I finished re-reading Slaughterhouse Five last week and I have been remembering, savoring bits that I liked and chewing the bits that need a bit of chewing. It is a brilliant book that gets better each time I read it. I love the way Kurt Vonnegut crafts words, I love the way he interfaces reality with his poetic idea of what reality is or might be. I love his ability to weave humor into such a humorless subject, and put little touches of humanity here and there in unexpected ways.
I especially love the part of the book where Billy is watching a movie. Billy is either mad because it is his way of dealing with trauma, or he really can move through time in a random manner. He watches a movie one night, but he watches it in reverse because time is going backwards. It is a war movie. It starts with a city on fire but there is a mysterious force that sucks the fires and explosions out of the city and puts it into cylinders which are magnetically lifted into the belly's of passing bombers where they are stacked in neat rows in the bomb bays. The aircraft fly backwards towards Britain. They are damaged but as they fly over France German fighters fly up and suck bullets out of the bombers so that they are suddenly perfect again and no one is injured anymore. Crashed bombers fly up from the ground to re-join their friends. The dead pilots come to life again.
The planes land back in England, and the cylinders are shipped to the United States where workers, mostly women, disassemble them and separate the dangerous contents into safe minerals which are then placed back in the ground where they remain safe forever. All the characters grow younger, including Hitler, until they are all babies and unable to harm anyone. It is a beautiful movie.
This section of the book was read by Vonnegut in 2003 and set to music. It is called Tock Tick. It is reproduced at the end of the book, at least it does in the Audible.com version. I love listening to a story teller reading books which I listen to on my iPod. The audio book format has many advantages and in this case especially so because the book was followed by Vonnegut talking about aspects of the book, then there was a discussion between Vonnegut and a war buddy of his about the war, the book, and life. Then they played Tock Tick.
Listening to Vonnegut talk was interesting not just for what he said, but because it created yet another interface with the fire bombing of Dresden in World War Two. Vonnegut put the hero of the book, Billy Pilgrim there in Dresden during the firebombing. Vonnegut, however, was writing from direct experience. He really was there as the incendiary devices fell and the city was destroyed. He was a prisoner of war. He couldn't do anything to stop the bombs but he did survive miraculously. Possibly because he was locked in a deep dungeon. Perhaps just because he was lucky. While Vonnegut vastly exaggerates the extent of the deaths on that terrible day he accurately conveys the sense of menace and futility of war in all its brutality. In many ways the most callous acts within the story are not the indiscriminate killings of the distant bombers but the accumulated small atrocities committed on a daily basis by individuals, enemies and supposed comrades alike.
At the end of the book, after all the tens of thousands have died in the bombing, and the war is coming to a close, a soldier is caught stealing a teapot and is shot by firing squad as a looter. As Vonnegut says - so it goes.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Available as audio book for iPod/iTunes at Audible.com (which is cheaper than buying it directly from the iTunes Store)
Available as hard copy book from Amazon.com, or at your local bookstore.
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