9 ms·

What “Slaughterhouse-Five” Tells Us Now

123 points by prostoalex 7y ago

neilv 7y ago
A detail missed due to the HN title matching the linked page's title: the byline is Salman Rushdie.
jandrese 7y ago
[Harrison Starr] raised his eyebrows and inquired, “Is it an anti-war book?” “Yes,” I said. “I guess.” “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?” “No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?” “I say, why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?” What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. Well good news for humanity. We're well on our way to stopping glaciers, so maybe we can stop war after all.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Soon after stopping glaciers will come stopping technological human civilization. Maybe that won't stop war, but it'll reduce scale considerably. So it goes.
soperj 7y ago
I wonder what Mr.Vonnegut would have to say about the historians that try to minimize the causalities that occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.
- jandrese 7y ago
  "You weren't there".
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  What historians try to do that? Are they respected in their field? And are you sure about their intentions? Are they trying to minimize casualties, or just trying to find an accurate number(which may be smaller than reported casualties).
  - ShlomoS 7y ago
    >What historians try to do that? Most of them. >Are they respected in their field? Yes. >Are they trying to minimize casualties Yes. The reality is, people don't want nuance. They don't want grey. They don't want to feel the discomfort of realizing that the "good guys" were not so good, that they started deliberately burning tens of thousands of innocent women and children alive before a single bomb had been dropped on an allied city. People do not want to understand that WW2 was a war between bad guys and bad guys, not some noble heroic battle of good vs evil.
    - consumer451 7y ago
      Curtis Lemay, who was the man in charge of the firebombing of Japan had no questions in his mind on the morality of the operation. > Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. - On the morality of the firebombing campaign And also: > There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. [0] I would imagine that this is the same logic that modern terrorists(not only Islamic) use to justify their killing of civilians. Aka, collective responsibility.[1] [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility
      - fit2rule 7y ago
        .. its also the mechanism by which it is acceptable to completely ignore the victims of America's illegal drone killings.
    - archgoon 7y ago
      Putting aside our disagreements on the moral equivalency of the Axis and the Allies; it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  The very first time I read his book, over a decade ago, I really sympathized with his cries for Dresden. But it didn't last for me: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
- tomohawk 7y ago
  If the Nazis did not want to be bombed, they should not have picked a fight with the 2 superpowers (UK, US) who had heavy bombers when they had none. I know someone who survived Dresden, and what those people went through was terrible. However, it was an inevitable consequence of stopping an ideological movement that did not value humanity in the least. When you hear people touting their ideology and how they can't respect people's rights because they're trying to achieve a greater good - watch out.
  - mcbuilder 7y ago
    I think it is generally agreed that the Dresden bombing had little strategic impact, so I would do a little more reading on the subject before you go claim that it was a necessity to stop the Nazis. Unless you think vindictively bombing a civilian population as revenge is justifiable.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was arguably an opportunity to test methods. And to create terror, of course. Maybe also payback for the Blitz.
      - andy_ppp 7y ago
        I understand that it was always going to be immoral to fire bomb Dresden but the wind on that day whipped up the fires considerably and the extremity of the outcome was due to chance rather than vindictiveness. Of course I think if they’d have known the outcome of course they would have done it anyway.
        mirimir 7y ago
        Or maybe some of them considered the wind fortuitous. I wouldn't be surprised. But then, I'm not a huge fan of war. In fiction, sure. The bloodier, the better. But not in reality, where so many die to make points.
    - WiseWeasel 7y ago
- Tsubasachan 7y ago
  The consensus during and after WW2 was that the Germans deserved it. If you start a war expect to get burned. Sadly history tends to fade and now the Germans were just a tragically misunderstood people doing nothing wrong.
  - chachachoney 7y ago
    How amazingly reductive. Citizens are not governments. I wonder how you'd feel if you or a family member endured a horrible death by firestorm due to the machinations of a government which happens to rule the nation in which you currently reside? On whose perfect soil do you presently live?
  - deogeo 7y ago
    If only the writers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II shared your gift for stating things so concisely and unambiguously!
- emmelaich 7y ago
  What minimization? The recent (2010) study commissioned by the Dresden council came to the same ~25k that is the popular opinion. To be fair I could easily see it being much higher but that figure is the best we have.
neilv 7y ago
In early high school computer programming class (which officially was about programming in a particular language), our teacher didn't just teach that. The class put substantial time into things like history of programming (e.g., Ada Lovelace), and the thing I remember most was that we read and discussed Vonnegut's "Player Piano". In hindsight, that class was formative.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  In his seminal book on advanced industrial society, One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse makes the case that even many ostensibly democratic nations are, at heart, totalitarian. Totalitarianism, he argues, need not manifest as dystopian wastelands with labor camps, dictatorship, secret police, and all those other Orwellian characteristics: “For ‘totalitarian’ is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.” Player Piano, which purports to be “not a book about what is, but a book about what could be,” is such a totalitarian society – not one organized by terrorism but by economic-technical coordination of vested interests. Its society is one that appears, as its main character Paul Proteus notes, as a “clean, straight rafter,” that, once the surface is scraped away, is rotten to the core. [0] http://www.vonnegutreview.com/2013/06/player-piano-one-dimensional-society.html http://www.vonnegutreview.com/2013/06/player-piano-one-dimen...
  - r00fus 7y ago
    So I really struggle with the concept of subtle economic coercion (ie, the basis of western society) being described as "totalitarian". It's like 1st-world problems being described as legitimate oppression.
    - a1369209993 7y ago
      Note that subtle != mild. If going against society results in you losing your job (because your employer doesn't want to deal with bad publicity), losing your home (because you can't make rent/mortgage payments), losing your friends (because anyone who hangs out with a [racist/rapist/fetus-murderer/scammer/person who refuses to sign things they can't read/etc] suffers guilt by association), and possibly starving to death in the street (if you can't convince anyone to charity you some food), then that society is totalitarian, no matter how subtle they are about it. Current western society isn't nearly that bad[citation needed], but that's neither because it's impossible nor for lack of anyone trying.
oceanghost 7y ago
I generally respect Salman Rushdie (the author of the article), But I really feel he's missed the point. I am far less qualified to criticize literature than he, but I'm going to do it anyways. SL5 is about one thing. PTSD. PTSD was not a diagnosis when the book was written, but it is at least clear to me, that the book is about a fractured man trying to repair itself by creating a world view that is comforting to it. His becoming unstuck in time is, in my mind, simply a sci-fi flashback, or perhaps, flash-forward in this case?
- cafard 7y ago
  Nobody said PTSD, but one heard of shell shock or combat fatigue.
- funkjunky 7y ago
  That's a pretty reductive viewpoint. While PTSD is certainly a component of the story, it is all but a facet of the humanity and consequences of war
  - oceanghost 7y ago
    All viewpoints are reductive. That's exactly the point of them.
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  Arguing that a great novel is about one thing and one thing only is not only reductive, it is narcissistic. To think that there is no nuance, nothing that someone can see that you can't, that you know the author's full intentions, is self serving bordering on completely irrational. In short, no doubt this comment is on HN
clairity 7y ago
> "It tells us that most human beings are not so bad, except for the ones who are, and that’s valuable information." this sentiment underlies the misperception of risks like terrorism, school shootings, and child abduction. tangentially, billy pilgrim was a great little southern folk rock band. wish they'd made more music.
empath75 7y ago
I read this book from a Summer Reading List as a Stephen King fan in the 1990s. I assumed from the name, that it was a horror novel like Cujo. It was not a horror novel like Cujo but it sort of was in its own way. It had a huge impact on me, though. I'm fairly sure it was the first book that ever made me cry.
germanlee 7y ago
Did the writers at the new yorker finally start their high school literature education? "'1984' at Seventy: Why We Still Read Orwell" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158418 Not sure anyone at the new yorker should be telling us anything about anything, let alone high school literature.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
afro88 7y ago
If you ever find yourself in Dresden there's a fantastic tour based on Slaughterhouse Five, run by a local man who loves the book and is quite a character. A unique lens to learn about the city through. http://kurtvonnegut-tour.com/ http://kurtvonnegut-tour.com/
8bitsrule 7y ago
"Billy Pilgrim ... “comes unstuck in time” and begins to experience chronology the way Tralfamadorians do, he understands why his captors find comical the notion of free will." The belief that time is linear is not universal. Another fictional take on 'eternal recurrence' is explored in Ouspensky's 1915 Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. The protagonist becomes conscious of having lived the same life repeatedly, and struggles to fix his mistakes. It's a valuable metaphor, though I reject the concern that the timeline of every quark is scripted.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  The protagonist becomes conscious of having lived the same life repeatedly, and struggles to fix his mistakes. Abbreviated weeb version: Re:Zero. Also, All you need is Kill. (Aweebrviated?) It's a valuable metaphor, though I reject the concern that the timeline of every quark is scripted. Let's say I implement a huge, immersive, highly emergent video game, where all of the entity states are recorded, but all of the random number generation is constantly seeded by a feed from CloudFlare's lava lamps. I could present the entire history of my toy universe as a single, static 4 dimensional data object. I could even save that data on a 2D surface, then set the archive as a physical object on my mantelpiece. Yet the timeline of every entity in that toy universe wasn't scripted.
- nine_k 7y ago
  I remember this idea brought to the logical extreme (though I don't remember author's name). A character gets born, lives, dies, repeatedly, in different circumstances. At one.moment he manages to remember something that a being from outside time tells him between incarnations, in "limbo" / "bardo" type of setting. All the people in the world is that same character, only transpoted in time. All the worst villains he faces are himself, all the best saints he meets are his (future) selves. This world is entirely by him.
  - looeee 7y ago
    The Egg is the most famous story based on that idea, I think. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
tempguy9999 7y ago
I read it and thought it a remarkable book. I lent it to a mate who thought the same. Said mate lent it to his dad who had fought in the 2nd WW. His dad apparently said it was the best book on the war he'd ever read. If true, that's really saying something.
pstuart 7y ago
The movie adaptation of the book is as well done as one could ask for of such a work, at such a time. Joe Bob says check it out.
emmelaich 7y ago
I loved the book when I read it as youngster. Now .. it's faded a bit. A little factoid I found interesting -- Vonnegut was inspired in part to write it by the holocaust denier David Irving's book "The Destruction of Dresden" http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/04/kurt-vonnegut-and-david-irving-in.html http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/04/kurt-vonnegut-and-david... quote > "Vonnegut helped perpetuate that myth and spread this form of denial. He probably did so initially unwittingly. But since the publication of that book enough has been written to show this is not true and he could have corrected it has he been so inclined"
zeristor 7y ago
Is there an eBook edition? Strangely there’s an Italian eBook but I’ve not found an English one.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  http://libgen.io/search.php?req=slaughterhouse+five&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def http://libgen.io/search.php?req=slaughterhouse+five&open=0&r... http://booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=B238DC565A4E2BB3FA5FBA8D9E522C5A http://booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=B238DC565A4E2BB3FA5FBA8D9E...

123 points by prostoalex 7y ago

A detail missed due to the HN title matching the linked page's title: the byline is Salman Rushdie.

[Harrison Starr] raised his eyebrows and inquired, “Is it an anti-war book?” “Yes,” I said. “I guess.” “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?” “No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?” “I say, why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?” What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. Well good news for humanity. We're well on our way to stopping glaciers, so maybe we can stop war after all.

mirimir 7y ago
Soon after stopping glaciers will come stopping technological human civilization. Maybe that won't stop war, but it'll reduce scale considerably. So it goes.

soperj 7y ago

I wonder what Mr.Vonnegut would have to say about the historians that try to minimize the causalities that occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.

jandrese 7y ago
"You weren't there".
oh_sigh 7y ago
What historians try to do that? Are they respected in their field? And are you sure about their intentions? Are they trying to minimize casualties, or just trying to find an accurate number(which may be smaller than reported casualties).
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  >What historians try to do that? Most of them. >Are they respected in their field? Yes. >Are they trying to minimize casualties Yes. The reality is, people don't want nuance. They don't want grey. They don't want to feel the discomfort of realizing that the "good guys" were not so good, that they started deliberately burning tens of thousands of innocent women and children alive before a single bomb had been dropped on an allied city. People do not want to understand that WW2 was a war between bad guys and bad guys, not some noble heroic battle of good vs evil.
  - consumer451 7y ago
    Curtis Lemay, who was the man in charge of the firebombing of Japan had no questions in his mind on the morality of the operation. > Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. - On the morality of the firebombing campaign And also: > There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. [0] I would imagine that this is the same logic that modern terrorists(not only Islamic) use to justify their killing of civilians. Aka, collective responsibility.[1] [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      .. its also the mechanism by which it is acceptable to completely ignore the victims of America's illegal drone killings.
  - archgoon 7y ago
    Putting aside our disagreements on the moral equivalency of the Axis and the Allies; it is simply factual incorrect to claim that Dresden was done before any bombings on allied cities. The Blitz happened in 1940.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alexandercrohde 7y ago
The very first time I read his book, over a decade ago, I really sympathized with his cries for Dresden. But it didn't last for me: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
tomohawk 7y ago
If the Nazis did not want to be bombed, they should not have picked a fight with the 2 superpowers (UK, US) who had heavy bombers when they had none. I know someone who survived Dresden, and what those people went through was terrible. However, it was an inevitable consequence of stopping an ideological movement that did not value humanity in the least. When you hear people touting their ideology and how they can't respect people's rights because they're trying to achieve a greater good - watch out.
- mcbuilder 7y ago
  I think it is generally agreed that the Dresden bombing had little strategic impact, so I would do a little more reading on the subject before you go claim that it was a necessity to stop the Nazis. Unless you think vindictively bombing a civilian population as revenge is justifiable.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was arguably an opportunity to test methods. And to create terror, of course. Maybe also payback for the Blitz.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I understand that it was always going to be immoral to fire bomb Dresden but the wind on that day whipped up the fires considerably and the extremity of the outcome was due to chance rather than vindictiveness. Of course I think if they’d have known the outcome of course they would have done it anyway.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Or maybe some of them considered the wind fortuitous. I wouldn't be surprised. But then, I'm not a huge fan of war. In fiction, sure. The bloodier, the better. But not in reality, where so many die to make points.
  - WiseWeasel 7y ago
Tsubasachan 7y ago
The consensus during and after WW2 was that the Germans deserved it. If you start a war expect to get burned. Sadly history tends to fade and now the Germans were just a tragically misunderstood people doing nothing wrong.
- chachachoney 7y ago
  How amazingly reductive. Citizens are not governments. I wonder how you'd feel if you or a family member endured a horrible death by firestorm due to the machinations of a government which happens to rule the nation in which you currently reside? On whose perfect soil do you presently live?
- deogeo 7y ago
  If only the writers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II shared your gift for stating things so concisely and unambiguously!
emmelaich 7y ago
What minimization? The recent (2010) study commissioned by the Dresden council came to the same ~25k that is the popular opinion. To be fair I could easily see it being much higher but that figure is the best we have.

neilv 7y ago

In early high school computer programming class (which officially was about programming in a particular language), our teacher didn't just teach that. The class put substantial time into things like history of programming (e.g., Ada Lovelace), and the thing I remember most was that we read and discussed Vonnegut's "Player Piano". In hindsight, that class was formative.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
onemoresoop 7y ago
In his seminal book on advanced industrial society, One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse makes the case that even many ostensibly democratic nations are, at heart, totalitarian. Totalitarianism, he argues, need not manifest as dystopian wastelands with labor camps, dictatorship, secret police, and all those other Orwellian characteristics: “For ‘totalitarian’ is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.” Player Piano, which purports to be “not a book about what is, but a book about what could be,” is such a totalitarian society – not one organized by terrorism but by economic-technical coordination of vested interests. Its society is one that appears, as its main character Paul Proteus notes, as a “clean, straight rafter,” that, once the surface is scraped away, is rotten to the core. [0] http://www.vonnegutreview.com/2013/06/player-piano-one-dimensional-society.html http://www.vonnegutreview.com/2013/06/player-piano-one-dimen...
- r00fus 7y ago
  So I really struggle with the concept of subtle economic coercion (ie, the basis of western society) being described as "totalitarian". It's like 1st-world problems being described as legitimate oppression.
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    Note that subtle != mild. If going against society results in you losing your job (because your employer doesn't want to deal with bad publicity), losing your home (because you can't make rent/mortgage payments), losing your friends (because anyone who hangs out with a [racist/rapist/fetus-murderer/scammer/person who refuses to sign things they can't read/etc] suffers guilt by association), and possibly starving to death in the street (if you can't convince anyone to charity you some food), then that society is totalitarian, no matter how subtle they are about it. Current western society isn't nearly that bad[citation needed], but that's neither because it's impossible nor for lack of anyone trying.

oceanghost 7y ago

I generally respect Salman Rushdie (the author of the article), But I really feel he's missed the point. I am far less qualified to criticize literature than he, but I'm going to do it anyways. SL5 is about one thing. PTSD. PTSD was not a diagnosis when the book was written, but it is at least clear to me, that the book is about a fractured man trying to repair itself by creating a world view that is comforting to it. His becoming unstuck in time is, in my mind, simply a sci-fi flashback, or perhaps, flash-forward in this case?

cafard 7y ago
Nobody said PTSD, but one heard of shell shock or combat fatigue.
funkjunky 7y ago
That's a pretty reductive viewpoint. While PTSD is certainly a component of the story, it is all but a facet of the humanity and consequences of war
- oceanghost 7y ago
  All viewpoints are reductive. That's exactly the point of them.
wbronitsky 7y ago
Arguing that a great novel is about one thing and one thing only is not only reductive, it is narcissistic. To think that there is no nuance, nothing that someone can see that you can't, that you know the author's full intentions, is self serving bordering on completely irrational. In short, no doubt this comment is on HN

clairity 7y ago

> "It tells us that most human beings are not so bad, except for the ones who are, and that’s valuable information." this sentiment underlies the misperception of risks like terrorism, school shootings, and child abduction. tangentially, billy pilgrim was a great little southern folk rock band. wish they'd made more music.

empath75 7y ago

I read this book from a Summer Reading List as a Stephen King fan in the 1990s. I assumed from the name, that it was a horror novel like Cujo. It was not a horror novel like Cujo but it sort of was in its own way. It had a huge impact on me, though. I'm fairly sure it was the first book that ever made me cry.

germanlee 7y ago

Did the writers at the new yorker finally start their high school literature education? "'1984' at Seventy: Why We Still Read Orwell" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158418 Not sure anyone at the new yorker should be telling us anything about anything, let alone high school literature.

dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

afro88 7y ago

If you ever find yourself in Dresden there's a fantastic tour based on Slaughterhouse Five, run by a local man who loves the book and is quite a character. A unique lens to learn about the city through. http://kurtvonnegut-tour.com/ http://kurtvonnegut-tour.com/

8bitsrule 7y ago

"Billy Pilgrim ... “comes unstuck in time” and begins to experience chronology the way Tralfamadorians do, he understands why his captors find comical the notion of free will." The belief that time is linear is not universal. Another fictional take on 'eternal recurrence' is explored in Ouspensky's 1915 Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. The protagonist becomes conscious of having lived the same life repeatedly, and struggles to fix his mistakes. It's a valuable metaphor, though I reject the concern that the timeline of every quark is scripted.

stcredzero 7y ago
The protagonist becomes conscious of having lived the same life repeatedly, and struggles to fix his mistakes. Abbreviated weeb version: Re:Zero. Also, All you need is Kill. (Aweebrviated?) It's a valuable metaphor, though I reject the concern that the timeline of every quark is scripted. Let's say I implement a huge, immersive, highly emergent video game, where all of the entity states are recorded, but all of the random number generation is constantly seeded by a feed from CloudFlare's lava lamps. I could present the entire history of my toy universe as a single, static 4 dimensional data object. I could even save that data on a 2D surface, then set the archive as a physical object on my mantelpiece. Yet the timeline of every entity in that toy universe wasn't scripted.
nine_k 7y ago
I remember this idea brought to the logical extreme (though I don't remember author's name). A character gets born, lives, dies, repeatedly, in different circumstances. At one.moment he manages to remember something that a being from outside time tells him between incarnations, in "limbo" / "bardo" type of setting. All the people in the world is that same character, only transpoted in time. All the worst villains he faces are himself, all the best saints he meets are his (future) selves. This world is entirely by him.
- looeee 7y ago
  The Egg is the most famous story based on that idea, I think. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

tempguy9999 7y ago

I read it and thought it a remarkable book. I lent it to a mate who thought the same. Said mate lent it to his dad who had fought in the 2nd WW. His dad apparently said it was the best book on the war he'd ever read. If true, that's really saying something.

pstuart 7y ago

The movie adaptation of the book is as well done as one could ask for of such a work, at such a time. Joe Bob says check it out.

emmelaich 7y ago

I loved the book when I read it as youngster. Now .. it's faded a bit. A little factoid I found interesting -- Vonnegut was inspired in part to write it by the holocaust denier David Irving's book "The Destruction of Dresden" http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/04/kurt-vonnegut-and-david-irving-in.html http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/04/kurt-vonnegut-and-david... quote > "Vonnegut helped perpetuate that myth and spread this form of denial. He probably did so initially unwittingly. But since the publication of that book enough has been written to show this is not true and he could have corrected it has he been so inclined"

zeristor 7y ago

Is there an eBook edition? Strangely there’s an Italian eBook but I’ve not found an English one.

dredmorbius 7y ago
http://libgen.io/search.php?req=slaughterhouse+five&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def http://libgen.io/search.php?req=slaughterhouse+five&open=0&r... http://booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=B238DC565A4E2BB3FA5FBA8D9E522C5A http://booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=B238DC565A4E2BB3FA5FBA8D9E...