Slaughterhouse 5
Registered by BookGroupMan of Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom on 10/31/2003
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
“LISTEN: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”
This book absolutely defies description, even the blurb doesn’t try. Billy Pilgrim is our hero, ‘a prisoner of war, optometrist & time-traveller.’ There are also hints at a modern reworking of Pilgrims Progress and the Children’s Crusade, which I don’t know anything about (lots of different layers here). BP is also the ridiculous ‘veteran’ & survivor of the Dresden bombings, safe in a virtually indestructible underground slaughterhouse meat store. He is described as “preposterous, six feet three inches tall, with a chest & shoulders like a box of kitchen matches”
The central story is about BP’s wartime experiences, told in flashback episodes, but the narrative jumps backs and forward in time disturbingly in almost every paragraph. Part of the philosophy of the alien Tralfamadorians who kidnapped BP for a zoo exhibit (don’t even ask!) is that all time & events exist at once, and that we and our experiences are “trapped in the amber of this moment…there is no why...this moment simply is”. BP tries to understand why and how he survived, with so much apparent arbitrary slaughter, and how he goes on to become a successful businessman, despite his flaws, and civilian close shave with death. He has the serenity prayer in his office (apropos, not changing the things you can’t control). “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future”
Last quote from wartime experience, BP and a huge number of allied POWs’ being marched east to camps, “through the valley flowed a Mississippi of humiliated Americans”. I would highly recommend this book, although the style is challenging, its well written, good fun, hugely insightful and thought provoking.
This book absolutely defies description, even the blurb doesn’t try. Billy Pilgrim is our hero, ‘a prisoner of war, optometrist & time-traveller.’ There are also hints at a modern reworking of Pilgrims Progress and the Children’s Crusade, which I don’t know anything about (lots of different layers here). BP is also the ridiculous ‘veteran’ & survivor of the Dresden bombings, safe in a virtually indestructible underground slaughterhouse meat store. He is described as “preposterous, six feet three inches tall, with a chest & shoulders like a box of kitchen matches”
The central story is about BP’s wartime experiences, told in flashback episodes, but the narrative jumps backs and forward in time disturbingly in almost every paragraph. Part of the philosophy of the alien Tralfamadorians who kidnapped BP for a zoo exhibit (don’t even ask!) is that all time & events exist at once, and that we and our experiences are “trapped in the amber of this moment…there is no why...this moment simply is”. BP tries to understand why and how he survived, with so much apparent arbitrary slaughter, and how he goes on to become a successful businessman, despite his flaws, and civilian close shave with death. He has the serenity prayer in his office (apropos, not changing the things you can’t control). “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future”
Last quote from wartime experience, BP and a huge number of allied POWs’ being marched east to camps, “through the valley flowed a Mississippi of humiliated Americans”. I would highly recommend this book, although the style is challenging, its well written, good fun, hugely insightful and thought provoking.
Released on Monday, November 24, 2003 at Passed on to my brother in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.
Passed on to you bro to enjoy, and hopefully pass on or release back home in america?
Passed on to you bro to enjoy, and hopefully pass on or release back home in america?
