Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. Billy Pilgrim’s journey is at once a farcical look at the horror and tragedy of war where children are placed on the frontlines and die (so it goes), and a moving examination of what it means to be fallibly human. An American classic and one of the world’s seminal antiwar books, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is faithfully presented in graphic novel form for the first time from Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North (How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler) and Eisner Award-nominated artist Albert Monteys (Universe!).
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Readers say *Slaughterhouse-Five* remains a profoundly amoral, unconventional novel blending dark humor with antiwar themes in a non-linear narrative....
re-read for like the 4th or 5th time. Better every time!
Vonnegut is so good at melding resignation with sadness and humor and at describing things and concepts and behaviors that we are familiar with in such a way that it makes you think about their absurdity or tragedy or both.
I really don't know what to say about this - everyone should read it. Especially if you find yourself thinking a particular war would be justified or good, or that you or your country are the good guys, or that someone else is lesser than you.
Vonnegut is so good at melding resignation with sadness and humor and at describing things and concepts and behaviors that we are familiar with in such a way that it makes you think about their absurdity or tragedy or both.
I really don't know what to say about this - everyone should read it. Especially if you find yourself thinking a particular war would be justified or good, or that you or your country are the good guys, or that someone else is lesser than you.
Billy Pilgrim is an alien-abducted, time traveling, war survivor whose story is told in the same disjointed style as other 60's anti-war literature. Pilgrim, a skinny, average, dull optometrist, marries his boss's rather porcine daughter, has two kids, survives the bombing of Dresden in WWII, gets abducted by the Tralfamadorians where he is put on display in an alien zoo.
All of this is revealed within the first 30 or so pages of the book. No need to read any further. The rest is incoherent rambling - Billy Pilgrim jumping back and forth between periods in time and repeating that same ANNOYING phrase: "And so it goes."
The dull, sparsely written prose matches the main character's life and his perception of life - dull, meaningless, and unchanging - a fatalistic view that both angered and irritated me as I slogged through the 209 pages.
Had I read SH-5 first, doubtful I would've read anything else written by Vonnegut.
Okay, so I've read the book. Am I enlightened? Hardly. Is my life enriched for having read it? Decidedly, no.
All of this is revealed within the first 30 or so pages of the book. No need to read any further. The rest is incoherent rambling - Billy Pilgrim jumping back and forth between periods in time and repeating that same ANNOYING phrase: "And so it goes."
The dull, sparsely written prose matches the main character's life and his perception of life - dull, meaningless, and unchanging - a fatalistic view that both angered and irritated me as I slogged through the 209 pages.
Had I read SH-5 first, doubtful I would've read anything else written by Vonnegut.
Okay, so I've read the book. Am I enlightened? Hardly. Is my life enriched for having read it? Decidedly, no.
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