Opinions

Has anyone else read Slaughter House Five recently? If so, what did you take away from it? Or, do you hate it? Either way, post your answer below.

it's been a while but I remember it pretty well. I like the format of it being something that starts as a biopic and ends as this grand sci-fi WW2 crossover. I often think about Vonnegut's description of the Tralfamadorians' perception of time compared to humans', and the odd details like Kurt's mouthy war buddy's fucked up feet.

it's a good read, but I personally enjoy Cat's Cradle more, and Sirens of Titan is more ambitious as a sci fi story. being a weird genre hybrid makes Slaughterhouse-Five uneven and not as cogent as his later work, but it's still good.

The first half or so was terrible, got better towards the end but still not very good. I understand why it's a plebe/normie/plebbit favorite

the first time I read it, I could not stop because I enjoyed it so much. I've read it 7 times. one of my favorites.

Read it, finally, for the first time last weekend. I was pretty surprised by the references to Tralfamadore (only my second Vonnegut book) at first but I really enjoyed the way time flowed from event to event in the story, e.g. blinking and now it's 1958. I loved the ending and the comparison between the dilapidated Dresden and the moon.

I got goosebumps during the part where Billy was rescued from the airplane crash and told his rescuers "Shlacthof fünf" (sp). There were definitely many scenes that caught me off guard.

Probably the most lackluster Vonnegut novel. Read Breakfast of Champions or Mother Night.

people on here like to dump on it but I read it in high school and it changed my life. Lmao I reread the paper I wrote about it 7 years ago (ohhhhhh fuck), it was for AP English where we wrote about a book of our choice, I cringed so hard at my basic bitch analysis. But that book along with The Stranger really triggered my interest in literature.

Vonnegut was the author that got me into "real" literature in early high school so I'll always like him. Slaughterhouse isn't my favorite of his but I do think it was interesting and overall well-done.
Mother Night is definitely a very good one. Nobody seems to have read Bluebeard, but I liked that one a lot as well.

The part about Billy's muff was good for a chuckle.

I like the alien stuff.

And the Nazi stuff (KV never calls them Nazis but Germans).

The prisoners' camp always stuck with me. The enlisted Americans being so young and worn down in comparison to the English officers that had been captured earlier and just kinda hung out. Vonnegut's little cameo of himself was cool.

It's one of my favorite books, perhaps for very personal reasons. It's very sad overall but also have some beautiful parts.

>what did you take away from it?
Specially the part where Billy thinks that "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" would be a good epitaph for him speaks to me a lot. Taking into account the overall tone of the book, for me it means that yeah, the sad parts exist and perhaps are the majority of life, but it doesn't take the beauty out of the parts that were beautiful. So it's pretty much "acknowledge the bad shit but acknowledge the beauty as well" said in a funny/ironic way.
And I've read it during a period of my life that this was very important (and still is), so I guess it's the main thing I took out from it.
>have a tattoo of that gravestone btw

Also I enjoy a lot the style of writing and structure of the novel. I think the fact that is nonlinear but still reads line a very linear novel is a great accomplishment.

show tat

why didnt you get the titties tattoo instead? kek

he's no pynchon but i remember liking it in high school.

It's interest that Vonnegut was a liberal, liberals seems to love him, and he's basically Reddit's author sweetheart, but if he were alive doing what he did today he'd be crucified by them for writing stories like Welcome to the Monkey House.

Why? Is "Monkey House" the nickname of a nigger brothel or smt?

not really all that interesting desu

It's basically about a future where women are brainwashed/given drugs to make them not interested in sex (I think so anyways, it's been a few years since I've read it). Some dude kidnaps one of the bitches in question and rapes her, taking her virginity, him and the "rebel" group he's working with get her off of her meds (basically so her sex drive is going to kick back in) and then he tells her that she'll be thankful for him doing what he did someday when she finds romantic/sexual love with a more attractive man. The idea is that he's helping her reclaim her humanity, but it's basically also a rape story. Maybe the type of people who throw laurels on Vonnegut (who also strike me as the kind of people who are into the whole SJW rape-culture cult thing) haven't read that particular story, or if they have don't care that it doesn't mesh with their ideology. I guess my point is that if you wrote that story today you'd be called a rape advocate by the same people who like Vonnegut.

see

>SO IT GOES
>AND SO ON
>SO IT GOES
>AND SO ON
>SO IT GOES
>SO IT GOES
>AND SO ON
>SO IT GOES
>SO IT GOES
>SO IT GOES
>AND SO ON

I fucking hated this book. Vonnegut is a Young Adult writer marketed at midwit adults. His philosophy is superficial, timetravel is a fool's crutch, no free will nihilism is an argument for those who can't face difficult questions honestly and need a quick escape.

I thought it may have been a bad egg so I read Cat's Cradle and it's almost exactly the same. I'll never read another thing he wrote and you shouldn't either if you don't want to waste your time.

Short intro lit
Get through it while you can enjoy it because these books get worse the more you read

Outside, the ensemble of sparrows sung a tranquil tune. The sagacious oak trees swayed
rhythmically in the autumn wind. A small river flowed through the courtyard and beyond the
walls where it divided and became four rivers – an organic treasure in the urbanized city of
London. It was a charming portrait for the man in blue who sat on the courtyard bench, his
mind as clear as the river that flowed alongside him in the garden of the world. "

Opening paragraph to my novel. Am I too verbose?

>The sagacious oak trees

This is pretty spot on. The only objection I would have it that his work is at least somewhat entertaining, in the way that Hunger Games or some other drivel is kind of entertaining.

There was one short story I liked that he wrote, however, called "The Kid No One Could Handle." It's about a sort of delinquent teenage boy who antagonizes this high school music teacher he's been foisted on and it's completely devoid of that empty supernaturalism that belabors almost all of Vonnegut's stories.