On to the actual list! I was excited to see that the radnomizer chose Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut to start me off. This is one of the handful of books on this list that I probably would have chosen to read on my own, outside of a project like this. I am also a big history buff, especially World War II history, so I thought this would be a great way to ease myself into reading such a diverse body of literature. I am well aware of the firebombings of Dresden, so I was very interested in reading about a first hand account of the bombings, even if it is fictional. Those are the elements of this story I expected. What I got was something completely unexpected.
I knew that this novel wasn't a standard linear story going into it, but I had no idea how strange it would be. The story incorporates elements of war history. The history of wars is, if you think about it, strange enough on its own. Unfortunately, it is just a strangeness we are all too used to. Beyond that, it incorporates science fiction into the narrative through introducing aliens and time travel as major elements of the story. Though it is heavily suggested that aliens and time travel only exist in the mind of the main character, and flourish due to a combination of head trauma suffered during an accident after the war and to post traumatic stress, this is never explicitly stated, and the existence of both in the world Vonnegut has created is left slightly open ended. The status of these elements added to the feeling of confusion and isolation the the novel created. Are the Aliens supposed to be real? If not, which is likely, why does Pilgrim think they are real? His head injury? His fatalistic personality? Post traumatic stress? A way to escape any feeling of survivor's guilt he may have? Of course this is never explained, but it let me share in some of these emotions that Billy was feeling.
Though the firebombing of Dresden is a central theme of a the novel, there is very little time spent describing it or dealing with the events surrounding it directly. Most of the time are spent during different periods of the life of Billy Pilgrim, the main character - though it is hard to call him a protagonist. Pilgrim is, to me at least, a completely unlikeable figure. I felt sympathy for the painful experiences he had to endure. However, the narrative of the story makes it impossible for Pilgrim to actually care about participating in life because of his time travels, as he knows what will happen and that the future cannot be changed, which makes it seem like Pilgrim is watching his life on TV reruns instead of living it, makes it difficult to like or root for him. If he doesn't care to participate in life, why should the reader care about it?
I think it is natural as a reader to want a protagonist to identify with and root for, but Vonnegut manipulates that need beautifully by created an individual who can't even really root for or identify with himself, let alone creates any of those connections between the reader and the character. Are there really any protagonists in a war like this? Or are the actors in it just floating along, reacting to all of the circumstances they are subjected to? There are no answers to these questions, but they came to my mind all the same.
I also have to comment on the phrase "so it goes." Vonnegut writes that phrase after every mention of death in his novel. From people burned alive during the firebombing to a bottle of champagne that has gone flat and is "dead," they all get a "so it goes." This phrase appears more than 100 times. At first it was a statement that seemed to convey a resigned acceptance to the fate of us all. After multiple repetitions it becomes comic relief, especially when used in unexpected places such as refering to flat champagne. At the end it becomes frustrating, as though I could predict when I would have to read those words again. "So it goes" became my fate. Like Billy Pilgrim, I could see into the future and count on reading about the death of yet another individual and have to read "so it goes" again. By the very end of the novel, I was as resigned to reading the words "so it goes." As resigned as Pilgrim was to his own fate.
Vonnegut writes in the first few pages that he is sorry for how the novel came out because it is a jumbled mess, and goes on to say that there is not much to write about a massacre. He doesn't disappoint on the first point, but proves himself wrong on the second. The entire novel is composed of short blurbs of text, ranging from a paragraph to maybe a page or two. While some blurbs may run together in linear fashion, some may take a jump backward or forward in time or to a different planet. It is a jumbled mess, but through that mess he created in me a feeling that is hard to describe. It almost made me sick to my stomach. The combination of a terrible subject pulled from recent history, a frustrating protagonist, jumbled writing style, and unexpected sci-fi elements made for a disconcerting reading experience.
All of this is the point, I suppose. The war as a whole, and the firebombing of Dresden in particular, was such a pointless waste. As was the war in Vietnam, which was in its' most destructive prime when Slaughterhouse-five was published. The entire experience for people who lived through that time, even those far away from the fighting, is so difficult to capture. Conventional history books cannot do justice to the emotions felt by those that lived it. I doubt Vonnegut would have claimed to encompass everything felt by witnesses to the war in his novel, but he is able to capture and describe and convey a small sliver of that emotion to those of us who don't know what it was like. I don't know if I will read Slaughterhouse-five again, but I am glad that I did before I die.
So it goes.
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