From the Lists: #18 Slaugherhouse Five

Usually when reading a book from the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century I can easily relate the story to something in my life. My job, family, friends, relationships, or faith often come to mind as I experience a work of literature. For me, this makes the narrative more human - something I can relate to and color through my own experiences. 

Then along comes something so freaky deaky that all I can do is scratch my head and wonder what is this author trying to accomplish? Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut is one such novel. This semi-autobiographical work is told in non-linear fashion from the perspective of an unreliable, if not completely insane, character. Slaughter House Five circuitously relates the life and misfortunes of an unwilling soldier, Billy Pilgrim, who "does nothing to help himself." Obviously this novel is a satirical, anti-war response to WWII novels and memoirs released in the 1950's that meditated on the horrors of war and rejoiced in the heroic actions of our fighting boys.

That's the easy part to understand. Adding to the confusion, the novel jumps both forward and

Kurt Vonnegut

backward in time and space and planets. Pilgrim's story unfolds in a collection of seemingly unrelated vignettes recalling the highlights and traumas of his life. A life in which Pilgrim finds himself caught up in circumstances that he cannot fully understand or process at the time of their telling. Pilgrim's story describes his current struggles, his life before and during the war, his recovery from a mental breakdown, his life as a father, husband and business man, and his time spent as an exhibit in an alien zoo. There is no order. There is only the chaos of an unruly mind in its final days.

{Spoiler Alert - Stop here if you don't want to know the final plot twist}

This method of story telling is somewhat confusing, but as the story unfolds, Vonnegut slowly reveals the truth about Pilgim's world view and the source of the narrative's strange turns. Having experienced two mental breakdowns and now suffering from dementia Pilgrim now conflates his life experiences with the plots of pulp science fiction novels he read under the influence of drugs during his recovery from his first breakdown. In a way, his life as he now remembers it is like an unrelenting season of the Twilight Zone - full of ironic and unexpected endings and death - lots of death.

{End of Spoiler text}

Although it may not seem like it from the above, I actually quite liked this novel. Vonnegut's writing is clear and concise. Billy Pilgrim, while a buffoon, is ultimately a likeable and sympathetic character. And, even better, the reveal makes you rethink the entire novel.

If my life was to be composed of classic novels, which titles would I choose?

Life continues despite the death that awaits us.

Must add to the Netflix Queue

From the Lists: #19 Invisible Man

"Number 19? What happened to #20?" you may ask.

I read #20 Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright while in college. In researching this post, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Wright and Ralph Ellison were friends and were writing in Harlem in the years leading up to and following WWII. Both were disillusioned by the treatment of African-Americans by not only the US government and society at large, but also by socialist groups attempting to organize in the 1950s.

Where Native Son relates the inevitability of Bigger Thomas' crimes due to the hopelessness of his environment, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) tells a story of optimism and the slow onset of disillusionment. Ellison creates a first-person narrator who remains nameless throughout the novel. He could be anyone - including you or me. Our narrator is a pleasant, hopeful, intelligent, kind character with a gift for oration. He is the type of character a reader pulls for hoping he will rise above adversity, get the girl after a few setbacks and live happily ever after. But, as with all great literature, there is no happy ending for our invisible man.

Ralph Ellison

While our narrator does all he can to follow the rules thinking that is the only way to get ahead for a poor, Southern African-American boy, he finds himself again and again being cast as the fall guy in other peoples' agendas. Despite doing his best to get along without making waves, our invisible man is blamed, rejected, black-listed, shunned, and used by those he believes are his friends and mentors. Eventually, rather than pulling for the narrator, the reader is exhorting him to run and trust no one - particularly those who seem to want to help.

Upon finishing this novel, I was torn in my feelings. I greatly enjoyed the author's writing style and the narrator was a likable, if gullible, character. It was the "bad" guys who really bothered me the most. Not because of their inherent badness, but more due to their indifference. To them, the narrator is only a means to an end, a convenient scapegoat, a whipping boy, an excuse, or a pawn in a greater plan.

When I consider this, I think of the many people who, like the narrator, find themselves embroiled in the machinations of those with power over their lives. Groups of people who continue to be viewed as less than equal - women, immigrants, gays & lesbians, the homeless, the poor, the uninsured, the unemployed - the list goes on and on. Even worse, I think we have all been the invisible man and the bad guy. How many times have we crawled over the backs of others to get ahead in our competitive society? Made ourselves look better by making someone else look bad? How often do we pretend not to see or hear something or someone who makes us feel uncomfortable? How many times have we dismissively responded to a homeless person that we have no money to spare when we actually do?


I admit, I have been both invisible and incapable of seeing. 

"I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."