Slaughterhouse-five is an interesting novel, but I liked it primarily because of its new and enriching concept-- never before had I seen an idea of this constant time traveler (time traveler sort of implies that Billy is in control of time, he actually isn’t) and this awe-struck me. Although it was this very thing that had me confused for a long time, I think that that it served well to the purpose of the book. While Vonnegut’s style is disjointed into small vignettes, restraining from a fully coherent and well developed narrative, which at the beginning made it seem to like Billy was crazy. However, as the book progressed, the message was clear that this was how the human brain works-- everybody dreams, daydreams, fantasizes, remembers, and analyses.
I would also like to spend some time talking about the writing style. When I read a book, I prefer to go for fiction because you tend to have a lot of dialogue and not a whole lot of jargon mess to sort through (come on, thats reserved for things like poetry, not books). People write really exquisite and long sentences which I just hate. That is why, when I first read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, I liked it so much -- short and sweet, and gets the point across. The same thing can be seen in Slaughterhouse-five: while the concept is a bit hard to grasp, the writing is brief, yet moist with irony. For example on page 60 (this is Slaughterhouse-five), when Billy is not able to find the steering wheel, the narrator says, “He was in the backseat of his car, which was why he couldn't find the steering wheel.” The ironical frankness of that is what I enjoy. Vonnegut gets the point across in the quickest way possible, and I love him for that. While I was reading Mumbo Jumbo or Ragtime, it felt like the narrators were these tough, introvert type of people (if I were to sit in a room with them, I would feel lonely), whereas, Vonnegut’s narration is more simplistic, which is why I am able to connect.
Overall, I think that Slaughterhouse-five has been the most thought provoking book so far this semester, as well as engaging. While I was not able to connect to many of the problems that Billy faced, I was reminded of many proverbs while reading his experiences. For example, when Billy works together with the Germans to escape, that reminded me of the famous proverb “if you want to take refuge by the river, make friends with the crocodile.” So it goes.
The analogy to Hemingway's prose style makes a lot of sense--and it's striking in part because their sensibilities as people seem so different (even though they both made their name as writers portraying wounded war vets trying to adjust to a new world after the war). I see what you mean about KV's "ironical frankness"--how a line can be so funny and striking, largely because it comes up in contexts when we aren't expecting humor. I wrote about the "defamiliarizing" effects of this style on my own blog.
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