Laura’s Rating: 1/5 Stars
This book was chosen by my friend Bryan for our book club. I had never read Slaughterhouse-Five or any other Kurt Vonnegut so I was excited to give this book a try…
The Analysis:
What did I just read? This book was WEIRD. In the preface, Vonnegut says that he needed to “clear his head of all the junk in there”. It feels like that is exactly what he did. The book is filled with pointless thoughts, drawings, anecdotes, and set ups for short stories. It feels like a stream of consciousness, but not in a good way.
The story follows two men who eventually come to meet one another. The first is Kilgore Trout, who is a published but generally unrecognized science fiction author. The second is a wealthy businessman who is becoming mentally unstable, Dwayne Hoover. There are a cast of supporting characters who get their own backstories (somewhat unnecessarily). Throughout the novel, Vonnegut hints at a huge, violent event that felt underwhelming to me once it happened.
In theory, it is my understanding that this book is supposed to deal with themes of race, free will, the poor, and the destruction of the environment, among others. While the book does mention those things, the points made are either so brief that the reader could easily miss them, or so complicated by satire that it’s hard to find exactly what Vonnegut is getting at. I wanted to include this (slightly lengthy) quote from the book because I think it does the best job of explaining the structure of the story.
Vonnegut says, “I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out…I would bring chaos to order…If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirement of chaos instead.”
I understand Vonnegut’s point that novels commonly have a certain structure that may not be realistic to real life, but I think that framework is used in order to make a story compelling. By writing a novel that throws out this typical structure, Vonnegut does more to bore or confuse his audience rather than enlighten or inspire them to embrace chaos. If anything, this book made me crave the order and familiarity of a regular story. I’m sure that upon a more academic examination of this book, some fascinating ideas would be revealed, but it certainly is not something anyone should read for pleasure.
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