"high on clouds of sunlight floating by"

[ryutsuki]

I just spent the evening reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. An excerpt from the summary is as follows:Unstuck in time, the hero of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five -- an unforgettable Everyman named Billy Pilgrim -- is never sure what part of his life he is going to have to act in next

Comments

[wrongly_amused]

WHAT NO STFU LIES HE IS THE SHIT. >:O

:-P

What touches me the most about Vonnegut is his disappointed love for humanity that permeates all of his stories. There's sort of a reverence for the irreverent because he's seen so much of the ups and downs, and it's not that he doesn't get it - he really does! - he's just adamantly opposed to just letting things be.

Hnn...what else to recommend you. Well, I love almost all of his stuff, but the big ones most people know of after SH5 is Breakfast of Champions (which is sort of his...semi-abstract ruminations on authoring and self-consciousness and the nature of God-playing type of deal, I think you'd like it), Cat's Cradle (his apocalyptic examination of human folly, which is the closest to scifi as he's come, despite it being his original major, heh), and I'd also recommend Mother Night, though that's a bit darker than the other two.

Mr. Rosewater was the guy who showed Billy Trout's work in the hospital right? Is it the same one or a different guy in the book?

I think so, it's getting back to where I need to get into my annual rereading of the novel. One of the cool things about Vonnegut that you'll pick up if you become an avid reader of his work is that his stories have a way of carrying continuity between completely unrelated pieces. Several of the bit characters in SH5 are actually main characters in other novels - Kilgore Trout, for instance, is one of the dual protagonists in Breakfast of Champions.

[ryutsuki]

What touches me the most about Vonnegut is his disappointed love for humanity that permeates all of his stories. There's sort of a reverence for the irreverent because he's seen so much of the ups and downs, and it's not that he doesn't get it - he really does! - he's just adamantly opposed to just letting things be.
Eh, that's not what really got me about Vonnegut. What I liked most was his consistency with ideas, and how...the piece really felt whole. Nothing forgotten or left out, and what was forgotten and left out wasn't meant to be there anyway. And his voice was fantastic.

According to the PDF file I was reading, it took him 165 pages to tell me of the fragility and futileness of the human condition and how the good times are what carry us on. He could have said that in a sentence, but it wouldn't have meant as much. It's not a telling but a realization. I haven't read any of his other stuff, but Vonnegut was very talented at that in SH5.

At least, that's what it was to me.

[wrongly_amused]

I guess I'm coming at it more from the perspective from somebody who's read a lot of his work, picking up from the continuity of themes across the spectrum? SH5 really does read like a confession, a struggle to make sense of the experience of his existence - he's made it very clear that it was a purging process, and he's made good on his promise not to dwell on it as he did in his other works. Most of his writing is rather distinct from SH5; in fact, for an author who frequently alludes to characters and stories from other works, SH5 is the notable exclusion in that.