Review: Slaughter-House Five

After reading Armageddon in Retrospect and adoring Vonnegut's style and message, I picked up several of the new editions of his works. The volumes all look great - redesigned to include sketches done by the author. Much better than the old design used by Vintage. I dug into Slaughterhouse Five first and was surprised again - if I loved Armageddon in Retrospect, I absolutely adored this book. Irreverent, funny, ridiculous and extremely humane, this book danced around a subject that has always been of interest to me - the firebombing of Dresden by allied forces during World War Two.

Vonnegut writes with an admirable simplicity and clarity - his stories are not complex and involved. They are snippets of reality and fantasy, compassion and hatred, extraordinary compassion and total apathy. Like so many other writers who lived through wars in the first part of the 20th century, Vonnegut's writing is at its core a plea against the organized violence of warfare and violence of any kind.

I was honestly amazed by this book. It's an easy read and broken into many small sections, and since the story skips around constantly within Billy's life it is easy to read in pieces. I found myself enthralled with the book, yet happy to read a few chapters and then set the book down for a few hours or days before picking back up where I left off. It's remarkable that he is able to treat such dark material, something he lived through himself, with such delicate humor and insight. I wish I had started in on his writings years ago, but it's also nice to uncover such a wealth of excellent literature today.