Thoughts on Slaughterhouse-Five

Well I can definitely see why Vonnegut did not think this book was very "fun" to write.  As I expected, the humor in this book is quite different from that of the stories in "The 50 Funniest American Writers."  This book never had me laughing out loud and I find it hard to feel amused by the dark humor (which is kind of the point).  I found the character of Roland Weary, with his obsession with torture and warped mind, especially hard to find humorous, even if he looked ridiculous.  I felt annoyed with him more than anything.

War is a very harsh subject to write about, but Vonnegut does it quite well.  I personally do not enjoy reading sad books such as this one.  That being said, I think this was a well written account of such terrible events.  Vonnegut leaves little unsaid as he details Billy's experiences, truly depicting the horror of war.  The senselessness of the way it is written shows the senselessness of slaughter.  The repetition of "so it goes" emphasizes just how much death there is in the book.

The book constantly jerks you through time with Billy, showing how the war has managed to reek havoc on almost all of his life.  Once I got used to flinging back and forth through time, I started to enjoy this style of writing.  Even though the time travel never really serves as an escape to a pleasanter time, I find it better than reading pages upon pages of the same tragic event.  Jumping from moment to moment, even if only from one tragedy to the next, keeps the book interesting.  Vonnegut forces the reader to experience the schizophrenia of Billy's mind, but doing so also allows you to discover the events that influenced and shaped his Tralfamadorian delusions.

I disagree with the Tralfamadorian idea of time, but can see how Billy used it to cope with all of the death in his life.  They reject free will altogether, thinking that everything will happen regardless of how they feel about it, and they never try to change anything.  Even in the most extreme case, their destruction of the universe, they see it as just another moment of "so it goes."  Billy adopts their sense of apathy, allowing everyone and everything to push him around.  That is one of the reasons why I like Edgar Derby.  He is the only one who really bothers to take a stand on anything.  The Tralfamadorians advise Billy to learn to pay attention only to the good times in life and ignore the bad ones.  The only benefit of this idea is Billy's learning to appreciate the good times, but these moments can still be appreciated in light of the bad ones.  In fact, they are more precious when you take all things into account.

Clearly Vonnegut himself did not take the Tralfamadorians' advice, as he wrote an entire novel over an incredibly dark time.  If we try to brush the darker moments of our history under the rug, how can we ever learn from them and work to prevent their reoccurrence?  The fact that the Tralfamadorians are willing to let the entire universe be destructed only drives this point home and makes their philosophy look ridiculous.  Maybe that was Vonnegut's point in telling us this.  He uses the Tralfamadorians to show the extreme/ultimate cost of ignoring the past and not working to change the present.  Perhaps one could go so far as to say that this is the point of his writing the entire novel: if we do not acknowledge and work to prevent the shortcomings of our past, we may well be heading down a road of destruction.

On a side/happier note, I found the concept of the Tralfamadorian books interesting.  Seeing the picture that an amalgamation of moments in time creates is a neat idea.  I guess for us that is like looking at a series of memories and seeing how together they form a picture of us, like a small window into our identity.

Baked Potatoes and Bruised Pride

This past week my grandma flew into town to stay with my family for a while.  She was feeling sick when she got here so in only a period of four days my mom made three trips to the store to buy food and medicine.  I will say that she worked really hard to find things that my grandma would feel like eating.  So we had a number of foods in the house, like individually wrapped prunes, just for her to eat.  Right before we were supposed to leave for our trip to Houston/Galveston my grandma said that she would really like a baked potato.  My mom was a bit irked because she already had the meals planned out and there was already a bunch of food for my grandma to eat.  There would be plenty of time for my grandma to enjoy a baked potato when we got back from the trip, so we decided to wait.

The hotel we would be staying in in Houston served dinner and the menu was posted online, and guess what was being served?  Baked Potatoes!  My grandma was delighted to hear that.  The next day when we got to the hotel we stayed in the car while my dad went and checked us in.  At the front desk there was a sign:  "The food truck did not make it today and consequently we will not be serving baked potatoes tonight, instead there will be [blah blah blah]."  When my dad came back to the car and relayed the message to us we all started cracking up.  I'd say this was a form of schadenfreude.  My grandma was so excited when she found out that the hotel would be serving baked potatoes and the situation was so pitiful it was funny.  It was even funnier that the sign specifically said there would be no baked potatoes.  The story does have a happy ending however.  At a restaurant the next night in Galveston my grandma finally got her baked potato.

This was not the only time I found a sad situation comical on our trip.  We went to Space Center Houston and rode the tram to see Mission Control at NASA.  The tram was fairly high off the ground and you had to climb up into it.  We were really careful to make sure that my grandma got safely into the tram.  When we arrived at the building that housed mission control everyone had to exit the tram.  My grandma got off safely but somehow my mom's foot caught on the hump above the wheel and she fell off.  She didn't just trip, she fell all the way to a laying position on the ground.  There were audible gasps from everyone around.  I saw her going but I couldn't reach her in time and it all happened so fast.  When my mom made it clear that she was not hurt at all, I started laughing.  This time it was just me that laughed, as strangers cannot exactly laugh at something like that.

Morreal would be quick to say that this was a prime example of the superiority theory, but I beg to differ.  Yes I was glad that I had not fallen, but honestly if she had gotten hurt I would have rather it have been me that fell because it would have been less "disabling" for me.  The people around us were also glad that they did not fall, but that did not make them laugh.  I laughed more-so because of the situation and how startled I was by her fall.  (I tend to be a nervous laugher).  It was ironic because we were all so focused on making sure that my grandma didn't fall and then my mom fell.  It was also kind of funny because so many people did see her fall and it was such a dramatic fall.  I felt like I saw it in slow motion.  I can honestly say that I felt no malice when I laughed, and she made clear that she was not hurt when I laughed.  I think this was a better example of ironic situational humor.

An International Lunch

On Thursday I met Giovanka and two of her friends from IEP for lunch in the BLUU.  It was really neat getting to eat lunch with people from Brazil, Columbia, and New Caledonia (a French island off of Australia) all at once.  I did not realize when Giovanka and I planned to meet that it was a special day in the BLUU where Brazilian food was served.  There were Brazilian flags all over and Giovanka was so excited.  There were a number of foods that she really enjoyed from home but had not been able to eat for months.  She made sure to get some of each of the Brazilian foods.  I ate what I think was a called arroz brasileiro, or Brazilian-style "dirty rice."  It was rice with beans and meat and was delicious!  Giovanka introduced herself to Marcello, the Brazilian chef that had come in to cook the food and she got to talk to him in Portuguese for a while.  She told me that when she introduced herself to him she reached out her hand to shake his but he said "No, no, you are not an American" and he gave her a kiss on the cheek instead (the typical Brazilian greeting).  I thought that was funny because whenever we we hug goodbye Giovanka does like an air kiss, which I have to try to remember to do each time.

While Giovanka was talking to Marcello, I got to talk to Julien & Alison.  We got to talking about music.  Alison said that she really liked some of the French songs that Julien had introduced her to.  I asked her if she listened to Belinda, a Spanish artist, and she said that she is one of her favorite singers.  I think she was quite surprised when I told her that I have some of her CD's.

It was funny sitting at a table with three other people from such completely different backgrounds.  Alison would throw in Spanish phrases once in a while and Julien would use French terms such as "Shari."  They would joke around and make fun of each other for the way they pronounced certain words with an accent.  I thought it was interesting that I found Giovanka easier to understand than any of them.  We had a whole discussion on whether the Brazilian style of creme brulee that was in the BLUU could be considered Brazilian since it was inherently a French type of food.  (It was delicious either way).  Then Julien spent a while trying to get us to say creme brulee with the correct French pronunciation.  We also talked about the term "french kiss," a term that the French themselves do not use.  It was an interesting conversation.

It was neat getting to meet some of Giovanka's international friends and getting to try some of her native food.  I'd say it was another successful meeting.

A First Look At Slaughterhouse-Five

I have definitely heard of Slaughterhouse-Five but I really knew nothing about it, so I dove into it quite blindly.  After reading chapter one, it is evident this is no "ordinary" book.  In just a matter of pages the author seems to break a number of the unspoken rules that writers follow.  By only the second page Vonnegut is relating all of the trouble it has been to finish the "lousy little book."  He tells of the hardship in actually remembering stories from Dresden to write about for most of the chapter.  Vonnegut breaks the biggest rule of book-writing by telling the reader what he believes will be the climax of his book before we have even really begun reading it.  He describes what he believes to be the most exciting parts of his time in Dresden right off the bat, leaving the reader to wonder if it is even worth reading the rest of the story.  Within the first paragraph he gives away what appears to be some major plot spoilers.  Vonnegut himself says that nothing else that happened is really of as much note.  In the close of the chapter he calls the book a failure and reveals what are probably the the two most important lines of the book: the very beginning and end.

What does make the read enjoyable is his humor dropped here and there on the pages.  I love how he refers to himself as an "old fart" or calls drunk-dialing a "disease...involving alcohol and the telephone."  He has a way of downplaying the big events by intermingling the historic moments of the war with comments on his regular life in the present.  He says that the woman whose husband was squashed by his car said only "what you would expect her to say," as if this was a common occurence.  This juxtaposition between the harsh realities of death and his now mundane life, combined with his neutral attitude make everything seem almost ridiculous.  From dedicating the book to another man's wife (who didn't even like the idea of a war book) to quoting a whole passage in German, Vonnegut does nothing in ordinary fashion.

I find it quite refreshing that he seems to break all of the rules, setting Slaughterhouse-Five apart from books.  I enjoy his humor that seems to pop out of nowhere.  I am looking forward to seeing what Vonnegut will tell me next.