| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Literature & Fiction |
| Author: | Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. |
I often gravitate towards stories and novels about time travel, and this is one of the best. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a sad sack of a fellow who finds himself in the US Army as a chaplain's assistant. He is captured by German soldiers after the Battle of the Bulge and sent as a prisoner of war to a regular POW camp, then onto Dresden, Germany. All along that harrowing journey he is subject to humiliations by not only his guards but almost all of his fellow prisoners.
While working in a factory to make syrup for pregnant German women, Pilgrim witnesses the aftermath of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. It was also a city with little strategic value but, like Hiroshima, served as a target of mass killing to convince an Axis Power to give up.
An estimated 130,000 men, women and children lost their lives in one night of saturation fire-bombing.
"So it goes", as the novelist says many times in this short novel.
Vonnegut himself is a character in his own novel--a fellow American POW. He survived a hell on earth few walked away from and it marked him for the rest of his life. He later claimed in interviews that he was the only person on earth who got anything from the fire-bombing of Dresden that night--the success that came with this book.
Of course, it would be giving short shrift to call this a "genre" novel--it is really a rumination on war and the need to find a measure of peace and serenity in a world filled with death through conflicts, tragic accidents, and plain bad luck. Vonnegut's literary style is understated, he avoids almost all dramatic conflict between characters. Billy Pilgrim is not a go-getter protagonist, but this leaves room for us to absorb the characters around him, like his fellow G.I., Lazzaro, who wants to kill him for no better reason that that "revenge is the sweetest thing of all" and the character KIlgore Trout, who appears in other Vonnegut novels as a unsuccessful but prolific science-fiction novelist who is befriended by Pilgrim. (Trout is often seen by critics as Vonnegut's alter ego.)
Billy Pilgrim is also "unstuck in time" and can see his future, so we see him simultaneously as a prisoner, as a freed captive, as a successful optometrist, as an exhibit in a zoo on an alien planet with a beautiful porn star. (OK, it's not
all gritty realism.) And as a "kook" trying to get someone to believe his stories about space ships and time travel.
The author inserts non-fiction passages of his own experiences revisiting the rebuilt city of Dresden (then in East Germany) twenty odd years after World War II with another ex-POW. It is here that his wry humor comes through and provides some comic relief for a novel that badly needs it.
Kurt Vonnegut is often compared to Mark Twain as an author. This book stands as a testament to his talent to capture some of the grim realities of the human experience, just as Twain himself did.
Without reading this review, this is probably not a book that I would have gravitated too, but you make it sound interesting. I prefer writers with a more understated writing style so this is sounding a good read, maybe something my mother might even like to read, being as both her brothers were in this war somewhere.
ReplyDeleteVonnegut is a very understated writer; at times I had rare feeling that he was somehow conversing through the book, telling me (or any reader) a story with no frills or exotic imagery, always in control of his feelings but evoking strong emotional power nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the plotline sounds a little goofy to recount in a review, you feel this man gave us a glimpse into a horrible eyewitness event that could best be told within a fantastic backdrop. I just found out there is a non-fiction version of his Dresden experiences in his last book, a collection of Vonnegut short works called "Reviewing Armaggeddon", published after his death last year. Haven't read that one though.
I think I read this in High School but have since forgotten much of it. Maybe it was one of those books I read enough to discuss, but no more.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a title I need to re-visit.
I recently re-read Slaughterhouse Five which is probably my favourite Vonnegut book. I love his easy style of writing and humour which to me is an epitome of the best of modern American writing. I first read it about 30 years ago and remember being impressed then, but I now think I appreciate it even more than I did when I was I was younger. It is a potent critique of the obscenity of war which documents the Dresden fire storm which in terms of the cost in civilian lives was a war crime that even eclipses Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dresden had no military significance, a city built on the ceramics industry which was itself 'fired' in revenge for the Coventry blitz in an act of savage retribution. I used to live in Coventry myself, there remains close ties between that city and Dresden through the peace movement centred on Coventry cathedral (the new one built next to the ruined old one destroyed in the blitz). Vonnegut captures the futility of mechanised total war with a story also illustrated in his characteristic way by his cartoon doodles
ReplyDeleteHe makes the point that the past and the future coexist in the present and mixes pathos with comedy in a uniquely readable way which just canters along so compellingly. I feel that Vonnegut's style is quintessentially American, I don't think such a book would be possible by a British writer for example. Slaughterhouse Five is a masterpiece in my opinion and would certainly feature in my list of best books.
Thanks for the review Doug, a truly great work of 'faction' I think.
I grew up in Germany and my father was my mentor in the classics, so SF is a favorite of mine. God rest Mr. Vonnegut...he was an amazing writer.
ReplyDeleteI have always meant to read this and for one reason of another I never have. I may just have my Lobrarian firend pick it up for me.
ReplyDeleteAs did I. I had an assignment in a High School lit class to read three books by an important novelist. I chose Vonnegut because at that time I wasn't a super-reader and his books were faster to finish and write on than my other perference, Charles Dickens. Vonnegut later became a huge favorite of mine for years--although I didn't re read "S-5".
ReplyDeleteComing back to this book in full after 30 years, I found I had forgotten more than I imagined--like other grea tbooks, it was even richer and more powerful now that I know more about what happens to people in mass movements like warfare.
Thanks, AA, for stating what I didn't get around to--how readable Vonnegut is as an author. And, small well of pride here, that he is an American, a "peoples" writer in the truest and least political sense
ReplyDeleteDresden and Coventry. I've seen that terible testament--that one graceful cathedral, left a ruin. i had never heard of what happened to Dresden before this book, and found most other US histories of WWII-Europe pass over that horror quickly. Thankfully it sounds as if many in those two cities are doing their best not to allow their country men to forget.
This book is a good start for Mr. Vonnegut's other novels and stories. Warning--he can be addictive.
ReplyDeleteHe certainly was. Reading this from a German persepctive must have provided an interesting vantage. His other novel set in Germany, "Mother Night", is a favorite of mine as well.
ReplyDeleteThere was another book that I didn't complete recently called "How to talk about books you haven't read." One of the chapters talks about how certain books all have a place in our consciousness of books and a place in our culture, even if we haven't read it. All books are discussable, even the unread or partial read ones.
ReplyDeleteI will definitely read Mother Night!
ReplyDeleteI agree. You could say one measure of an outstanding book is how fast it percolates into public consciousness. If you read some of a book, and the reviews, you can make an intelligent judgement about it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you'll be disappointed.
ReplyDelete