Slaughterhouse 5

LoveReading Says

All this happened, more or less.

Comedy has sometimes between defined as ‘tragedy plus time’ and this is nowhere better illustrated than in Vonnegut’s 1969 classic. In the book for which he will be best remembered, Vonnegut processes his own experience as an American serviceman during the fire-bombing of Dresden, using mordant wit (and aliens) to examine one of the most senseless and tragic acts of war in modern times. Billy Pilgrim is ‘unstuck’ in time, and the dark humour with which his absurdist, time-travelling adventures are infused make this a captivating read. It’s certainly a wild ride, never more so than when Vonnegut introduces a second author – the failed science fiction writer Kilgore Trout – and fiction and historical reality become increasingly blurred and wonderfully bizarre. There are clowns, porn stars and alien zoos; satire, historical fiction and science fiction combining to make this an autobiographical novel like no other. Originally published during the Vietnam war, Slaughterhouse-Five (named after Schlachthof-fünf – the disused slaughterhouse in which Vonnegut was held as a prisoner of war) became an instant counter-culture hit, but remains every bit as relevant today. Arguably, it could not be any more relevant. There has never been a fictional character as simultaneously comic and tragic as Billy Pilgrim and through him, the reader is given a front row seat to a unique show that does not flinch from psychological trauma or from the terrible and often surreally funny insanities of war. Shocking, darkly funny and endlessly inventive, Slaughterhouse-Five has at various times been banned (and even burned) in many parts of the US, which is as good a reason as I can think of to read it immediately.

Guest Editor, Mark Billingham

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