, and aliens. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE's main theme is man’s inhumanity to man throughout history.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is not without its own heartfelt themes. It is most definitely an anti-war book. It is in many ways an anti-death book. It presents a philosophy questioning the purpose of life amidst determinism. Ayn Rand would have hated SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE ~~ yet another reason to love this book.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is often insensitive and dark, and yet, you can't help but laugh at the world Vonnegut has created. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is full of contradictions that only serve to make Vonnegut's points.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE doesn't end with the death of Billy Pilgrim. That would far to simple an ending for something as brilliant as this; Billy lives on reliving this strange existence, learning and relearning the lessons of his life, unstuck from time.



So, have I revised my opinion of Vonnegut? Most definitely. Will I read more Vonnegut in the future? Yes, but selectively. Will I reread Slapstick? NEVER ...

author-author classics desert-island-books ...more316 s Leonard GayaAuthor 1 book1,037

Don’t be fooled: this is a short novel, but a pretty difficult one! Kurt Vonnegut, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, witnessed long ago one of the most dreadful (and now almost forgotten) events during the crepuscular spring of 1945, when the Allies, pretending to eradicate Nazism, utterly destroyed the German city of Dresden and killed tens of thousands of civilians (comparable to the Hiroshima bombing). This event is the bleeding core of the novel. So it goes.

What is more bewildering about this book is its disjointed time structure: very soon in the story, Billy Pilgrim, a former prisoner of war, gets “unstuck in time”, thanks to the intervention of a Tralfamadorian flying saucer. He then keeps travelling in time from one paragraph to the next, going back and forth from the days before the Dresden destruction, to his childhood years, to his postwar life as an optometrist who is writing a book about Dresden and suffers a plane crash, to the time of the Vietnam War and Ronald Reagan (the present time when Vonnegut was writing), to a geodesic sphere on the far-off planet of Tralfamadore, to Times Square, and back to the firestorm of World War II.

In doing so, we get to know a gallery of quaint yet pitiful characters Billy meets along the way: Weary the bully, Lazzaro the enraged sadist, Campbell the American Nazi, Kilgore Trout the crook sci-fi writer, the Spinozist four-dimensional Tralfamadorians, Montana the porn star, the rich and fat Valencia who dies in her car, Derby the teacher who dies before a firing squad, Jesus Christ a “nobody” who dies on a piece of wood. So it goes.

Added to this sense of disorientation (which indeed is that of Billy/Kurt), Vonnegut uses a dry, detached and fatalistic humour, when describing the most unspeakable, even unthinkable, moments of this war experience, that, if amusing, truly conveys a sense of utter despair. So it goes.favorites306 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 157

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years.

It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

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????? ?????? ????? 31/05/1399???? ???????? 07/05/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Fergus, Quondam Happy Face1,125 17.7k

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.278 s Lyn1,919 16.9k

A fun visit with cantankerous old Uncle Kurt.

Vonnegut is on a short list of my favorite authors and this is perhaps his most famous work. Not his best, but most recognizable. Billy Pilgrim is also one of his best characters.

(Kilgore Trout is his best).

I d it as I everything I have read of him. The recurring themes and characters, use of repetition for emphasis and comic relief, his irreverence and postmodern lack of sensitivity shine bright as ever here.

Vonnegut can be funny and grim on the same page, same sentence even, and not lose relevance or sincerity.

** 2018 - My wife and I visited Dresden, Germany this year and I could not help think of Vonnegut as a young POW who miraculously survived the firebombing and lived to tell the tale.

***** 2019 reread

Perhaps his most celebrated and recognized this is also considered one of his best and I’d agree. This 1969 publication was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. I think maybe only Ursula K. LeGuin could also pull that off. This was made into a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting) and the film won the Hugo and the Cannes Grand Prix.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck” in time. We all walk through life with a film of our past raging in our minds, but Vonnegut had Billy go one step further, in that he actually lives random moments in time, from his famous prison time in Dresden to his airplane crash, to his kidnapping and zoo sentence on Tralfamador.

Yes, Tralfamador. And we have another Kilgore Trout sighting, and also Elliot Rosewater and Howard W. Campbell Jr. We are surrounded and encompassed in the world Kurt made.

We must play a drinking game of sorts, every time death is mentioned we must say “so it goes”. In his introduction, we are told that this is to be a novel against war, an anti-war novel, and the ubiquitous phrase is used as an existential (and ironic) reminder that we live in each moment of time but that freewill is an intangible thing, as flimsy as dry rubber bands. The novel is also ripe with situational irony throughout, peppered with his inimitable dry humor and wit.

An observant reader will also note that when Pilgrim’s wife Valencia is in a car wreck, there is a bumper sticker that said, “Reagan for President”. Since this was first published in 1969, seven years before Reagan would be mentioned in the Republican primaries and eleven years before he would be elected, one wonders if KV had some time travel experience.

An absolute must read for his fans, a good introduction to his work, and an excellent book for all readers.

238 s Nataliya856 14.2k

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” Listen:

When you find yourself in the middle of horror, enormity that defies rational understanding, and survive despite everything, can you ever leave that place and that time behind? Can you ever let it go, and can it ever set you free? Can you help looking back, Lot’s wife, at the pain and destruction that are calling to you through time and distance? Can you ever?
“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things “Poo-tee-weet?”
“All this happened, more or less.” In 1945, at the end of brutal World War II, the Allies firebombed the German city of Dresden and almost 25,000 people died in the inferno. Kurt Vonnegut was in the city as a prisoner of war, and years later wrote his most famous book about Billy Pilgrim, an American POW in Dresden who lives through the war and survives Dresden bombing, and gets “unstuck in time”, moving between different periods of his life, seeing “his memory of the future” through the disorienting now, always now.
“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

It’s a book that to me defies explanations. It’s science fiction inasmuch as there are aliens that see all the time simultaneously. It’s an anti-war book insomuch as it shows the absolute atrocity and monstrosity of mindless destruction. “So it goes,” continues the constant refrain — and yes, so it does.

And it is a book about trauma of war that stays with you no matter what else happens, because after such enormity how can life ever be the same? How can you ever come to grips with things that happened? War is absurd, and absurdity becomes reality.
“Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don’t want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.”
This book combines farce and seriousness, surreal experiences and crushing reality, and is perfect example of comedy and tragedy combining into something much greater than the sum of its parts.


“Was it awful?”
“Sometimes.” A crazy thought now occurred to Billy. The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim—and for me, too.”
Vonnegut’s language isn’t wasted in a single line here. It’s economical and spare; it says just as much with words on the page as with the words left unspoken but implied. The sentences are short, the syntax is simple, but beyond the deceiving simplicity lies the world of complex thought and feelings it evokes in the reader. And that quiet feeling of detachment punctuated with “So it goes” at the moments of death affected me more than any number of likable identifiable-with characters of other books have. After all, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

It does it to me, this book. It gets to me.
“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”
5 stars.

—————
—————
Buddy read with Dennis.

——————
Also posted on my blog.2011-reads 2022-reads favorites ...more246 s2 comments Henry Avila497 3,281

Now for something completely different , stating it mildly ...Billy Pilgrim is not just another time travelling man, kidnapped by aliens from the unknown planet Tralfamadore and put in their zoo, he's an eyewitness to the destruction of Dresden, during World War Two. Our Billy an optometrist, (eye doctor) marries the boss's slightly overweight daughter Valencia (who no one else wanted, people are so unkind) . The couple have two disrespectful children, Barbara and Robert, the truth that he becomes very rich through his nuptials, doesn't make him a bad guy, lucky, I guess is the proper adjective . Billy is no prize either , a tall, skinny weakling, an ordinary looking man , with a peculiar tendency for nervous breakdowns... welcome to modern life. The only unique thing about him, is the fact he visits rather reluctantly different stages of his life, by way of an unexplained and altogether involuntary power , by time travel. Yet for a while at least, life doesn't become endless and boring, still not as much fun as you'd think, repeating situations again and again, ouch . IT DOESN'T MATTER HE'D RATHER NOT GO...Past, Present and Future, are all the same to poor Pilgrim, he can be at his daughter's wedding and in a few moments, be back as a P.O.W. in Dresden, Germany on February 13th, 1945, when 1,200 allied bombers from England and America, dropped thousands of explosives on the city. Causing fires to spread quickly and kill (fry) thousands, anywhere from 30,000 to 130,000 humans, nobody will ever know the exact amount. "So it goes ". Then poor Billy is back in Illium, New York, talking to his only friend, Kilgore Trout an unsuccessful science fiction writer, (75 unread novels) I understand you can get his books at the local library, if you are diligent . The cosmic flying saucer that took Mr.Pilgrim secretly to that strange world...(not sure if it's the right word for the weird planet) millions of light years away, through a wormhole, did Billy a favor. The very curious people of Tralfamadore to watch and how. They are not embarrassed by any kind of activity, providing him with a young, beautiful, and eager movie starlet Montana Wildhack, for the prisoner. The salacious activity gives the inhabitants of this planet many hours of entertainment...Billy will never really die, he will always travel through time and space forever."So it goes".224 s Garima113 1,918


I finally read Vonnegut. I finally read a war novel. And after a long time I finally read something with so many GR ratings and a decent number of which is precisely the reason I have nothing much to add to the already expressed views here. So I urge you to indulge me to state a personal anecdote. Thank You.

My Grandfather was a POW during Indo-China war and remained in confinement for some six months. By the time I got to know about it I had already watched too many movies and crammed endless number of answers about when and where such n such war was fought. But I was naïve and let’s assume innocent and someone who was yet to learn to ask the right questions. So the fact that someone so close in the family had witness something I only read in schoolbooks was utterly fascinating for me. Thus began my streak of stupid questions.

Me: Did you kill someone? Did they torture you? Did you dig some sort of tunnel to escape? And so on.

My Grandpa gave this hearty laugh he is famous for and said that I’m missing one important question: Why the war happened at first place? I thought for a while and answered: Because it always happens.

I can’t recall properly what he replied to that but it was something on the lines of this: I wish the answer changes when you’ll grow up because as of now that’s exactly how it is. War always happens.

With books Slaughterhouse-Five (Schlachthöf-fünf), it’s not the writing which matters but simply the ideas and thoughts it carries which transgresses the literary boundaries and create a place in the heart of the readers as a humble reminder that Love happens, Hate happens, Life happens, Death happens, Peace happens, War happens and sometimes Shit happens.funny-funsome-sarcasome its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt my-2-cents210 s Lala BooksandLala517 71.2k

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-gfavourites201 s Annemarie251 881

This book is an absolute masterpiece and it makes it clear in every single sentence. I think it is best to go into it without knowing too much about the plot. You just got to take it as it comes, so to say.

Before reading, I was worried that I might have trouble with the writing style. English isn't my first language and the older a book is, the more trouble I seem to have with the writing (because of obsolete words, unusual sentence structures, ect.). However, my worry was totally for nothing in this case. I found the entire book very easy to read (which is even more surprising considering the heavy topics that get dealt with). I also loved how there were many little passages and repetitions of certain phrases. It seemed fitting somehow.

I would have never guessed that the blend of a war story with Science Fiction could work so well! It gives it so much room for analysing and interpretation.
Honestly, I could write a thousand more reasons why I loved this book, but in the end I would just repeat myself, because I seriously just loved every.single.little.thing! I highly recommend everyone to give it a shot.favorites read-in-english184 s jessica2,576 43.5k

here it is. yet another book that i didnt read in school but decided to pick up later in life. and i think this is one of the rare instances where i think i would have benefited from some educational instruction to supplement my reading, because i did not seem to get this on my own.

i mean, on a surface level, i understood the anti-war tones and commentary on society in general, but anything deeper than that eluded me. so taking this at face value, i think its safe to say this is a really weird book. lol.

also, i wasnt really a fan at how women were portrayed in this. they were always noted as being ugly, or dull, or only good for sex. and i know many people might say thats vonneguts signature satire, but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

overall, i get that this story evokes much needed discussion on several important issues. however, this didnt impact me as significantly as it was probably meant to. so it goes…

? 2.5 stars189 s1 comment BlackOxford1,095 69k

The God of Accidents

Only God knows all of time as if it were the same instant; only God can annihilate the Universe; only God knows our innermost thoughts: so contends Judaic, Christian, and Muslim theology. For God, therefore, there is no cause and effect; everything just is. And because there is no cause and effect, there is no issue of free will. Free will is an idea created by human beings who can't imagine any other way to escape the mechanical inevitability of causality.

In Slaughterhouse 5, the alien race of Tralfamadorians are not just god- in their ability to transit the Universe, they are collectively God in their power over time and existence itself. The book is a subtle and very clever theology that has fundamental implications for morality and ethics.

Billy Pilgrim is the recipient of important revelations from the divine Tralfamadorians. The first revelation is that although death is a real certainty, it doesn't matter because one can revisit moments in one's life ad infinitum; resurrection is part of existence.

Second, God is neither external to the Universe, nor pantheistically distributed throughout it; rather God is a very discrete presence in the Universe, as well as in charge of it. Importantly for the fate of everyone, God is also as hapless as human beings; he can't change himself or his fate.

The most significant revelation is that Kilgore Trout, the famous science fiction writer and newspaper delivery boss, is God's prophet, whose every pronouncement is sarcastic.

It's difficult to say what portion of these revelations come directly from the divine source and what portion comes through Kilgore Trout's explorations into Billy's consciousness. Nevertheless the bottom line is clear: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” In other words, life is so screwy that it can neither be analysed nor rationalised. Not the best of all possible worlds, but the only one possible. Accident willing.american182 s Adina1,056 4,317

Update: I decided to upgrade the rating to 5*. Still on my mind after more than 1 year.

This was such a pleasant surprise. This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not it since: 1. I am not a fan of books/movies about war and 2. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those (modern or not). This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure.

Oh, I judged this book so wrongly. Actually, I d it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever.1001 classics fantasy-sf ...more171 s1 comment ????1,081 1,954

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??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???? ????????.??????-????? ????-????? ????-???? ...more173 s Darwin8u1,638 8,814

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
? Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five



I've read Slaughterhouse-Five several times and I'm still not sure I know exactly how Vonnegut pulls it off. It is primarily a postmodern, anti-war novel. It is an absurd look at war, memory, time, and humanity, but it is also gentle. Its prose emotionally feels (go ahead, pet the emotion) the tug of the tides, the heaviness of sleep, the seduction of alcohol, the dizziness of love. His prose is simple, but beautiful.

Obviously, part of the brilliance of this novel is born from the reality that Vonnegut is largely playing the notes of his own song (obviously, obscured by an unreliable narrator, time that is unstuck, and generous kidnapping aliens). It is the song of someone who has seen horrible, horrible things but still wants to dance and smile (so a Totentanz?).

Emperor, your sword won't help you out
Sceptre and crown are worthless here
I've taken you by the hand
For you must come to my dance

I had to work very much and very hard
The sweat was running down my skin
I'd to escape death nonetheless
But here I won't have any luck

It is essentially art pulled out of the tension between despair and hope, grief and celebration, love and death. It is a classic not because it has a message about war, but because it has a message about life. Vonnegut aimed at war and hit everything. 100-mccaffery 100-modern-library 1001-ante-mortem ...more168 s Fabian977 1,926

No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon.

I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than physics because it is so closely related to the complete termination of life, spirit, & earthly happiness.

"Maus" reminded me of this because it mixed humor with tragedy... something super hard to pull off because the events are real. The Children's Crusade is still being fought today & this personal statement cannot go out of style-- maybe presidents/dictators/rulers/monarchs should read it as a by law prerequisite?159 s Matthias107 377

Listen:

This reviewer is stuck in time. He is unable to escape the narrow confines of the invisible, intangible machinery mercilessly directing his life from a beginning towards an end. The walls surrounding him are dotted with windows looking out on darkened memories and foggy expectations, easing the sense of claustrophobia but offering no way out. The ceiling is crushing down on this man while he paces frantically through other people's lives and memories in hopes of shaping his own and forgetting the enormity of oblivion looming above his head. He reads book after book after book. He reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He gets immersed, he gets lost in the pages. He smiles. He wonders. He tumbles. He laughs a laugh that seems to come from somewhere deep within him, telling him that everything is beautiful. A laugh that shoots up from a dark place and illuminates the universe, bathing it in colour, showing all the hidden threads in a fraction of a second. The man is consoled, recognizing that fraction as an eternity. He closes the book and looks around him. The space got bigger, the windows show a clearer picture. He sees his situation with a new light emanating from his own eyes and, looking up, notices the oppressive ceiling is no longer there. It made way for the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes painted with stars and clouds. He ruminates on this new canvas for his thoughts as a bird flies by and calls to him.
Poo-tee-weet. favorites my- out-of-the-box-166 s Cecily1,198 4,594

A strange and intriguing book that I found very hard to rate: a mixture of wartime memoir and sci fi - occasionally harrowing, sometimes funny and other times thought-provoking.

PLOT
It is the episodic story of Billy Pilgrim, a small town American boy, who is a POW in the second world war, later becomes a successful optometrist and who occasionally and accidentally travels in time to other periods of his life, so he has "memories of the future". Oh, he also gets abducted by aliens, along with some furniture. "So it goes." (That is the catchphrase of the book, and I found rather annoying after the umpteenth time. It's used in Philip K Dick's "Ubik" (review here), which I assumed was a nod to Vonnegut, until I discovered both were published in the same year).

It starts with an old man reminiscing about his life. He is asked about the point of writing an anti-war book, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" After that, it jumps about, much as Billy does, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time... he is in a constant state of stage fright".

The most thought-provoking bits for me were Billy's mother who tried "to construct a life that makes sense from things she found in gift shops", the bathos with which some war events were described (e.g. being executed for stealing a teapot), and the alien Tralfamadorian's multi-dimensional and multi-sexual world. For instance, they have five sexes, but their differences were in the fourth dimension and they couldn't imagine how time looks to Billy (they also told him that seven sexes were essential for human reproduction!).

MESSAGE
A main message is surprisingly positive: if we could only see or feel the fourth dimension, we would realise that "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past".

SPOONS
Spoons are mentioned oddly often, as a description of how people lie (lovers or fallen soldiers). Then, near the end, actual spoons are briefly important. I have no idea whether this is significant.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Matthias on his excellent review (read it here), I have, not an answer, but a great spoon reference in The Matrix:
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon."
Spoon Boy

RELATED BOOKS
It has strong links with several other books: as it's Vonnegut, the "fictitious" sci fi writer, Kilgore Trout, gets several mentions.

The mode of time travel clearly influenced Octavia Butler's Kindred, review here,
and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, review here.

When he watches a WW2 film in reverse, it's very Amis's Time's Arrow, review here.

For a more linguistic and philosophical take on the implications of Tralfamadorians living in all time, simultaneously, see the heptapods in Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, review here.

Also compare it with the Borges short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, which is in The Book of Sand, review here


It also left me wanting to read a Tralfamadorian book with its simultaneous threads, "no beginning, no middle, no end... What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time", which is surely what Vonnegut was trying to create for mere human readers.



scifi-future-speculative-fict time-travel usa-and-canada164 s TK421571 279

There are only a few books that I ever really try to revisit. Sherlock Holmes and his stories are one. Some Shakespeare. And Slaughterhouse-Five.

I have read this book every year since my first reading almost ten years ago. I read it as an undergraduate; I read it as a graduate student. I've written three or four papers about it. And, yes, I have tried to pawn this book off on as many people as I could over the years.

You see, this book does something to me whenever I read it. It takes me places. Sure there is the time travel, other-world element to the novel, but the places it takes me are not physical in nature. I can't rightly say that they are spiritual either. Basically, the best way I can describe it is where I am taken is if my heart, mind, soul, education, fears, desires, and dreams were all placed in a blender and set to liquefy. And then this slosh of material is constructed into whatever semblance of a structure can be created from this amalgam.

This novel gets me to question not only life, but what it means that I was the lucky sperm to reach the egg, or that I was the lucky egg that was implanted. Oh dear, I fear I am convoluting what it is I am trying to say.

Okay, here goes: This book questions war. It questions as to why humans feel it is imperative to destroy. It questions what it might be to live a completely different life than the one you live now. But it doesn't try to give bullshit answers. In fact, it really doesn't try to give answers to anything. And since this book is based on actual experiences Vonnegut suffered during WWII, it might be better said that this novel is really a science fiction memoir.

Dammit, I am screwing this up. I cannot seem to say it is that I want to say.

Enough already! Read the book. Or don't read the book. I know what it does to me.

So it goes.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDEED
sci-fi163 s Shannon 1,216 2,348

Contains spoilers
Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man called Billy Pilgrim who time-travels frequently. He was in the Second World War and, captured, was sent to Dresden to work in a malt syrup factory before the city was bombed. He studied optometry and had a nervous breakdown. He married the daughter of a rich optometrist, and became rich as well. He was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a young porn actress, Montana Wildhack, whom they also abducted. He had a daughter called Barbara and a son called Robert. He was in a plane crash that killed everyone except him and the co-pilot. Rushing to the hospital in frantic worry, his wife Valencia dies in a car accident. He gets to meet his favourite author, an unsuccessful sci-fi writer called Kilgore Trout. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the name of the building where the American POWs lived in in Dresden.

Because the narration jumps around as frequently as Billy does, you learn everything early on and then simply revisit it all. The fractured narrative is worse than watching ads in a commercial break, or those horrible pop songs where the scenes and costumes change every two seconds - it gives you a headache. It's extremely boring, and hollow, and unsatisfying.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know. But I do time-travel stories. Billy is nothing Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. For a start, not even a second seems to pass in "real" time while he is travelling - no one ever notices. It seems less time-travelling than reliving the past, present and future of your life, all at once, because it's his consciousness that does the travelling. What isn't clear, at all, is which is the real Billy? He moves so much, you have to wonder how he doesn't become completely dislodged from his own corporeal self and go mad.

The time-travelling predates the abduction-by-aliens, but the aliens themselves see the past, present and future simultaneously, and teach Billy their philosophy of not really caring about anything, since nothing can be changed etc. etc. Fatalism.

I think I hated this book, but not quite. Hate is a strong emotion and I don't think it brought that out in me. It wasn't even frustrating, nor even particularly confusing, though the repetition of the Tralfamadorian expression "so it goes" was so irritating I saw red a few times. The bits about the 100 American POWs being welcomed by the British POWs in a German prison camp was delightful, though boldly stereotyped, and I loved the excerpts from the work on American soldiers and prisoners-of-war by the American-turned-Nazi, forget his name, something Campbell. A lot of it - and it's a small, short book - could easily be skipped. The temptation was very strong.

In short, it's a very "postmodern" story, and all things postmodern, it's impractical, disjointed, a bit wanky, tries too hard, is extremely out-dated and, at the end of the day, rather useless. Vonnegut is also very heavy-handed and bangs you on the head with his messages. It doesn't really inspire me to read more of Vonnegut's work. I guess he's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of story-teller.2008 history not-worth-it ...more161 s Bram102 302

This novel has a pretty basic and consistent structure: a few paragraphs of humorous (I think) writing that has the presumed purpose of loosening you up before you get to the sucker-punch paragraph that contains something disturbing/death-related followed by "so it goes." And if the "so it goes" wasn't there to remind you that this is the part where death happens, Vonnegut hammers the point home by relaying it an inhumanly cool, dry, and nonchalant manner. How coy and provocative. Maybe Vonnegut could have helped the reader along a little more with a footnote: "See what I did there? By having my narrator relate stories of war and death in an apathetic manner, I made you really think about these issues. Didn't I? Huh? Huh?" Yes, we get it, Kurt.

Part way through reading this book, I was sharing my disappointment with a friend who mentioned that Vonnegut, the narrator, had actually witnessed the Dresden bombings. This apologia left me momentarily chastened as I considered the sobering impetus for the story. Then I mentally slapped myself for even considering that sympathy could cover for the stylistic bludgeoning that Vonnegut inflicted. I suppose there was a well thought out reason for making the prose stuttering and choppy, but I can't imagine what that would actually be (nor would I care to). Interestingly enough, Vonnegut may have been aware of this stylistic shortcoming: speaking of Billy's favorite obscure sci-fi author, he writes that "Trout's prose is frightful. Only his ideas are good." Kilgore Trout and his writing apparently feature in other Vonnegut books, and a Washington Post reviewer in the mid 70s contended that "Trout's prose is at least as good as Vonnegut's." Exactly.

And were the philosophical musings on time and fate, revealed primarily through unimaginative and silly sci-fi ramblings, supposed to be novel or even vaguely interesting? It's he took Tolstoy's ruminations on fate and free will in War and Peace and then removed all the complexities and internal dissonance.

In the second half of the story, I did find myself mildly interested in what was happening. Perhaps I became accustomed to the writing or the pain just dulled after a while. Regardless, this book crossed the overrated line so egregiously that I can't muster a second star. Heavy-handed, prosaic, unfunny. So it goes.
2009151 s J.L. Sutton666 1,087

At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five (now read 5 times) makes it difficult to take seriously.



However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore (and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward). Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time (and how this impacts perceptions of life and death). Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful. I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other . You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps (which are taken to possibly irrational extremes). In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting...And so it goes! 144 s Baba3,774 1,178

I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, , 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I d it. I d the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I d the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even d the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I d the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I d the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.
historical-fiction modern-fiction north-american ...more803 s11 comments SimeonAuthor 1 book401

There are some terrible of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly odious sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.

This is usually based on the following quote.
"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I know," said Billy.
"That's war."
"I know. I'm not complaining"
"It must have been hell on the ground."
"It was," said Billy Pilgrim.
"Pity the men who had to do it."
"I do."
"You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground."
"It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings Billy exterminated.

On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance

The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything.

It can't be prevented. It can't be helped.

You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events?

Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes.


Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it?

We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them.apocalypse classic literature ...more1,558 s1 comment Stephanie *Eff your feelings*239 1,319

I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.

What is it about?

It's about war.
It's about love and hate.
It's about post traumatic stress.
It's about sanity and insanity.
It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).
It's about life.
It's about death.
so it goes.

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

This is how I live my life. This is how I get through the day. Most days I am successful, some days I'm not. Today is one of the "not" days. so many Americans these days, I feel I'm in a rut. so many Americans I don't understand why I am where I am. This was not the plan. This was not what I had in mind......

Oh poor me....boo hoo.

This book. This book got me thinking. So much about life sucks, true, but not many of us want to give up on it that easy. Why? because of the "good ones". And what makes "good ones" is our ability to create and enjoy creating.....at least I think so.

"Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
— Joss Whedon

If you make something, a painting, a poem, a novel, a good meal, a person.....you continue to live even after death. I think that's what Mr. Vonnegut was getting at. Maybe.

At least that is how he has remained alive for me.
favorites lit re-read ...more1,212 s1 comment emma2,122 67.3k

welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE.

it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment, a project by which i take on classics i've been procrastinating reading in itty bitty sections to make them seem manageable.

this one isn't long, but i did only add it to my want to read list because i somehow have a bookmark that says "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" and i feel a poseur.

so similar in impact.

let's get into it.


CHAPTER 1
i think this book has 10 chapters, so i'll just read one a day till it's done and call it the world's worst project selection in terms of accuracy.

to be honest i just want an excuse to read it immediately.


CHAPTER 2
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

i mean. holy moley.


CHAPTER 3
this book has a character who briefly appears and in his short time with us says that if you're writing an anti-war book, you may as well write an anti-glacier book for how effective it will be. both war and glaciers are here intended as timeless and permanent parts of human life.

with climate change now making glaciers a much more impeachable concept, this statement acts as one of strange and ironic and twisted hope.


CHAPTER 4
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

if i have to get abducted by aliens i hope they're also wise.


CHAPTER 5
it's always fun to see another book you've enjoyed or want to read mentioned in a book you're actively reading and enjoying. a special guest star appearance.


CHAPTER 6
do you know the meme where a book / movie / tv show / romping good time / limited series / human life has to end when they say the title?

anyway. this book would've just ended.


CHAPTER 7
one of those books where you're "i could write a whole paper about this" every other page.


CHAPTER 8
this book is somewhat unique in antiwar books for its admission that war is intended to make shells out of heroic people, and that "one of its effects" is to prevent people from being "characters."

it seems there is an impulse to think antiwar media will be more effective if this truth is ignored, but i've never found that to be the case. the most disturbing part of war, after all, is its anti-humanity.


CHAPTER 9
a while back my boyfriend was flipping through my copy of this book and laughed pretty hard, but i didn't ask why because he appeared to be fairly close to the end and i didn't want to be spoiled.

i have to say, i gave him more literary benefit of the doubt than he was entitled to for laughing at what i now realize was a drawing of boobs.


CHAPTER 10
welp.


OVERALL
this book was mind melting and funny and smart and touching and painful, as was realizing that the quote i love so much that it inspired me to read this book is not meant sincerely.

not everything is beautiful. a hell of a lot hurts. we shouldn't respond to death with nonchalance—we should never accept that that's how it has to go, not all of the time, not right then. war is evil, and things mean things, and we should keep life close to us even when it's tempting to release it, to pull your hand back as if from a hot stove.

and the hurting makes the beautiful more beautiful anyway.
rating: 55-stars classics favorites-2023 ...more498 s13 comments Sean Barrs 1,122 46.7k

Every so often you read a book, a book that takes everything you thought created an excellent novel and tears it to pieces; it then sets it on fire and throws it out the window in a display of pure individual brilliance. That is how I felt when I read this jumbled and absurd, yet fantastic, novel.

The book has no structure or at the very least a perceivable one: it’s all over the place. But, it works so well. It cements the book’s message and purpose underlining its meaning. Indeed, this book is an anti-war novel, which is asserted (in part) through its random and confusing organisation. The story is “jumbled and jangled” such as the meaning of war. It appears pointless to the reader, again alluding to the meaning of war. It also suggests that after the war a soldier’s life is in ruins and has no clear direction, which can be seen with the sad case of Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.

Billy Pilgrim is a poor tortured soul who after the fire-bombing of Dresden is in a state of flux. His mind cannot remain in the present and darts back and forth in time the narrative. He was never the most assertive of men, and after the war became a shadow of his already meek self. The war has left him delusional, which is manifested by his abduction by aliens. This may or may not have happened. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide. What decision they make effects what genre the novel belongs to.

Is it science fiction?

If Billy was abducted by aliens then this is sci-fi, but if it is a figment of his imagination then this becomes something much deeper. It’s up to the reader how they interpret it, but I personally believe that he wasn’t abducted. I think he made it up, unconsciously, as a coping strategy for the effects of war, and that the author has used it as a tool to raise questions of the futility of free will, but more importantly to further establish the anti-war theme.

Vonnegut draws on a multitude of sources to establish this further, such as the presidential address of Truman. He ironically suggests that the A-bomb, whilst devastating, is no worse than ordinary war; he points out the fact that the fire-bombing of Dresden killed more than the nuking of Hiroshima. Through this he uses Billy Pilgrim’s life as a metaphor for what war for the effects of war on the human state.

So it goes.

Vonnegut himself is a character within the narrative as the life of Billy Pilgrim is, in part, an autobiographical statement. The narrator addresses the reader and informs them of this. He tells them that this all happened more or less. This establishes the black humour towards war and the inconsequential deaths of those that are in it. Hence the motif “so it goes” at each, and every, mention of death whether large or small. He ends the book on the line “poo-te-weet.” He even tells the reader he is going to do this, but at the same time demonstrates that there is nothing intelligible to be said about war.

I warn you, if you’ve not read this, it is one of the most bizarre books you will ever read. The main character time travels, in his mind, and has no real present state. The narrative initially appears random and completely confusing. But, once you reach the end you’ll see this book for what it is: the most individual, and unique, statement against war that will ever be written.

_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________5-star-reads reviewed-for-fantasy-book-review sci-fi461 s1 comment Kirstie262 137

I read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.


Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's head by the scattered science fiction plots of Kilgore Trout, experience time as a continuum that is constantly occurring...and when they look at time, even though in their version of history, the world is in a constant state of being destroyed for example, they choose to see the things that make them happy...the good moments.

What Billy learns from these creatures is that each traumatic event that has happened in his life fits very precisely into a state of meticulous nature. It has always happened and always will happen and so it goes (on and on and on). What Billy Pilgrim truly experiences over and over in his life is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He exists throughout his memories traveling back and forth with the knowledge of what will happen and how precise it all is. Dresden is bombed in every moment and his friend Derby is put in front of a firing squad. At every second, he is the only survivor of a plane wreck, he is getting married, and he is fighting a Children's Crusade. It's the only way he can look at the despair that has happened and make sense of it.

When my grandfather died and I read this, I felt as if it was just what I needed because I could escape back into time and remember the good memories of my grandfather...if they existed (even if in some fourth dimension) then he was just as dead as he was alive and eating peanut butter chocolate ice cream. At the same time my grandfather had a heart attack, I was watching him play cards with my grandma at the kitchen table. But which one to think of? Well, that was easy. Death can't be prevented and so it goes but you can always try to change which moment you live in. It's a little bit different than a memory and if you go far into it, you'll end up Billy Pilgrim, which is to say, you will go insane because the rest of the world sees time as linear and counts seconds and minutes and hours.

Once and awhile, it doesn't hurt. I re-read this again on the plane rides home and back before and after my grandmother's funeral on Monday and last night. My grandma was a strong and intelligent woman and she always read everything she saw. My recent memories of my grandmother were of her at the holidays. She always had her mind but her physical condition had deteriorated and she was dependent on oxygen. It made me sad to think of her this a bit.

It's really hard for me to think that my grandma is no more but then I tell myself...well, it's silly for me to keep crying on and on about this. My grandma is right now reading at 4am in her living room chair and I am a child creeping down the stairs hoping she's still up. She is telling me that one day I'll come around and green onions. She is reminding me to keep my feet off of the davenport and about being "tickled" by something. She lives in a jungle of houseplants and watches musicals all of the time, always pointing out when some distant relative of mine appears briefly in The Greatest Show on Earth. My grandma can't be dead and be doing all of those things, can she? It doesn't make sense. She will always be alive in some moments just I will always be seven and nine and twenty eight and perhaps past thirty and forty. So, she'll always be here.

I just wish I could dream about her.
388 s Vit Babenco1,560 4,358

Kurt Vonnegut always had his own unique attitude to society and history. Therefore Slaughterhouse-Five is a special story of man and his place in war and peace.
Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
War is a wonderful thing – it presents a man with a gift of madness. And madness is even a more wonderful thing – it allows a man to travel in time, to go through space to distant planets, to see things others can’t see.
‘Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, here we are… trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.’
So it goes… Then it stops…a-hundred-of-the-best-novels325 s Kenny526 1,284

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
SLAUGHTERHOUSE - FIVE ~~ Kurt Vonnegut


My junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved Kurt Vonnegut ~~ no, he worshiped Kurt Vonnegut. It’s ironic since everything Har Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Har Don insisted I read Vonnegut's SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I was wrong. I wasn't. But, I was done with Vonnegut; there were authors I was craving to read and Vonnegut was not one of them.

Skip ahead to my joining Goodreads. Friends here, people whose opinions I truly respect, kept telling me I had to read SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. So, I broke down, and picked up a copy. And? Well, it is hard to put into words how much I loved the world ~~ no worlds ~~ inhabited by Billy Pilgrim.

I can honestly say I have not read anything SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. That's a good thing. I had just finished NORWEGIAN WOOD and LIE WITH ME, two tales of young love gone wrong so I was looking to inhabit an entirely different world. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE definitely was that world, or should I say worlds???



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is based on Vonnegut's experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is considered a modern literary masterpiece, as it should be. It propelled Vonnegut, who had been largely ignored by both critics and the public, to fame and literary acclaim. So it goes.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time," and brings together different periods of Billy's life ~~ his time as an ill-fated soldier, his post-war optometry career, and a foray in an extraterrestrial zoo where he served as an exhibit ~~ with humor and deep insight.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE was published on March 31, 1969 and became an instant and surprise hit. It spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times best seller list and went through five printings by July of 1969.



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE has not been without controversy. The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century. "It was banned from Oakland County, Michigan public schools in 1972. The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” No wonder I loved it!

“My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene," Vonnegut told the Paris Review. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?” I'm starting to this Vonnegut character!

"In 2011, Wesley Scroggins, an assistant professor at Missouri State University, called on the Republic, MO school board to ban SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. He wrote in the local paper, 'This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.' The board eventually voted 4-0 to remove the novel from the high school curriculum and its library."

In response to this ban, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis gave away 150 free copies of SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE to Republic, Missouri students who wanted to read it. As a kid who was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class because my reading choices were "morally questionable" I now officially love the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library!



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is the strange tale of Billy Pilgrim. As i said previously, Billy becomes "unstuck" from the linear nature of time and takes us along on his journey. Billy Pilgrim is the anti-everyman while engaging in love, ethics, war, science, and aliens. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE's main theme is man’s inhumanity to man throughout history.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is not without its own heartfelt themes. It is most definitely an anti-war book. It is in many ways an anti-death book. It presents a philosophy questioning the purpose of life amidst determinism. Ayn Rand would have hated SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE ~~ yet another reason to love this book.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is often insensitive and dark, and yet, you can't help but laugh at the world Vonnegut has created. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is full of contradictions that only serve to make Vonnegut's points.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE doesn't end with the death of Billy Pilgrim. That would far to simple an ending for something as brilliant as this; Billy lives on reliving this strange existence, learning and relearning the lessons of his life, unstuck from time.



So, have I revised my opinion of Vonnegut? Most definitely. Will I read more Vonnegut in the future? Yes, but selectively. Will I reread Slapstick? NEVER ...

author-author classics desert-island-books ...more316 s Leonard GayaAuthor 1 book1,037

Don’t be fooled: this is a short novel, but a pretty difficult one! Kurt Vonnegut, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, witnessed long ago one of the most dreadful (and now almost forgotten) events during the crepuscular spring of 1945, when the Allies, pretending to eradicate Nazism, utterly destroyed the German city of Dresden and killed tens of thousands of civilians (comparable to the Hiroshima bombing). This event is the bleeding core of the novel. So it goes.

What is more bewildering about this book is its disjointed time structure: very soon in the story, Billy Pilgrim, a former prisoner of war, gets “unstuck in time”, thanks to the intervention of a Tralfamadorian flying saucer. He then keeps travelling in time from one paragraph to the next, going back and forth from the days before the Dresden destruction, to his childhood years, to his postwar life as an optometrist who is writing a book about Dresden and suffers a plane crash, to the time of the Vietnam War and Ronald Reagan (the present time when Vonnegut was writing), to a geodesic sphere on the far-off planet of Tralfamadore, to Times Square, and back to the firestorm of World War II.

In doing so, we get to know a gallery of quaint yet pitiful characters Billy meets along the way: Weary the bully, Lazzaro the enraged sadist, Campbell the American Nazi, Kilgore Trout the crook sci-fi writer, the Spinozist four-dimensional Tralfamadorians, Montana the porn star, the rich and fat Valencia who dies in her car, Derby the teacher who dies before a firing squad, Jesus Christ a “nobody” who dies on a piece of wood. So it goes.

Added to this sense of disorientation (which indeed is that of Billy/Kurt), Vonnegut uses a dry, detached and fatalistic humour, when describing the most unspeakable, even unthinkable, moments of this war experience, that, if amusing, truly conveys a sense of utter despair. So it goes.favorites306 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 157

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years.

It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

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????? ?????? ????? 31/05/1399???? ???????? 07/05/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Fergus, Quondam Happy Face1,125 17.7k

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.278 s Lyn1,919 16.9k

A fun visit with cantankerous old Uncle Kurt.

Vonnegut is on a short list of my favorite authors and this is perhaps his most famous work. Not his best, but most recognizable. Billy Pilgrim is also one of his best characters.

(Kilgore Trout is his best).

I d it as I everything I have read of him. The recurring themes and characters, use of repetition for emphasis and comic relief, his irreverence and postmodern lack of sensitivity shine bright as ever here.

Vonnegut can be funny and grim on the same page, same sentence even, and not lose relevance or sincerity.

** 2018 - My wife and I visited Dresden, Germany this year and I could not help think of Vonnegut as a young POW who miraculously survived the firebombing and lived to tell the tale.

***** 2019 reread

Perhaps his most celebrated and recognized this is also considered one of his best and I’d agree. This 1969 publication was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. I think maybe only Ursula K. LeGuin could also pull that off. This was made into a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting) and the film won the Hugo and the Cannes Grand Prix.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck” in time. We all walk through life with a film of our past raging in our minds, but Vonnegut had Billy go one step further, in that he actually lives random moments in time, from his famous prison time in Dresden to his airplane crash, to his kidnapping and zoo sentence on Tralfamador.

Yes, Tralfamador. And we have another Kilgore Trout sighting, and also Elliot Rosewater and Howard W. Campbell Jr. We are surrounded and encompassed in the world Kurt made.

We must play a drinking game of sorts, every time death is mentioned we must say “so it goes”. In his introduction, we are told that this is to be a novel against war, an anti-war novel, and the ubiquitous phrase is used as an existential (and ironic) reminder that we live in each moment of time but that freewill is an intangible thing, as flimsy as dry rubber bands. The novel is also ripe with situational irony throughout, peppered with his inimitable dry humor and wit.

An observant reader will also note that when Pilgrim’s wife Valencia is in a car wreck, there is a bumper sticker that said, “Reagan for President”. Since this was first published in 1969, seven years before Reagan would be mentioned in the Republican primaries and eleven years before he would be elected, one wonders if KV had some time travel experience.

An absolute must read for his fans, a good introduction to his work, and an excellent book for all readers.

238 s Nataliya856 14.2k

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” Listen:

When you find yourself in the middle of horror, enormity that defies rational understanding, and survive despite everything, can you ever leave that place and that time behind? Can you ever let it go, and can it ever set you free? Can you help looking back, Lot’s wife, at the pain and destruction that are calling to you through time and distance? Can you ever?
“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things “Poo-tee-weet?”
“All this happened, more or less.” In 1945, at the end of brutal World War II, the Allies firebombed the German city of Dresden and almost 25,000 people died in the inferno. Kurt Vonnegut was in the city as a prisoner of war, and years later wrote his most famous book about Billy Pilgrim, an American POW in Dresden who lives through the war and survives Dresden bombing, and gets “unstuck in time”, moving between different periods of his life, seeing “his memory of the future” through the disorienting now, always now.
“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

It’s a book that to me defies explanations. It’s science fiction inasmuch as there are aliens that see all the time simultaneously. It’s an anti-war book insomuch as it shows the absolute atrocity and monstrosity of mindless destruction. “So it goes,” continues the constant refrain — and yes, so it does.

And it is a book about trauma of war that stays with you no matter what else happens, because after such enormity how can life ever be the same? How can you ever come to grips with things that happened? War is absurd, and absurdity becomes reality.
“Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don’t want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.”
This book combines farce and seriousness, surreal experiences and crushing reality, and is perfect example of comedy and tragedy combining into something much greater than the sum of its parts.


“Was it awful?”
“Sometimes.” A crazy thought now occurred to Billy. The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim—and for me, too.”
Vonnegut’s language isn’t wasted in a single line here. It’s economical and spare; it says just as much with words on the page as with the words left unspoken but implied. The sentences are short, the syntax is simple, but beyond the deceiving simplicity lies the world of complex thought and feelings it evokes in the reader. And that quiet feeling of detachment punctuated with “So it goes” at the moments of death affected me more than any number of likable identifiable-with characters of other books have. After all, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

It does it to me, this book. It gets to me.
“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”
5 stars.

—————
—————
Buddy read with Dennis.

——————
Also posted on my blog.2011-reads 2022-reads favorites ...more246 s2 comments Henry Avila497 3,281

Now for something completely different , stating it mildly ...Billy Pilgrim is not just another time travelling man, kidnapped by aliens from the unknown planet Tralfamadore and put in their zoo, he's an eyewitness to the destruction of Dresden, during World War Two. Our Billy an optometrist, (eye doctor) marries the boss's slightly overweight daughter Valencia (who no one else wanted, people are so unkind) . The couple have two disrespectful children, Barbara and Robert, the truth that he becomes very rich through his nuptials, doesn't make him a bad guy, lucky, I guess is the proper adjective . Billy is no prize either , a tall, skinny weakling, an ordinary looking man , with a peculiar tendency for nervous breakdowns... welcome to modern life. The only unique thing about him, is the fact he visits rather reluctantly different stages of his life, by way of an unexplained and altogether involuntary power , by time travel. Yet for a while at least, life doesn't become endless and boring, still not as much fun as you'd think, repeating situations again and again, ouch . IT DOESN'T MATTER HE'D RATHER NOT GO...Past, Present and Future, are all the same to poor Pilgrim, he can be at his daughter's wedding and in a few moments, be back as a P.O.W. in Dresden, Germany on February 13th, 1945, when 1,200 allied bombers from England and America, dropped thousands of explosives on the city. Causing fires to spread quickly and kill (fry) thousands, anywhere from 30,000 to 130,000 humans, nobody will ever know the exact amount. "So it goes ". Then poor Billy is back in Illium, New York, talking to his only friend, Kilgore Trout an unsuccessful science fiction writer, (75 unread novels) I understand you can get his books at the local library, if you are diligent . The cosmic flying saucer that took Mr.Pilgrim secretly to that strange world...(not sure if it's the right word for the weird planet) millions of light years away, through a wormhole, did Billy a favor. The very curious people of Tralfamadore to watch and how. They are not embarrassed by any kind of activity, providing him with a young, beautiful, and eager movie starlet Montana Wildhack, for the prisoner. The salacious activity gives the inhabitants of this planet many hours of entertainment...Billy will never really die, he will always travel through time and space forever."So it goes".224 s Garima113 1,918


I finally read Vonnegut. I finally read a war novel. And after a long time I finally read something with so many GR ratings and a decent number of which is precisely the reason I have nothing much to add to the already expressed views here. So I urge you to indulge me to state a personal anecdote. Thank You.

My Grandfather was a POW during Indo-China war and remained in confinement for some six months. By the time I got to know about it I had already watched too many movies and crammed endless number of answers about when and where such n such war was fought. But I was naïve and let’s assume innocent and someone who was yet to learn to ask the right questions. So the fact that someone so close in the family had witness something I only read in schoolbooks was utterly fascinating for me. Thus began my streak of stupid questions.

Me: Did you kill someone? Did they torture you? Did you dig some sort of tunnel to escape? And so on.

My Grandpa gave this hearty laugh he is famous for and said that I’m missing one important question: Why the war happened at first place? I thought for a while and answered: Because it always happens.

I can’t recall properly what he replied to that but it was something on the lines of this: I wish the answer changes when you’ll grow up because as of now that’s exactly how it is. War always happens.

With books Slaughterhouse-Five (Schlachthöf-fünf), it’s not the writing which matters but simply the ideas and thoughts it carries which transgresses the literary boundaries and create a place in the heart of the readers as a humble reminder that Love happens, Hate happens, Life happens, Death happens, Peace happens, War happens and sometimes Shit happens.funny-funsome-sarcasome its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt my-2-cents210 s Lala BooksandLala517 71.2k

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-gfavourites201 s Annemarie251 881

This book is an absolute masterpiece and it makes it clear in every single sentence. I think it is best to go into it without knowing too much about the plot. You just got to take it as it comes, so to say.

Before reading, I was worried that I might have trouble with the writing style. English isn't my first language and the older a book is, the more trouble I seem to have with the writing (because of obsolete words, unusual sentence structures, ect.). However, my worry was totally for nothing in this case. I found the entire book very easy to read (which is even more surprising considering the heavy topics that get dealt with). I also loved how there were many little passages and repetitions of certain phrases. It seemed fitting somehow.

I would have never guessed that the blend of a war story with Science Fiction could work so well! It gives it so much room for analysing and interpretation.
Honestly, I could write a thousand more reasons why I loved this book, but in the end I would just repeat myself, because I seriously just loved every.single.little.thing! I highly recommend everyone to give it a shot.favorites read-in-english184 s jessica2,576 43.5k

here it is. yet another book that i didnt read in school but decided to pick up later in life. and i think this is one of the rare instances where i think i would have benefited from some educational instruction to supplement my reading, because i did not seem to get this on my own.

i mean, on a surface level, i understood the anti-war tones and commentary on society in general, but anything deeper than that eluded me. so taking this at face value, i think its safe to say this is a really weird book. lol.

also, i wasnt really a fan at how women were portrayed in this. they were always noted as being ugly, or dull, or only good for sex. and i know many people might say thats vonneguts signature satire, but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

overall, i get that this story evokes much needed discussion on several important issues. however, this didnt impact me as significantly as it was probably meant to. so it goes…

? 2.5 stars189 s1 comment BlackOxford1,095 69k

The God of Accidents

Only God knows all of time as if it were the same instant; only God can annihilate the Universe; only God knows our innermost thoughts: so contends Judaic, Christian, and Muslim theology. For God, therefore, there is no cause and effect; everything just is. And because there is no cause and effect, there is no issue of free will. Free will is an idea created by human beings who can't imagine any other way to escape the mechanical inevitability of causality.

In Slaughterhouse 5, the alien race of Tralfamadorians are not just god- in their ability to transit the Universe, they are collectively God in their power over time and existence itself. The book is a subtle and very clever theology that has fundamental implications for morality and ethics.

Billy Pilgrim is the recipient of important revelations from the divine Tralfamadorians. The first revelation is that although death is a real certainty, it doesn't matter because one can revisit moments in one's life ad infinitum; resurrection is part of existence.

Second, God is neither external to the Universe, nor pantheistically distributed throughout it; rather God is a very discrete presence in the Universe, as well as in charge of it. Importantly for the fate of everyone, God is also as hapless as human beings; he can't change himself or his fate.

The most significant revelation is that Kilgore Trout, the famous science fiction writer and newspaper delivery boss, is God's prophet, whose every pronouncement is sarcastic.

It's difficult to say what portion of these revelations come directly from the divine source and what portion comes through Kilgore Trout's explorations into Billy's consciousness. Nevertheless the bottom line is clear: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” In other words, life is so screwy that it can neither be analysed nor rationalised. Not the best of all possible worlds, but the only one possible. Accident willing.american182 s Adina1,056 4,317

Update: I decided to upgrade the rating to 5*. Still on my mind after more than 1 year.

This was such a pleasant surprise. This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not it since: 1. I am not a fan of books/movies about war and 2. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those (modern or not). This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure.

Oh, I judged this book so wrongly. Actually, I d it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever.1001 classics fantasy-sf ...more171 s1 comment ????1,081 1,954

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??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???? ????????.??????-????? ????-????? ????-???? ...more173 s Darwin8u1,638 8,814

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
? Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five



I've read Slaughterhouse-Five several times and I'm still not sure I know exactly how Vonnegut pulls it off. It is primarily a postmodern, anti-war novel. It is an absurd look at war, memory, time, and humanity, but it is also gentle. Its prose emotionally feels (go ahead, pet the emotion) the tug of the tides, the heaviness of sleep, the seduction of alcohol, the dizziness of love. His prose is simple, but beautiful.

Obviously, part of the brilliance of this novel is born from the reality that Vonnegut is largely playing the notes of his own song (obviously, obscured by an unreliable narrator, time that is unstuck, and generous kidnapping aliens). It is the song of someone who has seen horrible, horrible things but still wants to dance and smile (so a Totentanz?).

Emperor, your sword won't help you out
Sceptre and crown are worthless here
I've taken you by the hand
For you must come to my dance

I had to work very much and very hard
The sweat was running down my skin
I'd to escape death nonetheless
But here I won't have any luck

It is essentially art pulled out of the tension between despair and hope, grief and celebration, love and death. It is a classic not because it has a message about war, but because it has a message about life. Vonnegut aimed at war and hit everything. 100-mccaffery 100-modern-library 1001-ante-mortem ...more168 s Fabian977 1,926

No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon.

I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than physics because it is so closely related to the complete termination of life, spirit, & earthly happiness.

"Maus" reminded me of this because it mixed humor with tragedy... something super hard to pull off because the events are real. The Children's Crusade is still being fought today & this personal statement cannot go out of style-- maybe presidents/dictators/rulers/monarchs should read it as a by law prerequisite?159 s Matthias107 377

Listen:

This reviewer is stuck in time. He is unable to escape the narrow confines of the invisible, intangible machinery mercilessly directing his life from a beginning towards an end. The walls surrounding him are dotted with windows looking out on darkened memories and foggy expectations, easing the sense of claustrophobia but offering no way out. The ceiling is crushing down on this man while he paces frantically through other people's lives and memories in hopes of shaping his own and forgetting the enormity of oblivion looming above his head. He reads book after book after book. He reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He gets immersed, he gets lost in the pages. He smiles. He wonders. He tumbles. He laughs a laugh that seems to come from somewhere deep within him, telling him that everything is beautiful. A laugh that shoots up from a dark place and illuminates the universe, bathing it in colour, showing all the hidden threads in a fraction of a second. The man is consoled, recognizing that fraction as an eternity. He closes the book and looks around him. The space got bigger, the windows show a clearer picture. He sees his situation with a new light emanating from his own eyes and, looking up, notices the oppressive ceiling is no longer there. It made way for the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes painted with stars and clouds. He ruminates on this new canvas for his thoughts as a bird flies by and calls to him.
Poo-tee-weet. favorites my- out-of-the-box-166 s Cecily1,198 4,594

A strange and intriguing book that I found very hard to rate: a mixture of wartime memoir and sci fi - occasionally harrowing, sometimes funny and other times thought-provoking.

PLOT
It is the episodic story of Billy Pilgrim, a small town American boy, who is a POW in the second world war, later becomes a successful optometrist and who occasionally and accidentally travels in time to other periods of his life, so he has "memories of the future". Oh, he also gets abducted by aliens, along with some furniture. "So it goes." (That is the catchphrase of the book, and I found rather annoying after the umpteenth time. It's used in Philip K Dick's "Ubik" (review here), which I assumed was a nod to Vonnegut, until I discovered both were published in the same year).

It starts with an old man reminiscing about his life. He is asked about the point of writing an anti-war book, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" After that, it jumps about, much as Billy does, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time... he is in a constant state of stage fright".

The most thought-provoking bits for me were Billy's mother who tried "to construct a life that makes sense from things she found in gift shops", the bathos with which some war events were described (e.g. being executed for stealing a teapot), and the alien Tralfamadorian's multi-dimensional and multi-sexual world. For instance, they have five sexes, but their differences were in the fourth dimension and they couldn't imagine how time looks to Billy (they also told him that seven sexes were essential for human reproduction!).

MESSAGE
A main message is surprisingly positive: if we could only see or feel the fourth dimension, we would realise that "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past".

SPOONS
Spoons are mentioned oddly often, as a description of how people lie (lovers or fallen soldiers). Then, near the end, actual spoons are briefly important. I have no idea whether this is significant.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Matthias on his excellent review (read it here), I have, not an answer, but a great spoon reference in The Matrix:
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon."
Spoon Boy

RELATED BOOKS
It has strong links with several other books: as it's Vonnegut, the "fictitious" sci fi writer, Kilgore Trout, gets several mentions.

The mode of time travel clearly influenced Octavia Butler's Kindred, review here,
and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, review here.

When he watches a WW2 film in reverse, it's very Amis's Time's Arrow, review here.

For a more linguistic and philosophical take on the implications of Tralfamadorians living in all time, simultaneously, see the heptapods in Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, review here.

Also compare it with the Borges short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, which is in The Book of Sand, review here


It also left me wanting to read a Tralfamadorian book with its simultaneous threads, "no beginning, no middle, no end... What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time", which is surely what Vonnegut was trying to create for mere human readers.



scifi-future-speculative-fict time-travel usa-and-canada164 s TK421571 279

There are only a few books that I ever really try to revisit. Sherlock Holmes and his stories are one. Some Shakespeare. And Slaughterhouse-Five.

I have read this book every year since my first reading almost ten years ago. I read it as an undergraduate; I read it as a graduate student. I've written three or four papers about it. And, yes, I have tried to pawn this book off on as many people as I could over the years.

You see, this book does something to me whenever I read it. It takes me places. Sure there is the time travel, other-world element to the novel, but the places it takes me are not physical in nature. I can't rightly say that they are spiritual either. Basically, the best way I can describe it is where I am taken is if my heart, mind, soul, education, fears, desires, and dreams were all placed in a blender and set to liquefy. And then this slosh of material is constructed into whatever semblance of a structure can be created from this amalgam.

This novel gets me to question not only life, but what it means that I was the lucky sperm to reach the egg, or that I was the lucky egg that was implanted. Oh dear, I fear I am convoluting what it is I am trying to say.

Okay, here goes: This book questions war. It questions as to why humans feel it is imperative to destroy. It questions what it might be to live a completely different life than the one you live now. But it doesn't try to give bullshit answers. In fact, it really doesn't try to give answers to anything. And since this book is based on actual experiences Vonnegut suffered during WWII, it might be better said that this novel is really a science fiction memoir.

Dammit, I am screwing this up. I cannot seem to say it is that I want to say.

Enough already! Read the book. Or don't read the book. I know what it does to me.

So it goes.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDEED
sci-fi163 s Shannon 1,216 2,348

Contains spoilers
Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man called Billy Pilgrim who time-travels frequently. He was in the Second World War and, captured, was sent to Dresden to work in a malt syrup factory before the city was bombed. He studied optometry and had a nervous breakdown. He married the daughter of a rich optometrist, and became rich as well. He was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a young porn actress, Montana Wildhack, whom they also abducted. He had a daughter called Barbara and a son called Robert. He was in a plane crash that killed everyone except him and the co-pilot. Rushing to the hospital in frantic worry, his wife Valencia dies in a car accident. He gets to meet his favourite author, an unsuccessful sci-fi writer called Kilgore Trout. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the name of the building where the American POWs lived in in Dresden.

Because the narration jumps around as frequently as Billy does, you learn everything early on and then simply revisit it all. The fractured narrative is worse than watching ads in a commercial break, or those horrible pop songs where the scenes and costumes change every two seconds - it gives you a headache. It's extremely boring, and hollow, and unsatisfying.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know. But I do time-travel stories. Billy is nothing Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. For a start, not even a second seems to pass in "real" time while he is travelling - no one ever notices. It seems less time-travelling than reliving the past, present and future of your life, all at once, because it's his consciousness that does the travelling. What isn't clear, at all, is which is the real Billy? He moves so much, you have to wonder how he doesn't become completely dislodged from his own corporeal self and go mad.

The time-travelling predates the abduction-by-aliens, but the aliens themselves see the past, present and future simultaneously, and teach Billy their philosophy of not really caring about anything, since nothing can be changed etc. etc. Fatalism.

I think I hated this book, but not quite. Hate is a strong emotion and I don't think it brought that out in me. It wasn't even frustrating, nor even particularly confusing, though the repetition of the Tralfamadorian expression "so it goes" was so irritating I saw red a few times. The bits about the 100 American POWs being welcomed by the British POWs in a German prison camp was delightful, though boldly stereotyped, and I loved the excerpts from the work on American soldiers and prisoners-of-war by the American-turned-Nazi, forget his name, something Campbell. A lot of it - and it's a small, short book - could easily be skipped. The temptation was very strong.

In short, it's a very "postmodern" story, and all things postmodern, it's impractical, disjointed, a bit wanky, tries too hard, is extremely out-dated and, at the end of the day, rather useless. Vonnegut is also very heavy-handed and bangs you on the head with his messages. It doesn't really inspire me to read more of Vonnegut's work. I guess he's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of story-teller.2008 history not-worth-it ...more161 s Bram102 302

This novel has a pretty basic and consistent structure: a few paragraphs of humorous (I think) writing that has the presumed purpose of loosening you up before you get to the sucker-punch paragraph that contains something disturbing/death-related followed by "so it goes." And if the "so it goes" wasn't there to remind you that this is the part where death happens, Vonnegut hammers the point home by relaying it an inhumanly cool, dry, and nonchalant manner. How coy and provocative. Maybe Vonnegut could have helped the reader along a little more with a footnote: "See what I did there? By having my narrator relate stories of war and death in an apathetic manner, I made you really think about these issues. Didn't I? Huh? Huh?" Yes, we get it, Kurt.

Part way through reading this book, I was sharing my disappointment with a friend who mentioned that Vonnegut, the narrator, had actually witnessed the Dresden bombings. This apologia left me momentarily chastened as I considered the sobering impetus for the story. Then I mentally slapped myself for even considering that sympathy could cover for the stylistic bludgeoning that Vonnegut inflicted. I suppose there was a well thought out reason for making the prose stuttering and choppy, but I can't imagine what that would actually be (nor would I care to). Interestingly enough, Vonnegut may have been aware of this stylistic shortcoming: speaking of Billy's favorite obscure sci-fi author, he writes that "Trout's prose is frightful. Only his ideas are good." Kilgore Trout and his writing apparently feature in other Vonnegut books, and a Washington Post reviewer in the mid 70s contended that "Trout's prose is at least as good as Vonnegut's." Exactly.

And were the philosophical musings on time and fate, revealed primarily through unimaginative and silly sci-fi ramblings, supposed to be novel or even vaguely interesting? It's he took Tolstoy's ruminations on fate and free will in War and Peace and then removed all the complexities and internal dissonance.

In the second half of the story, I did find myself mildly interested in what was happening. Perhaps I became accustomed to the writing or the pain just dulled after a while. Regardless, this book crossed the overrated line so egregiously that I can't muster a second star. Heavy-handed, prosaic, unfunny. So it goes.
2009151 s J.L. Sutton666 1,087

At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five (now read 5 times) makes it difficult to take seriously.



However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore (and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward). Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time (and how this impacts perceptions of life and death). Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful. I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other . You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps (which are taken to possibly irrational extremes). In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting...And so it goes! 144 s Baba3,774 1,178

I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, , 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I d it. I d the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I d the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even d the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I d the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I d the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.
historical-fiction modern-fiction north-american ...more803 s11 comments SimeonAuthor 1 book401

There are some terrible of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly odious sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.

This is usually based on the following quote.
"It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden.
"I know," said Billy.
"That's war."
"I know. I'm not complaining"
"It must have been hell on the ground."
"It was," said Billy Pilgrim.
"Pity the men who had to do it."
"I do."
"You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground."
"It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings Billy exterminated.

On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. <- passive acceptance

The entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything.

It can't be prevented. It can't be helped.

You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events?

Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes.


Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it?

We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them.apocalypse classic literature ...more1,558 s1 comment Stephanie *Eff your feelings*239 1,319

I miss Kurt Vonnegut.

He hasn't been gone all that long. Of course he isn't gone, yet he is gone. He has always been alive and he will always be dead. So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-five is next to impossible to explain, let alone review, but here I am. And here I go.

What is it about?

It's about war.
It's about love and hate.
It's about post traumatic stress.
It's about sanity and insanity.
It's about aliens (not the illegal kind, the spacey kind).
It's about life.
It's about death.
so it goes.

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

This is how I live my life. This is how I get through the day. Most days I am successful, some days I'm not. Today is one of the "not" days. so many Americans these days, I feel I'm in a rut. so many Americans I don't understand why I am where I am. This was not the plan. This was not what I had in mind......

Oh poor me....boo hoo.

This book. This book got me thinking. So much about life sucks, true, but not many of us want to give up on it that easy. Why? because of the "good ones". And what makes "good ones" is our ability to create and enjoy creating.....at least I think so.

"Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
— Joss Whedon

If you make something, a painting, a poem, a novel, a good meal, a person.....you continue to live even after death. I think that's what Mr. Vonnegut was getting at. Maybe.

At least that is how he has remained alive for me.
favorites lit re-read ...more1,212 s1 comment emma2,122 67.3k

welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE.

it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment, a project by which i take on classics i've been procrastinating reading in itty bitty sections to make them seem manageable.

this one isn't long, but i did only add it to my want to read list because i somehow have a bookmark that says "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" and i feel a poseur.

so similar in impact.

let's get into it.


CHAPTER 1
i think this book has 10 chapters, so i'll just read one a day till it's done and call it the world's worst project selection in terms of accuracy.

to be honest i just want an excuse to read it immediately.


CHAPTER 2
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

i mean. holy moley.


CHAPTER 3
this book has a character who briefly appears and in his short time with us says that if you're writing an anti-war book, you may as well write an anti-glacier book for how effective it will be. both war and glaciers are here intended as timeless and permanent parts of human life.

with climate change now making glaciers a much more impeachable concept, this statement acts as one of strange and ironic and twisted hope.


CHAPTER 4
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

if i have to get abducted by aliens i hope they're also wise.


CHAPTER 5
it's always fun to see another book you've enjoyed or want to read mentioned in a book you're actively reading and enjoying. a special guest star appearance.


CHAPTER 6
do you know the meme where a book / movie / tv show / romping good time / limited series / human life has to end when they say the title?

anyway. this book would've just ended.


CHAPTER 7
one of those books where you're "i could write a whole paper about this" every other page.


CHAPTER 8
this book is somewhat unique in antiwar books for its admission that war is intended to make shells out of heroic people, and that "one of its effects" is to prevent people from being "characters."

it seems there is an impulse to think antiwar media will be more effective if this truth is ignored, but i've never found that to be the case. the most disturbing part of war, after all, is its anti-humanity.


CHAPTER 9
a while back my boyfriend was flipping through my copy of this book and laughed pretty hard, but i didn't ask why because he appeared to be fairly close to the end and i didn't want to be spoiled.

i have to say, i gave him more literary benefit of the doubt than he was entitled to for laughing at what i now realize was a drawing of boobs.


CHAPTER 10
welp.


OVERALL
this book was mind melting and funny and smart and touching and painful, as was realizing that the quote i love so much that it inspired me to read this book is not meant sincerely.

not everything is beautiful. a hell of a lot hurts. we shouldn't respond to death with nonchalance—we should never accept that that's how it has to go, not all of the time, not right then. war is evil, and things mean things, and we should keep life close to us even when it's tempting to release it, to pull your hand back as if from a hot stove.

and the hurting makes the beautiful more beautiful anyway.
rating: 55-stars classics favorites-2023 ...more498 s13 comments Sean Barrs 1,122 46.7k

Every so often you read a book, a book that takes everything you thought created an excellent novel and tears it to pieces; it then sets it on fire and throws it out the window in a display of pure individual brilliance. That is how I felt when I read this jumbled and absurd, yet fantastic, novel.

The book has no structure or at the very least a perceivable one: it’s all over the place. But, it works so well. It cements the book’s message and purpose underlining its meaning. Indeed, this book is an anti-war novel, which is asserted (in part) through its random and confusing organisation. The story is “jumbled and jangled” such as the meaning of war. It appears pointless to the reader, again alluding to the meaning of war. It also suggests that after the war a soldier’s life is in ruins and has no clear direction, which can be seen with the sad case of Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.

Billy Pilgrim is a poor tortured soul who after the fire-bombing of Dresden is in a state of flux. His mind cannot remain in the present and darts back and forth in time the narrative. He was never the most assertive of men, and after the war became a shadow of his already meek self. The war has left him delusional, which is manifested by his abduction by aliens. This may or may not have happened. Vonnegut leaves it up to the reader to decide. What decision they make effects what genre the novel belongs to.

Is it science fiction?

If Billy was abducted by aliens then this is sci-fi, but if it is a figment of his imagination then this becomes something much deeper. It’s up to the reader how they interpret it, but I personally believe that he wasn’t abducted. I think he made it up, unconsciously, as a coping strategy for the effects of war, and that the author has used it as a tool to raise questions of the futility of free will, but more importantly to further establish the anti-war theme.

Vonnegut draws on a multitude of sources to establish this further, such as the presidential address of Truman. He ironically suggests that the A-bomb, whilst devastating, is no worse than ordinary war; he points out the fact that the fire-bombing of Dresden killed more than the nuking of Hiroshima. Through this he uses Billy Pilgrim’s life as a metaphor for what war for the effects of war on the human state.

So it goes.

Vonnegut himself is a character within the narrative as the life of Billy Pilgrim is, in part, an autobiographical statement. The narrator addresses the reader and informs them of this. He tells them that this all happened more or less. This establishes the black humour towards war and the inconsequential deaths of those that are in it. Hence the motif “so it goes” at each, and every, mention of death whether large or small. He ends the book on the line “poo-te-weet.” He even tells the reader he is going to do this, but at the same time demonstrates that there is nothing intelligible to be said about war.

I warn you, if you’ve not read this, it is one of the most bizarre books you will ever read. The main character time travels, in his mind, and has no real present state. The narrative initially appears random and completely confusing. But, once you reach the end you’ll see this book for what it is: the most individual, and unique, statement against war that will ever be written.

_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________5-star-reads reviewed-for-fantasy-book-review sci-fi461 s1 comment Kirstie262 137

I read this book first in 1999 when my grandfather passed away. It was a bit of a coincidence as his funeral occurred between a Primate Anatomy exam and a paper for my Experimental Fiction class on Slaughterhouse Five. I was frantically trying to remember the names of all kinds of bones when I picked this up in the other hand and tried to wrap my head around it.


Basically, Vonnegut has written the only Tralfamadorian novel I can think of. These beings, most undoubtedly inspired in Billy Pilgrim's head by the scattered science fiction plots of Kilgore Trout, experience time as a continuum that is constantly occurring...and when they look at time, even though in their version of history, the world is in a constant state of being destroyed for example, they choose to see the things that make them happy...the good moments.

What Billy learns from these creatures is that each traumatic event that has happened in his life fits very precisely into a state of meticulous nature. It has always happened and always will happen and so it goes (on and on and on). What Billy Pilgrim truly experiences over and over in his life is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He exists throughout his memories traveling back and forth with the knowledge of what will happen and how precise it all is. Dresden is bombed in every moment and his friend Derby is put in front of a firing squad. At every second, he is the only survivor of a plane wreck, he is getting married, and he is fighting a Children's Crusade. It's the only way he can look at the despair that has happened and make sense of it.

When my grandfather died and I read this, I felt as if it was just what I needed because I could escape back into time and remember the good memories of my grandfather...if they existed (even if in some fourth dimension) then he was just as dead as he was alive and eating peanut butter chocolate ice cream. At the same time my grandfather had a heart attack, I was watching him play cards with my grandma at the kitchen table. But which one to think of? Well, that was easy. Death can't be prevented and so it goes but you can always try to change which moment you live in. It's a little bit different than a memory and if you go far into it, you'll end up Billy Pilgrim, which is to say, you will go insane because the rest of the world sees time as linear and counts seconds and minutes and hours.

Once and awhile, it doesn't hurt. I re-read this again on the plane rides home and back before and after my grandmother's funeral on Monday and last night. My grandma was a strong and intelligent woman and she always read everything she saw. My recent memories of my grandmother were of her at the holidays. She always had her mind but her physical condition had deteriorated and she was dependent on oxygen. It made me sad to think of her this a bit.

It's really hard for me to think that my grandma is no more but then I tell myself...well, it's silly for me to keep crying on and on about this. My grandma is right now reading at 4am in her living room chair and I am a child creeping down the stairs hoping she's still up. She is telling me that one day I'll come around and green onions. She is reminding me to keep my feet off of the davenport and about being "tickled" by something. She lives in a jungle of houseplants and watches musicals all of the time, always pointing out when some distant relative of mine appears briefly in The Greatest Show on Earth. My grandma can't be dead and be doing all of those things, can she? It doesn't make sense. She will always be alive in some moments just I will always be seven and nine and twenty eight and perhaps past thirty and forty. So, she'll always be here.

I just wish I could dream about her.
388 s Vit Babenco1,560 4,358

Kurt Vonnegut always had his own unique attitude to society and history. Therefore Slaughterhouse-Five is a special story of man and his place in war and peace.
Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
War is a wonderful thing – it presents a man with a gift of madness. And madness is even a more wonderful thing – it allows a man to travel in time, to go through space to distant planets, to see things others can’t see.
‘Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, here we are… trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.’
So it goes… Then it stops…a-hundred-of-the-best-novels325 s Kenny526 1,284

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
SLAUGHTERHOUSE - FIVE ~~ Kurt Vonnegut


My junior year of college, I had a roommate, Don, his nickname was Har Don ~~ which he hated; Har Don loved Kurt Vonnegut ~~ no, he worshiped Kurt Vonnegut. It’s ironic since everything Har Don believed in was the antithesis of what Vonnegut stood for. Har Don insisted I read Vonnegut's SLAPSTICK. He told me it was the greatest novel ever written. I did, and it isn't. He insisted I was wrong. I wasn't. But, I was done with Vonnegut; there were authors I was craving to read and Vonnegut was not one of them.

Skip ahead to my joining Goodreads. Friends here, people whose opinions I truly respect, kept telling me I had to read SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. So, I broke down, and picked up a copy. And? Well, it is hard to put into words how much I loved the world ~~ no worlds ~~ inhabited by Billy Pilgrim.

I can honestly say I have not read anything SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. That's a good thing. I had just finished NORWEGIAN WOOD and LIE WITH ME, two tales of young love gone wrong so I was looking to inhabit an entirely different world. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE definitely was that world, or should I say worlds???



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is based on Vonnegut's experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is considered a modern literary masterpiece, as it should be. It propelled Vonnegut, who had been largely ignored by both critics and the public, to fame and literary acclaim. So it goes.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE follows Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time," and brings together different periods of Billy's life ~~ his time as an ill-fated soldier, his post-war optometry career, and a foray in an extraterrestrial zoo where he served as an exhibit ~~ with humor and deep insight.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE was published on March 31, 1969 and became an instant and surprise hit. It spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times best seller list and went through five printings by July of 1969.



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE has not been without controversy. The American Library Association listed the book as the 46th most banned or challenged book of the first decade of the 21st century. "It was banned from Oakland County, Michigan public schools in 1972. The circuit judge there accused the novel of being “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” No wonder I loved it!

“My books are being thrown out of school libraries all over the country—because they’re supposedly obscene," Vonnegut told the Paris Review. "I’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?” I'm starting to this Vonnegut character!

"In 2011, Wesley Scroggins, an assistant professor at Missouri State University, called on the Republic, MO school board to ban SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE. He wrote in the local paper, 'This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.' The board eventually voted 4-0 to remove the novel from the high school curriculum and its library."

In response to this ban, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis gave away 150 free copies of SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE to Republic, Missouri students who wanted to read it. As a kid who was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class because my reading choices were "morally questionable" I now officially love the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library!



SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is the strange tale of Billy Pilgrim. As i said previously, Billy becomes "unstuck" from the linear nature of time and takes us along on his journey. Billy Pilgrim is the anti-everyman while engaging in love, ethics, war, science, and aliens. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE's main theme is man’s inhumanity to man throughout history.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is not without its own heartfelt themes. It is most definitely an anti-war book. It is in many ways an anti-death book. It presents a philosophy questioning the purpose of life amidst determinism. Ayn Rand would have hated SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE ~~ yet another reason to love this book.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is often insensitive and dark, and yet, you can't help but laugh at the world Vonnegut has created. SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE is full of contradictions that only serve to make Vonnegut's points.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE -- FIVE doesn't end with the death of Billy Pilgrim. That would far to simple an ending for something as brilliant as this; Billy lives on reliving this strange existence, learning and relearning the lessons of his life, unstuck from time.



So, have I revised my opinion of Vonnegut? Most definitely. Will I read more Vonnegut in the future? Yes, but selectively. Will I reread Slapstick? NEVER ...

author-author classics desert-island-books ...more316 s Leonard GayaAuthor 1 book1,037

Don’t be fooled: this is a short novel, but a pretty difficult one! Kurt Vonnegut, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, witnessed long ago one of the most dreadful (and now almost forgotten) events during the crepuscular spring of 1945, when the Allies, pretending to eradicate Nazism, utterly destroyed the German city of Dresden and killed tens of thousands of civilians (comparable to the Hiroshima bombing). This event is the bleeding core of the novel. So it goes.

What is more bewildering about this book is its disjointed time structure: very soon in the story, Billy Pilgrim, a former prisoner of war, gets “unstuck in time”, thanks to the intervention of a Tralfamadorian flying saucer. He then keeps travelling in time from one paragraph to the next, going back and forth from the days before the Dresden destruction, to his childhood years, to his postwar life as an optometrist who is writing a book about Dresden and suffers a plane crash, to the time of the Vietnam War and Ronald Reagan (the present time when Vonnegut was writing), to a geodesic sphere on the far-off planet of Tralfamadore, to Times Square, and back to the firestorm of World War II.

In doing so, we get to know a gallery of quaint yet pitiful characters Billy meets along the way: Weary the bully, Lazzaro the enraged sadist, Campbell the American Nazi, Kilgore Trout the crook sci-fi writer, the Spinozist four-dimensional Tralfamadorians, Montana the porn star, the rich and fat Valencia who dies in her car, Derby the teacher who dies before a firing squad, Jesus Christ a “nobody” who dies on a piece of wood. So it goes.

Added to this sense of disorientation (which indeed is that of Billy/Kurt), Vonnegut uses a dry, detached and fatalistic humour, when describing the most unspeakable, even unthinkable, moments of this war experience, that, if amusing, truly conveys a sense of utter despair. So it goes.favorites306 s Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 157

(Book 375 from 1001 books) - Slaughterhouse-Five = The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years.

It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. A central event is Pilgrim's surviving the Allies' firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner-of-war. This was an event in Vonnegut's own life, and the novel is considered semi-autobiographical.

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????? ?????? ????? 31/05/1399???? ???????? 07/05/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Fergus, Quondam Happy Face1,125 17.7k

Life can be so unutterably sad.

That in a nutshell was my early life; and Kurt Vonnegut’s life.

And young Billy’s too.

But Vonnegut was American, and so was I (by birth at least) - and so is Billy Pilgrim.

And Americans always jazz up their sadness.

And that’s what they all did to get themselves through the War. Big Bands became the perfect anodyne to stark terror.

And zany behaviour - my own, Vonnegut’s and Billy’s - became the preferred personal way for American bullied innocents to jazz up their sadness.
***

Living in a meat cooler under a city while your country is Decimating that city can only leave a traumatic scar.

BIG TIME.

So you jazz it up big time yourself - you start to prefer your mini-vacations on Trafalmador over more mundane hot spots.

, for example, foxholes.

So it goes, with Kurt and Billy, and me, and with cringing, bullied kids us EVERYWHERE. Because where there is carrion us there the crows gather. And crows don’t even chew you before swallowing.

And they have gizzards to take care of your bones.

You know, had Kurt Vonnegut been a believer he might have considerably mollified his trauma.

Or even reading books by and about declared Aspies, I do now, may have helped do the trick.

But alas, dear Kurt, back then they shot first and asked questions later.

If they’d have heard you were an Aspie back then they would have leered and just told you to keep marching and shut up.

No wonder their Jazz was in as much demand as a good, stiff drink back then.

For you too, Kurt - you picked up their old-time jazzy zaniness...

And just marched on into doomed Dresden -

Dreaming of long-lost Tralfamador.278 s Lyn1,919 16.9k

A fun visit with cantankerous old Uncle Kurt.

Vonnegut is on a short list of my favorite authors and this is perhaps his most famous work. Not his best, but most recognizable. Billy Pilgrim is also one of his best characters.

(Kilgore Trout is his best).

I d it as I everything I have read of him. The recurring themes and characters, use of repetition for emphasis and comic relief, his irreverence and postmodern lack of sensitivity shine bright as ever here.

Vonnegut can be funny and grim on the same page, same sentence even, and not lose relevance or sincerity.

** 2018 - My wife and I visited Dresden, Germany this year and I could not help think of Vonnegut as a young POW who miraculously survived the firebombing and lived to tell the tale.

***** 2019 reread

Perhaps his most celebrated and recognized this is also considered one of his best and I’d agree. This 1969 publication was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. I think maybe only Ursula K. LeGuin could also pull that off. This was made into a 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill (who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting) and the film won the Hugo and the Cannes Grand Prix.

Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck” in time. We all walk through life with a film of our past raging in our minds, but Vonnegut had Billy go one step further, in that he actually lives random moments in time, from his famous prison time in Dresden to his airplane crash, to his kidnapping and zoo sentence on Tralfamador.

Yes, Tralfamador. And we have another Kilgore Trout sighting, and also Elliot Rosewater and Howard W. Campbell Jr. We are surrounded and encompassed in the world Kurt made.

We must play a drinking game of sorts, every time death is mentioned we must say “so it goes”. In his introduction, we are told that this is to be a novel against war, an anti-war novel, and the ubiquitous phrase is used as an existential (and ironic) reminder that we live in each moment of time but that freewill is an intangible thing, as flimsy as dry rubber bands. The novel is also ripe with situational irony throughout, peppered with his inimitable dry humor and wit.

An observant reader will also note that when Pilgrim’s wife Valencia is in a car wreck, there is a bumper sticker that said, “Reagan for President”. Since this was first published in 1969, seven years before Reagan would be mentioned in the Republican primaries and eleven years before he would be elected, one wonders if KV had some time travel experience.

An absolute must read for his fans, a good introduction to his work, and an excellent book for all readers.

238 s Nataliya856 14.2k

“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” Listen:

When you find yourself in the middle of horror, enormity that defies rational understanding, and survive despite everything, can you ever leave that place and that time behind? Can you ever let it go, and can it ever set you free? Can you help looking back, Lot’s wife, at the pain and destruction that are calling to you through time and distance? Can you ever?
“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things “Poo-tee-weet?”
“All this happened, more or less.” In 1945, at the end of brutal World War II, the Allies firebombed the German city of Dresden and almost 25,000 people died in the inferno. Kurt Vonnegut was in the city as a prisoner of war, and years later wrote his most famous book about Billy Pilgrim, an American POW in Dresden who lives through the war and survives Dresden bombing, and gets “unstuck in time”, moving between different periods of his life, seeing “his memory of the future” through the disorienting now, always now.
“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”

It’s a book that to me defies explanations. It’s science fiction inasmuch as there are aliens that see all the time simultaneously. It’s an anti-war book insomuch as it shows the absolute atrocity and monstrosity of mindless destruction. “So it goes,” continues the constant refrain — and yes, so it does.

And it is a book about trauma of war that stays with you no matter what else happens, because after such enormity how can life ever be the same? How can you ever come to grips with things that happened? War is absurd, and absurdity becomes reality.
“Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don’t want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.”
This book combines farce and seriousness, surreal experiences and crushing reality, and is perfect example of comedy and tragedy combining into something much greater than the sum of its parts.


“Was it awful?”
“Sometimes.” A crazy thought now occurred to Billy. The truth of it startled him. It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim—and for me, too.”
Vonnegut’s language isn’t wasted in a single line here. It’s economical and spare; it says just as much with words on the page as with the words left unspoken but implied. The sentences are short, the syntax is simple, but beyond the deceiving simplicity lies the world of complex thought and feelings it evokes in the reader. And that quiet feeling of detachment punctuated with “So it goes” at the moments of death affected me more than any number of likable identifiable-with characters of other books have. After all, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

It does it to me, this book. It gets to me.
“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”
5 stars.

—————
—————
Buddy read with Dennis.

——————
Also posted on my blog.2011-reads 2022-reads favorites ...more246 s2 comments Henry Avila497 3,281

Now for something completely different , stating it mildly ...Billy Pilgrim is not just another time travelling man, kidnapped by aliens from the unknown planet Tralfamadore and put in their zoo, he's an eyewitness to the destruction of Dresden, during World War Two. Our Billy an optometrist, (eye doctor) marries the boss's slightly overweight daughter Valencia (who no one else wanted, people are so unkind) . The couple have two disrespectful children, Barbara and Robert, the truth that he becomes very rich through his nuptials, doesn't make him a bad guy, lucky, I guess is the proper adjective . Billy is no prize either , a tall, skinny weakling, an ordinary looking man , with a peculiar tendency for nervous breakdowns... welcome to modern life. The only unique thing about him, is the fact he visits rather reluctantly different stages of his life, by way of an unexplained and altogether involuntary power , by time travel. Yet for a while at least, life doesn't become endless and boring, still not as much fun as you'd think, repeating situations again and again, ouch . IT DOESN'T MATTER HE'D RATHER NOT GO...Past, Present and Future, are all the same to poor Pilgrim, he can be at his daughter's wedding and in a few moments, be back as a P.O.W. in Dresden, Germany on February 13th, 1945, when 1,200 allied bombers from England and America, dropped thousands of explosives on the city. Causing fires to spread quickly and kill (fry) thousands, anywhere from 30,000 to 130,000 humans, nobody will ever know the exact amount. "So it goes ". Then poor Billy is back in Illium, New York, talking to his only friend, Kilgore Trout an unsuccessful science fiction writer, (75 unread novels) I understand you can get his books at the local library, if you are diligent . The cosmic flying saucer that took Mr.Pilgrim secretly to that strange world...(not sure if it's the right word for the weird planet) millions of light years away, through a wormhole, did Billy a favor. The very curious people of Tralfamadore to watch and how. They are not embarrassed by any kind of activity, providing him with a young, beautiful, and eager movie starlet Montana Wildhack, for the prisoner. The salacious activity gives the inhabitants of this planet many hours of entertainment...Billy will never really die, he will always travel through time and space forever."So it goes".224 s Garima113 1,918


I finally read Vonnegut. I finally read a war novel. And after a long time I finally read something with so many GR ratings and a decent number of which is precisely the reason I have nothing much to add to the already expressed views here. So I urge you to indulge me to state a personal anecdote. Thank You.

My Grandfather was a POW during Indo-China war and remained in confinement for some six months. By the time I got to know about it I had already watched too many movies and crammed endless number of answers about when and where such n such war was fought. But I was naïve and let’s assume innocent and someone who was yet to learn to ask the right questions. So the fact that someone so close in the family had witness something I only read in schoolbooks was utterly fascinating for me. Thus began my streak of stupid questions.

Me: Did you kill someone? Did they torture you? Did you dig some sort of tunnel to escape? And so on.

My Grandpa gave this hearty laugh he is famous for and said that I’m missing one important question: Why the war happened at first place? I thought for a while and answered: Because it always happens.

I can’t recall properly what he replied to that but it was something on the lines of this: I wish the answer changes when you’ll grow up because as of now that’s exactly how it is. War always happens.

With books Slaughterhouse-Five (Schlachthöf-fünf), it’s not the writing which matters but simply the ideas and thoughts it carries which transgresses the literary boundaries and create a place in the heart of the readers as a humble reminder that Love happens, Hate happens, Life happens, Death happens, Peace happens, War happens and sometimes Shit happens.funny-funsome-sarcasome its-not-you-its-meta-or-gfhrytyt my-2-cents210 s Lala BooksandLala517 71.2k

This was really weirdly fantastic.

Re-read in 2020 as book 29 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge.
https://youtu.be/8CA3Ep_Z1-gfavourites201 s Annemarie251 881

This book is an absolute masterpiece and it makes it clear in every single sentence. I think it is best to go into it without knowing too much about the plot. You just got to take it as it comes, so to say.

Before reading, I was worried that I might have trouble with the writing style. English isn't my first language and the older a book is, the more trouble I seem to have with the writing (because of obsolete words, unusual sentence structures, ect.). However, my worry was totally for nothing in this case. I found the entire book very easy to read (which is even more surprising considering the heavy topics that get dealt with). I also loved how there were many little passages and repetitions of certain phrases. It seemed fitting somehow.

I would have never guessed that the blend of a war story with Science Fiction could work so well! It gives it so much room for analysing and interpretation.
Honestly, I could write a thousand more reasons why I loved this book, but in the end I would just repeat myself, because I seriously just loved every.single.little.thing! I highly recommend everyone to give it a shot.favorites read-in-english184 s jessica2,576 43.5k

here it is. yet another book that i didnt read in school but decided to pick up later in life. and i think this is one of the rare instances where i think i would have benefited from some educational instruction to supplement my reading, because i did not seem to get this on my own.

i mean, on a surface level, i understood the anti-war tones and commentary on society in general, but anything deeper than that eluded me. so taking this at face value, i think its safe to say this is a really weird book. lol.

also, i wasnt really a fan at how women were portrayed in this. they were always noted as being ugly, or dull, or only good for sex. and i know many people might say thats vonneguts signature satire, but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

overall, i get that this story evokes much needed discussion on several important issues. however, this didnt impact me as significantly as it was probably meant to. so it goes…

? 2.5 stars189 s1 comment BlackOxford1,095 69k

The God of Accidents

Only God knows all of time as if it were the same instant; only God can annihilate the Universe; only God knows our innermost thoughts: so contends Judaic, Christian, and Muslim theology. For God, therefore, there is no cause and effect; everything just is. And because there is no cause and effect, there is no issue of free will. Free will is an idea created by human beings who can't imagine any other way to escape the mechanical inevitability of causality.

In Slaughterhouse 5, the alien race of Tralfamadorians are not just god- in their ability to transit the Universe, they are collectively God in their power over time and existence itself. The book is a subtle and very clever theology that has fundamental implications for morality and ethics.

Billy Pilgrim is the recipient of important revelations from the divine Tralfamadorians. The first revelation is that although death is a real certainty, it doesn't matter because one can revisit moments in one's life ad infinitum; resurrection is part of existence.

Second, God is neither external to the Universe, nor pantheistically distributed throughout it; rather God is a very discrete presence in the Universe, as well as in charge of it. Importantly for the fate of everyone, God is also as hapless as human beings; he can't change himself or his fate.

The most significant revelation is that Kilgore Trout, the famous science fiction writer and newspaper delivery boss, is God's prophet, whose every pronouncement is sarcastic.

It's difficult to say what portion of these revelations come directly from the divine source and what portion comes through Kilgore Trout's explorations into Billy's consciousness. Nevertheless the bottom line is clear: “Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.” In other words, life is so screwy that it can neither be analysed nor rationalised. Not the best of all possible worlds, but the only one possible. Accident willing.american182 s Adina1,056 4,317

Update: I decided to upgrade the rating to 5*. Still on my mind after more than 1 year.

This was such a pleasant surprise. This book has been on my to-read list since the beginning of my activity on Goodreads and I did a good job avoiding to read it. I was sure I would not it since: 1. I am not a fan of books/movies about war and 2. I thought this science-fiction satire style was not for me. I only wanted to read it because it is a classic and I resolved to read more of those (modern or not). This book kept bumping on different lists so I could not escape its lure.

Oh, I judged this book so wrongly. Actually, I d it a lot. I thought the time travelling, the fractured prose and the detached tone of the narrator were very effective to portrait the Dresden atrocities and how to witness this can impact your life forever.1001 classics fantasy-sf ...more171 s1 comment ????1,081 1,954

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??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ???? ????????.??????-????? ????-????? ????-???? ...more173 s Darwin8u1,638 8,814

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
? Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five



I've read Slaughterhouse-Five several times and I'm still not sure I know exactly how Vonnegut pulls it off. It is primarily a postmodern, anti-war novel. It is an absurd look at war, memory, time, and humanity, but it is also gentle. Its prose emotionally feels (go ahead, pet the emotion) the tug of the tides, the heaviness of sleep, the seduction of alcohol, the dizziness of love. His prose is simple, but beautiful.

Obviously, part of the brilliance of this novel is born from the reality that Vonnegut is largely playing the notes of his own song (obviously, obscured by an unreliable narrator, time that is unstuck, and generous kidnapping aliens). It is the song of someone who has seen horrible, horrible things but still wants to dance and smile (so a Totentanz?).

Emperor, your sword won't help you out
Sceptre and crown are worthless here
I've taken you by the hand
For you must come to my dance

I had to work very much and very hard
The sweat was running down my skin
I'd to escape death nonetheless
But here I won't have any luck

It is essentially art pulled out of the tension between despair and hope, grief and celebration, love and death. It is a classic not because it has a message about war, but because it has a message about life. Vonnegut aimed at war and hit everything. 100-mccaffery 100-modern-library 1001-ante-mortem ...more168 s Fabian977 1,926

No one really introduced me to this work, despite its resonant presence in the literary canon.

I adore books that reek of marvelous postmodern perfume. This is one original, enthralling, always-relevant novel. Vonnegut is brave & cowardly because he makes the material his own, yet he is but scenery... his main character is an Everyman who is sooo affected by the Dresden bombings that he "becomes unglued from time." Yes: war is complete, utter chaos... it becomes something more powerful than physics because it is so closely related to the complete termination of life, spirit, & earthly happiness.

"Maus" reminded me of this because it mixed humor with tragedy... something super hard to pull off because the events are real. The Children's Crusade is still being fought today & this personal statement cannot go out of style-- maybe presidents/dictators/rulers/monarchs should read it as a by law prerequisite?159 s Matthias107 377

Listen:

This reviewer is stuck in time. He is unable to escape the narrow confines of the invisible, intangible machinery mercilessly directing his life from a beginning towards an end. The walls surrounding him are dotted with windows looking out on darkened memories and foggy expectations, easing the sense of claustrophobia but offering no way out. The ceiling is crushing down on this man while he paces frantically through other people's lives and memories in hopes of shaping his own and forgetting the enormity of oblivion looming above his head. He reads book after book after book. He reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. He gets immersed, he gets lost in the pages. He smiles. He wonders. He tumbles. He laughs a laugh that seems to come from somewhere deep within him, telling him that everything is beautiful. A laugh that shoots up from a dark place and illuminates the universe, bathing it in colour, showing all the hidden threads in a fraction of a second. The man is consoled, recognizing that fraction as an eternity. He closes the book and looks around him. The space got bigger, the windows show a clearer picture. He sees his situation with a new light emanating from his own eyes and, looking up, notices the oppressive ceiling is no longer there. It made way for the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes painted with stars and clouds. He ruminates on this new canvas for his thoughts as a bird flies by and calls to him.
Poo-tee-weet. favorites my- out-of-the-box-166 s Cecily1,198 4,594

A strange and intriguing book that I found very hard to rate: a mixture of wartime memoir and sci fi - occasionally harrowing, sometimes funny and other times thought-provoking.

PLOT
It is the episodic story of Billy Pilgrim, a small town American boy, who is a POW in the second world war, later becomes a successful optometrist and who occasionally and accidentally travels in time to other periods of his life, so he has "memories of the future". Oh, he also gets abducted by aliens, along with some furniture. "So it goes." (That is the catchphrase of the book, and I found rather annoying after the umpteenth time. It's used in Philip K Dick's "Ubik" (review here), which I assumed was a nod to Vonnegut, until I discovered both were published in the same year).

It starts with an old man reminiscing about his life. He is asked about the point of writing an anti-war book, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" After that, it jumps about, much as Billy does, "Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time... he is in a constant state of stage fright".

The most thought-provoking bits for me were Billy's mother who tried "to construct a life that makes sense from things she found in gift shops", the bathos with which some war events were described (e.g. being executed for stealing a teapot), and the alien Tralfamadorian's multi-dimensional and multi-sexual world. For instance, they have five sexes, but their differences were in the fourth dimension and they couldn't imagine how time looks to Billy (they also told him that seven sexes were essential for human reproduction!).

MESSAGE
A main message is surprisingly positive: if we could only see or feel the fourth dimension, we would realise that "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is very much alive in the past".

SPOONS
Spoons are mentioned oddly often, as a description of how people lie (lovers or fallen soldiers). Then, near the end, actual spoons are briefly important. I have no idea whether this is significant.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from Matthias on his excellent review (read it here), I have, not an answer, but a great spoon reference in The Matrix:
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon."
Spoon Boy

RELATED BOOKS
It has strong links with several other books: as it's Vonnegut, the "fictitious" sci fi writer, Kilgore Trout, gets several mentions.

The mode of time travel clearly influenced Octavia Butler's Kindred, review here,
and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, review here.

When he watches a WW2 film in reverse, it's very Amis's Time's Arrow, review here.

For a more linguistic and philosophical take on the implications of Tralfamadorians living in all time, simultaneously, see the heptapods in Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life, review here.

Also compare it with the Borges short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, which is in The Book of Sand, review here


It also left me wanting to read a Tralfamadorian book with its simultaneous threads, "no beginning, no middle, no end... What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time", which is surely what Vonnegut was trying to create for mere human readers.



scifi-future-speculative-fict time-travel usa-and-canada164 s TK421571 279

There are only a few books that I ever really try to revisit. Sherlock Holmes and his stories are one. Some Shakespeare. And Slaughterhouse-Five.

I have read this book every year since my first reading almost ten years ago. I read it as an undergraduate; I read it as a graduate student. I've written three or four papers about it. And, yes, I have tried to pawn this book off on as many people as I could over the years.

You see, this book does something to me whenever I read it. It takes me places. Sure there is the time travel, other-world element to the novel, but the places it takes me are not physical in nature. I can't rightly say that they are spiritual either. Basically, the best way I can describe it is where I am taken is if my heart, mind, soul, education, fears, desires, and dreams were all placed in a blender and set to liquefy. And then this slosh of material is constructed into whatever semblance of a structure can be created from this amalgam.

This novel gets me to question not only life, but what it means that I was the lucky sperm to reach the egg, or that I was the lucky egg that was implanted. Oh dear, I fear I am convoluting what it is I am trying to say.

Okay, here goes: This book questions war. It questions as to why humans feel it is imperative to destroy. It questions what it might be to live a completely different life than the one you live now. But it doesn't try to give bullshit answers. In fact, it really doesn't try to give answers to anything. And since this book is based on actual experiences Vonnegut suffered during WWII, it might be better said that this novel is really a science fiction memoir.

Dammit, I am screwing this up. I cannot seem to say it is that I want to say.

Enough already! Read the book. Or don't read the book. I know what it does to me.

So it goes.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDEED
sci-fi163 s Shannon 1,216 2,348

Contains spoilers
Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man called Billy Pilgrim who time-travels frequently. He was in the Second World War and, captured, was sent to Dresden to work in a malt syrup factory before the city was bombed. He studied optometry and had a nervous breakdown. He married the daughter of a rich optometrist, and became rich as well. He was abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a young porn actress, Montana Wildhack, whom they also abducted. He had a daughter called Barbara and a son called Robert. He was in a plane crash that killed everyone except him and the co-pilot. Rushing to the hospital in frantic worry, his wife Valencia dies in a car accident. He gets to meet his favourite author, an unsuccessful sci-fi writer called Kilgore Trout. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is the name of the building where the American POWs lived in in Dresden.

Because the narration jumps around as frequently as Billy does, you learn everything early on and then simply revisit it all. The fractured narrative is worse than watching ads in a commercial break, or those horrible pop songs where the scenes and costumes change every two seconds - it gives you a headache. It's extremely boring, and hollow, and unsatisfying.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know. But I do time-travel stories. Billy is nothing Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife. For a start, not even a second seems to pass in "real" time while he is travelling - no one ever notices. It seems less time-travelling than reliving the past, present and future of your life, all at once, because it's his consciousness that does the travelling. What isn't clear, at all, is which is the real Billy? He moves so much, you have to wonder how he doesn't become completely dislodged from his own corporeal self and go mad.

The time-travelling predates the abduction-by-aliens, but the aliens themselves see the past, present and future simultaneously, and teach Billy their philosophy of not really caring about anything, since nothing can be changed etc. etc. Fatalism.

I think I hated this book, but not quite. Hate is a strong emotion and I don't think it brought that out in me. It wasn't even frustrating, nor even particularly confusing, though the repetition of the Tralfamadorian expression "so it goes" was so irritating I saw red a few times. The bits about the 100 American POWs being welcomed by the British POWs in a German prison camp was delightful, though boldly stereotyped, and I loved the excerpts from the work on American soldiers and prisoners-of-war by the American-turned-Nazi, forget his name, something Campbell. A lot of it - and it's a small, short book - could easily be skipped. The temptation was very strong.

In short, it's a very "postmodern" story, and all things postmodern, it's impractical, disjointed, a bit wanky, tries too hard, is extremely out-dated and, at the end of the day, rather useless. Vonnegut is also very heavy-handed and bangs you on the head with his messages. It doesn't really inspire me to read more of Vonnegut's work. I guess he's a love-him-or-hate-him kind of story-teller.2008 history not-worth-it ...more161 s Bram102 302

This novel has a pretty basic and consistent structure: a few paragraphs of humorous (I think) writing that has the presumed purpose of loosening you up before you get to the sucker-punch paragraph that contains something disturbing/death-related followed by "so it goes." And if the "so it goes" wasn't there to remind you that this is the part where death happens, Vonnegut hammers the point home by relaying it an inhumanly cool, dry, and nonchalant manner. How coy and provocative. Maybe Vonnegut could have helped the reader along a little more with a footnote: "See what I did there? By having my narrator relate stories of war and death in an apathetic manner, I made you really think about these issues. Didn't I? Huh? Huh?" Yes, we get it, Kurt.

Part way through reading this book, I was sharing my disappointment with a friend who mentioned that Vonnegut, the narrator, had actually witnessed the Dresden bombings. This apologia left me momentarily chastened as I considered the sobering impetus for the story. Then I mentally slapped myself for even considering that sympathy could cover for the stylistic bludgeoning that Vonnegut inflicted. I suppose there was a well thought out reason for making the prose stuttering and choppy, but I can't imagine what that would actually be (nor would I care to). Interestingly enough, Vonnegut may have been aware of this stylistic shortcoming: speaking of Billy's favorite obscure sci-fi author, he writes that "Trout's prose is frightful. Only his ideas are good." Kilgore Trout and his writing apparently feature in other Vonnegut books, and a Washington Post reviewer in the mid 70s contended that "Trout's prose is at least as good as Vonnegut's." Exactly.

And were the philosophical musings on time and fate, revealed primarily through unimaginative and silly sci-fi ramblings, supposed to be novel or even vaguely interesting? It's he took Tolstoy's ruminations on fate and free will in War and Peace and then removed all the complexities and internal dissonance.

In the second half of the story, I did find myself mildly interested in what was happening. Perhaps I became accustomed to the writing or the pain just dulled after a while. Regardless, this book crossed the overrated line so egregiously that I can't muster a second star. Heavy-handed, prosaic, unfunny. So it goes.
2009151 s J.L. Sutton666 1,087

At first, the absurdity of Slaughterhouse-Five (now read 5 times) makes it difficult to take seriously.



However, part of Vonnegut's magic is that this absurdity becomes impossible to ignore (and increasingly powerful as the narrative moves forward). Vonnegut actually wants you to focus on the absurd. It works itself not only into the narrative, where our protagonist becomes unstuck in time and is abducted by aliens, but also into questions about war, civilization, identity and theories of time (and how this impacts perceptions of life and death). Slaughterhouse-Five didn't grab me right away, but as I continued to read, Vonnegut's explorations become more intriguing and insightful. I know I've commented on Vonnegut's perspective on the world in other . You wonder how Vonnegut made the leaps he did and when you think about them there's something completely rational about these leaps (which are taken to possibly irrational extremes). In any event, Slaughterhouse-Five is a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend; Vonnegut's unique perspective continues to be fresh and interesting...And so it goes! 144 s Baba3,774 1,178

/// gentle reminder that this is not the time to read this book ///

This is my first re-read of 2017, and I don't regret it one bit. When I first read this book three years ago, I really d it. Sadly, I didn't write my thoughts down in an elaborate way back in the day, but I know for sure, that I didn't read critically then. Upon my re-read of this book, I honestly don't have good things to say. I am aware that some of my criticism is not a critique of the book itself, but about its perception, and how it is, up to this day, held up as the one true book about race relations in the United States of America.

And that really infiruates me. This book was written by a white woman, from a white perspective, about white characters, for a white audience. This book is a pat on the back for the white middle class. This book gives comfort to the white middle class. Comfort that they, especially back in the 1960s, didn't need, and allow me to be so bold, didn't deserve.

Harper Lee's focus is purely white. While the white characters in this book are the subjects, who take action into their own hands, who suffer and make sacrifices, the Black characters in this book are objects. They have little to no agency. Things happen to them. They are harmless, defenseless, and just there – waiting for the white knight hero, Atticus Finch, to save them. This book is a disgrace in the face of the Black liberation movements that existed back in the day, and the solidarity within Black communities. Black people stood up for themselves and fought for their rights, and only due to their voices, their protests, their sit-ins, their marches, their demonstrations, their conferences, was racial segregation made unconstitutional in the United States.

Black people, back then and now, know that Atticus Finch doesn't exist. And because no one put in better words than the one and only James Baldwin, I will quote a passage from one of his amazing interviews on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968. One could say that this is Baldwin's response to the cry of "not all white people": James Baldwin: I don't know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. [...] I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me - that doesn't matter - but I know I'm not [allowed] in their union. I don't know whether the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don't know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools we have to go to. Now, this is the evidence. You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.This right here is what I'm talking about. To Kill A Mockingbird plays into this idealism. Although the book touches on the horrors of racism in the Deep South, it’s a strangely comforting read. A terrible injustice is done, but at the end the status quo is reassuringly restored. The final message is that most (white) people are nice when you get to know them.

As a reader you are never allowed to feel with Tom Robinson, the Black man who is innocently convicted for raping a white woman, because all the Black characters in this tale are sidelined. This story should be about them, because how else would you be able to convince the white moderate (in the 1960s) that Black people are actually people. The closest insight we get to a Black character is the family's cook Calpurnia. Calpurnia is in the fictional tradition of the "happy black", the contented slave – the descendent of the ever-loyal Mammy in Gone With the Wind. And the rest of the Black community is depicted as a group of simple, respectful folk – passive and helpless and all touchingly grateful to Atticus Finch – the white saviour. We never see any of them angry or upset. We never see the effect of Tom Robinson’s death on his family up close – we don't witness Helen, Tom's wife, grieving and Scout never wonders about his children. Their distress is kept at safe distance from the reader.

I was very angry after finishing this book, and I'm still angry up to this day. Not necessarily at Harper Lee, but at our society as a whole, and at our educational system. Why do we constantly uplift white narratives, whilst brushing over marginalized ones? Why aren't our kids reading If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin – a book dealing with the exact same topic (a Black man getting falsely accused of raping a woman)? Why isn't Lorraine Hansberry required reading? Why are we still relying on white narratives, when talking about Black people and their struggles?

Since finishing this book, I started reading The History of Legal Education in the United States and I wanted to share some interesting facts, because I couldn't believe how absurd To Kill A Mockingbird was. This story is, supposedly, set in the Deep South in the 1930s, where Atticus Finch, our white saviour, takes it upon himself to defend a Black man at court. By the end of Lee's novel we are led to believe that Atticus had a great chance of actually getting Tom Robinson acquitted, if the latter had just been a "good n*gger" and didn't try to escape on his own. (Yes, I'm a little petty. I swear, I'm not turning bitter over this.) So, I just wanted to know how realistic that scenario is. All of the information is related to the 1930s Southern setting. Here's what I've learned:

Most Southern lawyers readily accepted Black clients for routine economic cases – property, tort, contract, dept, insurance – and minor criminal cases that did not threaten the South's system of racial hierarchy. It was virtually impossible, however, to find a Southern white lawyer who would accept a major criminal case involving a white victim or a politically charged case that in any way challenged segregation.

Only the combination of direct action, community organizing and legal strategy with the help of Black lawyers, made the defense of Black men and women at court possible. In the Lockett-case, the Black community in Tulsa survived largely because Black lawyers were able to defend the community's interests. In 1934, Black lawyers represented George Crawford, a Black man accused of brutally murdering a wealthy white woman – no white lawyer would take Crawford's case. In the end, Crawford got a sentence of life imprisonment instead of a death sentence. And this verdict had to be seen as an accomplishment by the Black lawyers and the Black community as a whole, because life imprisonment was as good as it was going to get.

Oftentimes, Black lawyers took serious criminal cases without a fee or at a very reduced rate. This was well appreciated by their communities, but also a given. It is admirable how well Black communities were organized. None of that got translated on the pages of Lee's novel. The Black characters do absolutely nothing, except sending Atticus food, because they're so grateful. [*insert snort here*]

This book appears to uphold the standard of racial equality; de facto it is about the white middle class patting themselves on the back for not thinking racist thoughts. I'm sorry to break it to you, Miss Maudie, but you won't get a sugar cookie for that. I am not saying that this is not a realistic portrayal of the white middle class, it is, it totally is. If you do just a little research on the Civil Rights movement, the moral apathy of the white middle class becomes crystal clear. However, we shouldn't portray these characters in a positive light, there is nothing admirable about them. After all... He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against is really cooperating with it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.1,687 s54 comments Stephen1,516 11.7k



6.0 stars. I know I am risking a serious “FILM AT 11” moment and a club upside the head from Captain Obvious for voicing this, but nabbit dog I still think it needs to be said…TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is one of the BEST and MOST IMPORTANT American novels ever written. Okay, I said it, and I will wait patiently while you get your DUHs and DERs out of the way and hang your “no shit” signs outside for Inspector Holmes.

Okay, now given the gruntload of /ratings this book has I know I’m not the first person to wag my chin about how amazing it is. Still, I am going to chance coming off that annoying dingleberry at the tail end of a huge porcelain party because I truly have a pile of love for this book. …(Sorry for taking the metanalogy there just now, but I promise no more poop references for the rest of the review)... So if my review can bring a few more people into the Atticus Finch Fan Club, I will be just flush with happy.

On one level, this book is a fairly straight-forward coming of age story about life in a small Alabama town during the Great Depression. It has a very slice of lifesaver warmth and simplicity to it that I think resonates with a lot of readers. It certainly does with me and I think the adjective “charm” may have been invented to describe the novel.

Despite how easing flowing the narrative is, this book is both extremely and deceptively powerful in its discussion of race, tolerance and human decency. Most importantly, this book shows us by example the courage to stand all up in the grill of injustice and say “Not today, Asshole! Not on my watch.”

That is a lesson that I think we can never be reminded of too often. When bad people do bad things to good people, the rest of us good people need to sack up and be counted regardless of how scary it might be. Easier said then done, I know. But at least that should be the standard to which we strive.

Atticus Fitch is the epitome of that standard. He is the role model to end all role models and what is most impressive is that he comes across as such a REAL person. There is no John Wayne/Jack Bauer/Dirty Harry cavalry charging BSD machismo about him. Just a direct, unflinching, unrelenting willingness to always do what he thinks is right. As Atticus’ daughter Scout puts it so well: It was times these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. I was to make something crystal before going on because it is an important part of my love of this story. Notwithstanding this book's powerful, powerful moral message, it never once…ever…comes off as preachy or heavy handed. There is no lecture to be given here. The only sermon we are privy to is the example of Atticus Finch and the simple yet unwavering strength and quiet decency of the man. Even when asked by his daughter about the horrendous racism being displayed by the majority of the townsfolk during a critical point in the story, Atticus responds with conviction but without: "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." This is a special story. Oh, and as a huge bonus…it is also an absolute joy to read. Lee’s prose is silky smooth and as cool as the other side of the pillow. Read this book. Read it with your children, read it with your spouse, read it by yourself….read it the bigoted assclown that you work with or see around the neighborhood…Just make sure you read it. It is a timeless classic and one of the books that I consider a “life changer.” 6.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!!!

BONUS QUOTE: This is Scout talking to Atticus after getting to know someone she had previously be afraid of:

“ ‘When they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things . . . Atticus, he was real nice. . . .’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’ He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”(Emphasis added)
1954-1969 6-star-books all-time-favorites ...more1,596 s3 comments Miranda Reads1,589 162k

Looking for a new book but don't want to commit? Check out my latest BooktTube Video: One & Done - all about fabulous standalones!

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The Written Review :

If you haven't read this as an adult - pick it up today I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. I (along with millions of other kids) first read this in grade-school. And I (along with those millions) didn't really get the point.

I remember thinking, Well... I already know discrimination is wrong. I don't get why I have to read a book about it...

Oh Lordy, if I could go back in time...

Rereading led to a (unsurprisingly) wholly different interpretation of this novel. I am in awe of Harper Lee and what she's written.

How could I have so completely missed the point back in fifth grade? People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. We follow Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the daughter of Atticus Finch - a prominent lawyer. Scout narrates the great and terrible tragedies of her life - namely the trial of Tom - an upstanding "colored" man accused of raping a white woman.

Atticus is appointed to defend Tom and soon, nearly the whole town turns against the Finch Family. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. Much Scout, I was simply too young to understand much of what was going on the first time through.

I tell you, there were so, so many moments this time through where the light bulb turned on and everything just clicked. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash My entire life, I never truly understood why this was such a classic, why people read it over and over, and why this (of all books) is forced upon kids year after year. I get it now. And I'm disappointed that I hadn't reread it sooner.

P.s. Sorry to my teachers for being such a sulky kid - they sure picked a great one. I was just so enthralled with reading other things that I didn't read this one as well as I should've. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Audiobook s
Exceptionally well-read by Sissy Spacek. I felt I was in the story. If you are itching for a reread - pick up the audio!

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_readsaudiobook939 s1 comment Ahmad Sharabiani9,564 157

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird one of the best-loved stories of all time, is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960.

It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature.

The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The story is told by the six-year-old Jean Louise Finch.

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???? «???? ??? ????»? ????? ? ????? ??????? «????? ??»? ?? ?? ?????: «???? ??? ????» ?? «?????» ????? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???1960??????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ????? ???? ????? ? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ???1962?????? ???? «????? ???????»? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ??????? ? ?? ???? ???? ????? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ????? ??? ?? ?? ??? ????? ???? ????? ? ?????? ?????? ??? ?? ???? «??????? ??»? ? ????? ??? ?????? ???????? ????? ? ?????? ???????? ? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???????? ???? «????? ??»? ?? ?? ?? ??? ????? ?? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ?? ?????? ?????? ??? (?? ???? ?? ??? ? ?????? «?? ????»? «??????»? ? «?? ???» ?????? ??? ????????? ????? ?? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ???????? ???? ???.) ????? ???

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??? ?? ??? ????: (??????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ???? ?????? ??? ?? «??????» ?????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ????? «????» ????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ???? ????? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ???? ??????? ??????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ????? ???? ????) ????? ???

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?????: «?????» ? «???»? ????? ? ????? ????? ?????? ?? ??????? ????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ?? ?? ?????? «??????»? ?? ??? ????? ????? ??????? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ? ???? ???????? ? ??????? ?????? ?????? ????????? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?? ???????? ?? ????? ??? ????? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ? ?? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ???????? ?? ???: «???»? ?? ??? ????? ?? ????? ????????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ???? «???» ?? ??? ?? ????? ???? ? «??????» ????????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? «??????» ?????? ? ????? ?? ????? ?? ???? ???????? ????????? ?? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?????

????? ?????? ????? 18/05/1399???? ???????? 19/09/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Kim286 817

Why is it when I pick up To Kill A Mockingbird , I am instantly visited by a sensory memory: I’m walking home, leaves litter the ground, crunching under my feet. I smell the smoke of fireplaces and think about hot cider and the wind catches and my breath is taken from me and I bundle my coat tighter against me and lift my head to the sky, no clouds, just a stunning blue that hurts my eyes, another deep breath and I have this feeling that all is okay.

Why? Why this memory? I mean, this takes place in Alabama and mostly in the summer, well there is that one climatic scene on Halloween, but I bet it’s still hot enough to melt the balls off a brass monkey.

It must be the school thing, my daughter just finished reading it, prompting me to give it another go, to fall back into Scout’s world and pretend to be eight and let life simply be.

How is that? How can life for Scout be simple? I mean, she lives in the south, during the depression, she has to deal with ignorant schoolteachers and town folk, her ideas of what is right, what is what it should be are laughed at by her schoolmates… man, and I thought my childhood was rough.

Still, she lives in this idyllic town, I mean, except for the racism and the creepy neighbors and the whole fact that it’s, you know, the south…(forgive me… I’m not immune to the downfalls of the north, I mean, we had witches and well, Ted Bundy was born here…) But, there’s this sense of child innocence to this book that makes me believe in humanity… even in the throes of evil. What am I saying here? I guess, that this is a good pick me up.

What I also get from this book is that I have severe Daddy issues. I consume Atticus Finch in unnatural ways. He is the ultimate father; he has the perfect response for every situation. He is the transcendent character. My heart melts at each sentence devoted to him and I just about crumble during the courtroom scene.

Am I gushing? I sure am. I was raised by a man who thought that Budweiser can artwork was the epitome of culture. That drinking a 6-pack was the breakfast of champions. That college was for sissies. He could throw out a racial slur without a single thought, care or worry to who was around. I won't even get into the debates/rantings of a 16 yr old me vs a 42 yr old him... What a role model.

So, I thank Harper Lee for giving me Atticus. I can cuddle up with my cider and pretend that I’m basking in his light. I can write this blurb that makes sense to maybe a handful but that is okay, I am approved of and all is good.
cultured mmix simpatico1,394 s3 comments may ?511 2,376

I had a much longer review written for this book, but the comments were sadly annoying me. so I’ll just make my opinions clear in two sentences, because these are really the only thoughts about the book that matter to me:

I was extremely bored by the majority of this novel and thus I did not enjoy it very much (and no, I will not reread it because I do not care). most importantly, though, I don’t believe a white savior narrative this one is a story that should be so heavily defended by white people or pushed as an essential book in school curriculum today when there are better books about racism by people who have actually experienced it, and especially when this book cares more about the white characters than the Black ones! 2-star adult boring ...more852 s4 comments Eddy Allen8 10

While the plot was very gripping and well-written, the book didn't actually instruct me on how to kill a mockingbird. I bought this book intending to do away with this obnoxious bird that's always sitting in my backyard and making distracting noises. I had hoped this book would shed some light on how to humanely dispose of the bird, but unfortunately it was this story about a lawyer and a falsely-accused criminal. As I said, the plot is great but nowhere in the book does it say exactly how to kill a mockingbird.890 s12 comments Jon599 746

classics coming-of-age favorites ...more3,267 s1 comment Brina1,040 4

With endless books and infinitely more to be written in the future, it is rare occasion that I take the time to reread a novel. As women’s history month is upon us (2019), I have kept revising my monthly lineup to feature books by remarkable women across the spectrum. Yet, none of these nonfiction books pay homage to the writers of the books themselves. Even with memoirs, the prose focuses on the author’s achievements in her chosen field. Last week a goodreads friend and I paid tribute to women authors in a daily literary journal. In one of my friend’s posts, she pointed out that as recently as 1960, the author of the most endearing of American novels had to use a masculinized version of her name in fear of not being published. Nelle Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama published To Kill a Mockingbird under her middle name, so only those well read readers are aware of the author’s full name. It is in this regard, that I included Pulitzer and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Nelle Harper Lee in my Women’s History month lineup. It is as auspicious of a time as any to reread one of America’s greatest novels.

When I was in ninth grade English class, I read Harper Lee’s novel for the first time. At age fourteen I was hardly a polished writer and struggled with many of the assignments. Yet, I do remember that the top essay in the class focused on the overarching theme of courage and how Harper Lee showed how each of the characters, major and minor, embodied this trait in the trying times associated with the novel. It was courageous of a southern woman to write a novel with this subject matter prior to the passage of the civil rights act. It is of little wonder to me looking back now that she chose to publish under a gender neutral name. Perhaps, she feared a lynch mob or being outcast in her home town. It was a trying time as the federal government asserted itself against states still grieving from the war between the states and holding out as the last bulwarks of white superiority. Harper Lee exhibited as much courage as the characters in her novel, and rightfully was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her work. As such, being courageous starts from the top and works its way down to each and every character of this timeless work.

In 1930s rural Maycomb, Alabama people were pretty much set in their way of life. Town folk had received an education and worked as lawyers, doctors, bankers, and businessmen. The country folk may or may not have received an education because they had to work the fields and many were illiterate. Even the majority of those educated white folk still saw themselves as superior to blacks, and few, if any, had the audacity to take a black’s word over a white’s even if it were the correct moral thing to do. Yet, the crux of Lee’s novel is a court case threatening to disrupt this way of life, having the town divide along both racial and moral lines, and having each character step into others’ shoes and view the world from another’s perspective. Maycomb at the time embodied many rural American cities, isolated from progress as town set in its ways with few people who were willing to see the world from another perspective. One man was, however, a lawyer named Atticus Finch who is among the most revered fictional characters ever created. Even though this court case should not have been his, his superiors selected Atticus to counsel a black defendant because they realized that he was the one man in Maycomb who had both the ability to empathize and the courage to do so. His neighbor Mrs Maudie Atkinson noted that Atticus was the same man in the court house as he was at home and had nothing to fear. A widower, he instilled these values to his children Jeremy Atticus (Jem) and Jean Louise (Scout) from a young age, passing a strong moral compass onto his children.

In addition to critiquing southern race relations, Lee’s novel has endeared itself to children with the legend of Boo Radley. From the time they were young, Jem, Scout, and their summer friend Dill had courage to go to the Radley house trying to get Boo to come out even though all the other kids said the house was spooked. Atticus told them to put a halt to these childish games and explained Boo Radley’s background to them. The town claimed that Boo Radley was a ghost, but perhaps the reason he did not leave the house is because he did not want to. As the children grew older, Atticus warned them that there would be darker times ahead and they would have to be courageous in the face of what people said to them behind their backs. From the time Scout began school in first grade, she inhibited Atticus’ ability to stand up for what was right. Her teacher Miss Robinson was new to Maycomb and did not understand people’s ways. Scout explained about the Cunninghams, the Ewells, as well as other families at a personal cost to herself. As Scout grew older and was able to step into other people’s’ shoes more, she grew to understand differences between folks; however, she and Jem realized that differences did not make the world distinctly black and white or right and wrong. During an era when children were looked upon as unintelligent, Scout and Jem were wise beyond their years and following in their father’s footsteps.

Harper Lee created strong archetypal characters and had each embody their own courage. Each’s courage allowed Atticus to teach his children a life lesson that would endure for the rest of their lives. The family’s neighbor Mrs. Henry Lafayette DuBose demonstrates courage as she battles a final illness. Third grade teacher Mrs. Gates exhibits courage as she teaches Scout’s class about the rise of Nazism in Germany and th encourages her students to think for themselves about the differences between prejudices at home and abroad. The African American characters all demonstrate strong courage as well. The Finch’s housekeeper Calpurnia is a bridge between the white and black communities of Maycomb and does not hesitate to teach Scout and Jem life lessons as they arise. The Reverend Sykes welcomes Jem and Scout into his congregation as though they were his own and invites them to sit in the colored balcony at time when segregation was still the law. He risked a lynching and knew that the Finch family could possibly be labeled as negro lovers, yet Reverend Sykes played a small role in proving that one’s skin color should not determine whether someone is right or wrong. Of course, as part of the overarching story line, Boo Radley can be viewed as the most courageous character of them all. It is through the courage of an author to create characters who will stand up for what is morally right at a large cost to themselves that she created an award winning novel that was ahead of its time for its era. It is little wonder that the courage of these fictional characters has made the novel as beloved as it is today.

I believe that the courage exhibited by all these characters has made the town of Maycomb, Alabama stand the test of time and remain the timeless classic that it is. Most people can relate to those who have the courage to stand up for what they think is right or to fight against those tougher than them. This character trait has endeared the Finch family to millions of readers and will continue to do so for generations to come. Whenever a person asks what book would you give as a gift or what is the perfect book, To Kill a Mockingbird is my first choice. I find that it is perfect for any time but most appropriate in spring as in addition to courage there is an underlying theme of hope. Harper Lee won the Pulitzer for this timeless classic, and it also won first place in the Great American Read as America’s best novel. Thus I can think of no better way to honor women’s history month than with a timeless book that has and will continue to capture the hearts and minds of all of its readers.

5+ stars/ all-time favorites shelf500-great-books-women all-time-favorites classics ...more551 s Lit Bug160 474

In the course of 5 years, I’ve read this book nearly 17 times. That adds up to reading it once at least every 4 months, on an average. And I still return to this book a bark seeking a lighthouse in the dark. When I first finished it, I was so overwhelmed by how much I related to it, I read it nearly 8 times before the year ended. By now I’ve memorized almost every scene and I still can’t shake off the feeling that I still have to learn a lot from it. Over the years, I realize that without knowing it, it has become my personal Bible – a beacon to keep me from straying from the path of kindness and compassion, no matter what.

With its baseless cruelty and what Coleridge poetically referred to as motiveless malignity, the world is in need of much motiveless kindness – a rugged determination to keep the world a quiet haven and not the callous, cruel place it constantly aspires to be.

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of those rare books that doesn’t give in to the belief that ”deep down, everybody’s actually good.” Not everybody is. And we must still persevere to see things from their perspective, and though we may not justify their ways, we must strive to understand them – though we might not follow them, we must try to be as kind to them as possible. And yet, there comes a time when some people need to be put down – we must follow the call of our conscience then, and yet be kind to them in the process, as much as we can.

Striving to follow this dictum, I have realized how difficult it is to be kind to others when I find I’m right. It is so easy to put down others bluntly, it is so easy to be critical and fair, but so difficult to consider for a moment what the other might be going through. How convenient it is to dismiss the hardships of others and say, “They had it coming!” and unburden our conscience of the probable guilt that perhaps we’ve been a bit too harsh.

How simple it is to stereotype people, classify them neatly into convenient square boxes and systematically deal with them based on those black-or-white prejudices! Robe a prejudice in the opaque, oppressive garment called Common Sense and display boldly the seal of Social Approval and you’ve solved the biggest difficulty of life – knowing how to treat people.

And yet, nothing could be farther than the truth. Rarely are people so simple as they seem. In Wilde’s words, “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” For you never know when a grumpy, rude, racist Mrs. Dubose might be fighting her own monsters or Ewell be, in fact trying to protect the last vestiges of honor he has, or Aunt Alexandra only trying to advocate the least painful way of life. And though we might not agree with any of them, Atticus, we must see them for their peculiar situations and grant them a little leeway, make a little corner for them too, and yet, stand up for what is right in defiance of them.

It is this tricky rope-walking balance between prejudice and common sense, kindness and firmness, and justice and leeway that spurs me to revisit this little book every time I seem to falter. While I find it difficult to keep my cool in the midst of flagrant injustices and ensuing pain, I strive to strike a balance between giving in to despair and becoming too optimistic; between becoming indifferent, unkind, righteous and being compassionate, considerate. It is what keeps me from becoming paranoid or cynical with the unceasing drone of passivity, callousness, overwhelming prejudice and unyielding customs while still being alive to the pain of those very people I do not necessarily agree with.

In a country India with its bizarre, incomprehensible equations and sequestrations of religion, class, caste, region, language, race, gender, sexuality and education, it takes a whole load of effort not to blow up one’s mind – people will kill each other over anything and everything. They’ll hate each other, isolate each other and cook up stories amongst themselves and leave it floating in the air. It takes every ounce of my energy not to hate my land and its majority people viciously. Yes, viciously.

But you see, I’ve got so much to learn to survive here – I have to stand up for myself when there will be hordes banging upon my door telling me to shut the hell up. And I’ll have to muster all the courage I have to tell them to go f*** themselves if they think I musn’t transcend the limits set for me. But I also have to learn not to hate them. Even if it sounds silly.

I know for one, Lee – I don’t care if you never wrote another work. I don’t care if Capote helped you write it, as many say. I’m glad somebody wrote this book, and somebody assigned this book as syllabus when I needed it the most. Five years ago, I hadn’t even heard of it. I read it in a single sitting. And then I read it several times over, taking my time, pondering over every page. I still do so. It is my favorite book ever.
american favorites fiction ...more547 s1 comment Lisa of Troy647 5,790

This is one book that I think is more relevant today than when it was first published.

I love how Scout is adamant about who she is. Others keep trying to tell her who to be, what it is to be a female. However, she wants to play, get dirty, run around with her brother. She couldn't care less about wearing dresses and sitting perfectly upright in a chair with knees pressed together in shoes you can't walk in.

Incredible to imagine that this was published before the internet.

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Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta526 s4 comments Claudia LomelíAuthor 8 books80.9k

So... I don't really know what to say.

I think I loved this book, but for a reason beyond my understanding, it never hooked me, and it took me AGES to finish it! Some chapters (especially at the beginning) were tedious and hard for me to get through them... but then there were some chapters that I devoured (the whole Tom Robinson trial and the last ones).

I definitely learned a lesson or two from this book. Atticus is my new role model, he is really incredible. I also love Scout and Jem, those kids will be in my heart forever. Oh! And I loved the Boo Radley storyline, it left me in awe.

This book surely deserves 5 solid stars, and I kinda feel bad for giving it 4 stars, but the thing is... I was struggling to finish it, I swear I let out a relieved sigh when I read the last sentence.

But all in all, it was a great read <3. And can't tell you how much I loved the last chapters, the part were Scout stands in Boo Radley's house and realizes the way he sees everything almost made me cry.2015485 s1 comment Jayson2,291 3,632

(A-) 83% | Very Good
Notes: On ugly truth, fading youth, dead appeals, courage, morals, community quarrels and fallible humans spoiling ideals.

*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary:

Progress updates:

01/01/2024 - Preamble:
(1) It's been New Year tradition for me to have either my first book of the year or the last book of the preceding year (some years both) be a super-popular novel.
- For 2024 it's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
(2) When I say "super-popular," I don't mean the YA novel de jour that practically no one outside Goodreads has even heard of. I mean books that everyone knows, possibly a classic or due to a hit adaptation.

01/04/2024 - Chapters 1–5
(1) The most striking thing so far has to do with people's names. The brother and sister, Jeremy and Jean, are nicknamed Jem and Scout.
- It's notable that practically everyone calls them by their nicknames, which are both decidedly unisex—I can't be the only one who saw "Jem" and thought "and the Holograms"?
- Possibly it's to underscore a time of innocence, before sexuality kicks in.
- That goes for their friend Dill as well.
(2) Both children refer to and call their father by his given name, Atticus. It just feels wrong, especially for this very antique setting. I mean, these aren't hippies we're dealing with.
- Unless this is explained later in the book, I figure I'll just attribute it to regional or cultural quirks.
(3) Both Atticus and the cook Calpurnia have Roman names. They're the only ones that do, despite being different races. It doesn't seem to be a family thing, Atticus' brother's named Jack.
- It's established early on how these are the book's two moral compasses, so this might be to highlight that idea since Latin is the language of law.
(4) It's an odd inversion of roles, where the teacher, Miss Caroline, is the one comforted, protected by, and at the mercy of the children in her class.
- The children here act more adults and she acts a scared child.
- Additionally, it's her comic unfamiliarity with how things are done locally that reinforces how insular a community Maycomb is.
(5) Atticus' personal morality seems to be distinctly utilitarian: the greatest good for the greatest number.
- He explains how the town allows the Ewell family to break local hunting and truancy laws so their children won't go hungry.
- Scout mentions how Maycomb has its own "ethical culture."
(6) I wish I had an annotated version of this. I'm not doing so well with the Alabama vernacular and phonetic spellings of words.
- I have to keep googling what things mean, which isn't difficult just tedious.

01/05/2024 - Chapters 6–9
(1) "[Jem] went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way."
- Hmm, I wonder if that's where The Bangles got it from?
- Rural American children learning about Egypt just seems odd. Greece and Rome seems more natural.
- I recall reading somewhere that early American education put an emphasis on learning Greek and Latin. Though, perhaps if learning to read hieroglyphs were viable they'd do that too?
(2) One of the big subplots at the start is the knot-hole in the Radley's tree, which is used as a kind of drop-off between the Finch children and some mysterious benefactor.
- My guess is that it's Boo Radley who's been leaving them little treats and trinkets. Which would be ironic, since the main focus of this first part has been the children trying desperately to catch a glimpse of and make contact with Boo. It could well be that Boo's been trying to make contact with them.
(3) We get quite frequent use of the N-word here, and mainly by children no less. I'm not the least bit squeamish about it, but I can understand if people are.
- Possibly I'd feel differently if I were listening to the audiobook version.
- I'm guessing this is why the book's so controversial and banned in many jurisdictions. Otherwise, it's a rather tame story so far: reminds me a lot of Laura Ingalls Wilder books, all quaint rural activities.
(4) So far, the book hasn't struck me as remarkable at all. Though, by the end of Chapter 9 it seems to be ramping up the heat.
- Atticus is conscious that his choices will negatively affect his children. It's the first time we've seen him show any vulnerability.
- It'll be interesting to see how Boo Radley fits into all this. He's so far been the focus of the book and I can't see how he'd naturally tie into the story going forward.
(5) School is canceled because of some unseasonably slushy snowfall.
- I live in Canada, so to me that's totally weak. Though, understandable if they don't have the clothes for the cold, poor as they are.

01/06/2024 - Chapters 10–13
(1) This is an odd sort of novel. So far, it's been more interconnected short stories than anything all that cohesive.
- Perhaps I'm just too used to the pace and plotting of modern books. Halfway through this and I don't really know where it's going, only an inkling based solely on the book's reputation.
(2) The whole First Purchase Church section is a fascinating bit of anthropology.
- It's a very binary environment. There are always two kinds of people. People who can read and people who can't. People who welcome whites attending their church and people who don't. People who meet the Reverend's moral standards and people who don't, etc.
- Also notable is how prevalent public shaming is in coercing desired behavior. Reverend Sykes calls out people by name, in front of the congregation, for their moral failings. He even shames the congregation, keeping them locked inside until the minimum weekly offering's met.
(3) We get a closer look at Calpurnia, who's very much a binary figure herself. She lives among blacks but works among whites.
- In this capacity she acts as a sort of bridge or translator between the two cultures.
- Scout goes as far as to say she's bilingual, the way she changes her speech to fit who she's talking to.
- She brings literacy into her community, having learned from her employers.
(4) It's very important to Atticus to instill in his children a very specific idea of courage. He very reluctantly, but very expertly, puts down a mad dog. His shooting skills having been hidden from his children.
- He goes to great lengths to hide it, in fact, having his out-of-town brother come teach them to shoot instead of himself.
(5) The whole section with Mrs. Dubose is meant as a lesson, to teach Jem the real meaning of courage by witnessing first-hand an old woman persist through morphine withdrawals.
- Atticus tells Jem that he would have made him visit Mrs. Dubose even if he wasn't forced to do so as punishment. That makes me think it was actually Atticus' idea, which he suggested to Mrs. Dubose.
- Of course, this lesson in enduring discomfort and pain is done to prepare his children for the inevitable abuse they'll get once Tom Robinson goes to trial.
- Atticus is sort of doing a Mr. Miyagi on Jem and Scout. Wax-on, wax-off.
(6) Scout says that Jem is all she has in life. Her accompanying him to his daily punishments with Mrs. Dubose is that sentiment put to practice.
- They're the only two children in a neighborhood of old people, which surely played a role in making Dill's visits every summer special.

01/07/2024 - Chapters 14–17
(1) This has been a real slow burn. Not that it's been bad, just it's been going at a leisurely pace and hasn't been at all what I expected.
- The story doesn't really find a clear direction until the jailhouse scene. After that it's been laser-focused on the trial of Tom Robinson.
- From Chapter 17 onward, it's been pretty much a pure law procedural, albeit from a child's perspective.
(2) "I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high."
- Quite a polite way of saying she kicked him in the balls.
(3) Dill runs away from home seemingly because he craves companionship. His parents buy him all the toys and distractions he wants, and just leaves him to entertain himself.
- Definitely shades of the future, how parents leave children to be raised by their televisions and smart devices.
- As well, it underscores a recurring theme of how children need to get out of the house and play with kids their own age.
(4) The scene between Scout and Dill discussing theories on where babies come from really brings attention to how young these kids are.
- Alexandra told Scout God drops babies down chimneys, whereas Dill believes there's a foggy island where a man breathes life into dormant newborns.
- Being so young is an important storytelling element, since it's the justification for a lot of exposition. Them learning things for the first time and all.
(5) Jem seemingly puts Atticus' lessons in courage to practice, openly disobeying his father to protect him from an angry mob because it's the right thing to do.
- You can actually argue either way on this. Though, he seems to be taking directly after Atticus' example, who does the exact same self-sacrificial act to protect Tom Robinson.
(6) Maycomb treats the trial as a cause for festivities. Everyone, regardless of race or background, gathers at the courthouse square for one big picnic.
- I guess small towns will take any opportunity to have a party.
- Reminds me a lot of modern-day football tailgating. The trial being the game everyone's gathered to watch.
- The way it's written, it's everyone's at the theatre. People jostling for good seats and people being shushed for being noisy.

01/08/2024 - Chapters 18–22
(1) Mayella, we learn, has no friends. Even among her many siblings, they're always out with each other while she does the household chores alone.
- Of course, solitary individuals in this book are either taken as monsters (Boo Radley) or prone to making poor and impulsive decisions (Dill). Mayella is arguably both.
(2) Speaking of which, why was Boo Radley the primary focus of Part 1?
- He's barely mentioned in Part 2 except to say that the kids have grown out of bothering him.
- Meanwhile, the trial's barely given any attention prior to the jailhouse scene.
(3) Dill breaks down and cries during the trial because of the double-standard of treatment Tom Robinson faces from the prosecutor.
- Dolphus Raymond makes a point to say it's because only children can understand it, not yet being corrupted by society nor calloused to it.
- Personally, I find the idea terribly cliché, that the purity of children gives them a clarity adults don't possess. I mean, children are capable of terrible decisions and reasoning too, as evidenced in this book.
- Though I do appreciate the point that's being made. Cliché isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it may not have been cliché when this was written.
(4) Atticus gives very good closing remarks. Not that it gave me chills or anything. Just that it felt an excellent school civics lecture.
- He states the year as 1935, which I suppose was right in the heart of the Great Depression.
- The closing arguments are also excellent rhetoric, taking into account the presumed prejudice of the jury and pre-emptively addressing their assumptions and concerns. He handles it in a way that doesn't sound admonishing or preachy.
(5) Throughout the whole book you get a clear dichotomy between people who live in the town and people who live outside it. Townsfolk being more accepting and tolerant of blacks than people who live rurally.
- Even people Underwood, who's said to hate black people, helps Atticus defend Tom Robinson from the mob. Despite his personal feelings, he acts the way he's expected as a member of the community.
- With this in mind, the result of the trial was never in doubt, given what Scout says about townsfolk rarely ever being on juries: how they're always struck or excused.

01/09/2024 - Chapters 23–27
(1) Atticus: "There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance."
- I feel modern audiences reading this line, specifically "a Negro's ignorance," might be quick to label Atticus a racist.
- I know, it's ridiculous given the overall context of the book and of this quote. Though, I've seen harsher reactions to milder words.
- When I hear about this book being banned, and having now read nearly all of it, I can only guess that the controversy is about the language used. Not just the liberal use of the N-word but also of "Negro," the more politically correct term historically.
- The presence of racial language at all, even in decidedly positive usage, is often triggering and a red line for many people.
(2) Following the trial, Jem debates Atticus on the merits of the legal system.
- Here, Jem represents the reader, peppering Atticus with questions of injustice. Atticus, in his answers, defends the legal system as the best instrument that exists for achieving justice.
- It's an interesting conversation because we have Jem's idealism and faith in mankind broken as a result of the trial. Here, Atticus is sort of an idealist, faithful in the legal system to self-correct when the judgement is (inevitably) overturned on appeal. Spoiler: that doesn't happen.
(3) We get an answer to why no one in Maycomb wants to serve on a jury.
- Atticus explains that it's because the community's so reliant on each other that to even appear to pass negative judgement on neighbors might bring about negative social consequences.
- Indeed, we see this later with Atticus, Judge Taylor and Tom's widow, where Bob Ewell pesters, abuses and potentially commits crimes against them in order to get even for seemingly opposing his family.
(4) Jem comes to the understanding that Boo Radley doesn't leave his house because he simply doesn't want to.
- On the face of it, this may seem clear agoraphobia. Though, in the context of Jem's discussion with Scout, you get the sense it's because not all folk are the same, nor treated the same, and Boo Radley doesn't want to come out to face the cruel world.
(5) There's a lot of openly racist talk during the Missionary Society meeting Aunty Alexandra hosts.
- It's a scene to make plain how seemingly civilized and genteel ladies may be done up pretty and polite on the outside, but are ugly on the inside and hypocrites when it comes to helping Africans abroad while persecuting Africans in their midst.
- It's during this that Scout gains a respect for her aunt, who continues to act a lady during all this and particularly upon hearing of Tom's death.
(6) Speaking of Tom's death, it's a curious thing given how confident Atticus was in winning the appeal.
- Could it be the case that he wanted to die, knowing he could never show his face in town again? or to go back to being friendly neighbors with the Ewells?
(7) Jem stops Scout from squashing an insect.
- It's a relatively extreme position to take against the killing of innocents, which is more mental fallout from the trial.
- Scout calls it a phase, which it probably is.
(8) Underwood writes an editorial in the paper, mentioning how it's a sin to kill cripples. He says it's hunters and children senselessly killing songbirds.
- This calls back to Atticus near the beginning of the book when he gives the titular line, "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
- Tom is the cripple Underwood mentions. So, in case anyone didn't figure out already, it's made crystal-clear that Tom Robinson is the book's titular mockingbird.
(9) We get another instance of hypocrisy from another adult woman in Scout's life.
- Her teacher, Miss Gates, hates Hitler for persecuting the Jews, but is overheard by Scout rooting for the persecution of Tom Robinson outside the courthouse.
(10) It's interesting how after the trial the book goes back to short events and anecdotes about the town. It's a trial sandwich.
- It's as if to say that the goings on of the town stopped for the duration of the trial and then continued as it was, albeit with fallout pervading its stories.

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300-399-pp author-american era-cold-war ...more439 s15 comments Nataliya856 14.2k

Life gives you a few things that you can count on. Death (for all), taxes (for most), and the unwavering moral character of Atticus Finch (for me). "What would Atticus do?" is not just a meme; for eleven-year-old me it became a real consideration after I feigned an illness to cut school and stay home to finish To Kill a Mockingbird — while a decidedly non-Atticus- move, choosing Harper Lee's book over sixth grade math was probably a wiser life choice.For my thoughts on the shameless money grab by the money-greedy publishers recently published first draft of the novel inexplicably (or read: cash grab) marketed as a sequel... Well, I think I just said it all.I cannot be objective about this book - I don't think you can ever be about the things you love. I've read it many times as a child and a few times as an adult, and it never lost that special something that captivated me as a kid of Jem Finch's age.


“[...] Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.” To me, this book is as close to perfect as one can get.

It found a place in school curriculum because of its message, undoubtedly - but it's not what makes it so powerful. After all, if you have even a speck of brains you will understand that racism is wrong and you should treat people right and that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

No, what makes it wonderful is the perfect narrative voice combining adult perspective while maintaining a child's voice, through which we glimpse both the grown-up woman looking back through the lessons of years while still seeing the unmistakable innocence and incorruptible feistiness of young Scout Finch. And then there is the magic of the slow measured narration painting the most vivid picture of the sleepy Southern town where there's enough darkness lurking inside the people's souls to be picked up even by very young, albeit quite perceptive children. "If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all a, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.” And then there's Atticus Finch. Yes, there may be countless articles all fueled by Lee's first draft about his 'transformation' into a bigot - but I refuse to jump on that bandwagon. I stand behind him the way Lee developed him in the book she *did* publish. Because I sleep better knowing that there are people out there who are good and principled and kind and compassionate, who will do everything they can with the utmost patience to teach their children to be decent human beings. “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." What shines in this book the most for me is the amazing relationship between parent and child. It's the amazing guidance that the Finch children get in becoming good human beings that many of us would give up a lot for. I know I would. Because to me it will never be a story of a white man saving the world (and some, especially with the publication of that ridiculous first draft, would dismiss it as such). To me, it's the story of a child growing up and learning to see the world with the best possible guidance. It's a story of learning to understand and respect kindness and forgiveness and that sometimes you do right things not just because you're told to but because they are right things to do.

I see enough stupidity and nonsense and injustice in this world. And after all of it, what I often do need is Atticus Finch and reassurance that things can be right, and that with the few exceptions, even if I struggle to see it, "[...] there's just one kind of folks. Folks." and that, disillusioned as we become as we go on in life, "Most people are [nice], Scout, when you finally see them.”

Five stars from both child and adult me.2015-reads awesome-kickass-heroines favorites ...more424 s4 comments Caz (littlebookowl)303 39.8k

Beautiful book. owned386 s Reading_ Tamishly4,947 3,046

First of all, let's forget it's a 'classic' that we all 'must' read for the sake of reading a classic.

Second of all, let's have no inhuman high expectations from this book.

Third of all, it's enough to know that this has been written from the perspective of a six year old girl.

And that's how we should pick up this one and go for it we are picking up a newly released book and seriously that's the way it should be for everyone I would to say... again!

I won't go into details regarding what the book is about.

*Why the 5
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