Smith - Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-five : bookmarked

The Bookmarked Series

John Knowles A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann

Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five by Curtis Smith

Christina Steads The Man Who Loved Children by Paula Bomer

Stephen Kings The Body by Aaron Burch

Malcolm Lowrys Under the Volcano by David W. Ryan

F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby by Jaime Clarke

Mark Danielewskis House of Leaves by Michael Seidlinger

Copyright 2016 by Curtis Smith.

All rights reserved.

First Paperback Edition

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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

Please direct inquiries to:

Ig Publishing

Box 2547

New York, NY 10163

www.igpub.com

ISBN: 978-1-63246-014-1 (ebook)

To the uncounted, forgotten by the writers of history

Table of Contents

Contents

So it goes....

Perhaps the most often-quoted line from American literature, or at least a close second to Melvilles Call me Ishmael, Vonneguts melancholy refrain is readily expressed by anyone reacting to bad news on a scale so large and devastating as to be abstract. No author has managed to wring so many levels of meaning and allusion, or trigger so many different feelings, from the repetitive statement of three simple words as Vonnegut has in Slaughterhouse-Five, arguably the novel for which he is best known. Its a musical motif that falls just short of being a chant, the echo to each instance of death and decay that appears in the novels dark pagesover 100 times in scarcely more than 200 pagesa memento mori that reverberates among the numerous storylines and punctuates the authors absurdist sense of humor.

The book is a bit of a Trojan horse: its slim spine denies it the heft of those works typically anointed classic status, and on those few pages swims an abundance of white space, too, leaving room for scribbled illustrations no more detailed than doodles. A reader can be forgiven for thinking going in that heres a novel that can be sped through in a couple of hours for a quick fix of entertainmentmaybe provocative entertainment, going on what people say about Vonneguts writingbut entertainment nonetheless, and hopefully a few laughs along the way. The text encourages us to read in that way, the narrator/author opening his tale with a series of jokes and limericks and dismissive commentary on what he has prepared for us to read. And then he gets us, lightly alluding to the inescapable processes of war and inscribing in precise strokes of detail horrific images of mankinds inhumanity to itselfeven as he maintains that superficially breezy tone. Our eyes slow down to make certain we dont miss anything. Billy Pilgrim has been cast out of linear time and thus were in a jumble of past-present-future along with him, with nothing to hold on to save a tenuous faith in our charming, intermittent narrator. Its the kind of novel that can transform what a reader expects from the category, widening yet again the scope of the umbrella that covers all texts classified as The Novel. And its fun. Moreover, if one is open to such possibilities, the story of Billy Pilgrim and the Trafalmadorians (who can sense and observe in four dimensions and see time as one simultaneous present) can change how one views the world.

It helps to be young and impressionable. For Curtis Smith the encounter came in his early teens, as he makes clear early on. As best as he can remember it, at leasthe confesses to being unable to recall the day he bought the novel (the original copy of which he still owns, bound with tape and rubber bands). In this far-ranging exploration of Vonneguts novel and its ramifications and repercussions in his own life and the wider world, Smith goes all-in Trafalmadorian himself, half imagining, half remembering his first reading of Slaughterhouse-Five and using it as the springboard from which to dive into many of the threads and themes presented in the novel. A history of destruction, and our intrinsic talent for cruelty; the effects, form, and nature of memory, and the love between parent and child; the moral and ethical betrayals we all endure and try to evade as we each attempt to build a life of our own, preferably without destroying the lives of others.

In a spirit similar to that of his literary subject, Curtis Smith draws on the unavoidable and blunt pain of the world in history, from the smiting of Sodom to the invasion of Iraq, as material for constructing a resonant work of contemplative art.

It makes for an excellent introduction to the Bookmarked project, a series of brief volumes in which we look to showcase authors who offer a unique consideration of a single classic literary work, preferably one that has helped shape their own writing and sensibility; not necessarily an essay readied for the academic audienceno theory required herebut an offbeat approach to literatures expansive conversation, an example of how books can form (and inform) the visions of those who write them.

Kirby Gann

Series Editor

February 2016

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

Slaughterhouse-Five

I can only imagine.

No, I cant.

I found a picture. Cinder blocks propping long metal beams, the open space beneath, oxygen for the flames. Atop the beams, stacked bodies. Forty, fifty, more. Feet and hands. A child, and I look away. I wanted to draw the scene, but I cant. Sadder stillthe picture isnt one of a kind. Its an echo. A turn of the wheel.

Heres what Ill drawa frame. Fill it how you like. How you must. God bless us all.

*

All this happened, more or less.

The first line of Slaughterhouse-Five is a tricksters greeting, a fitting introduction from a guide as charming as he is sly. With these words, Kurt Vonnegut opens a door, and as we cross the threshold, we enter a realm dimly lit and full of mirrors, a set built with the warped architecture of dreams. The door shuts. Weve entered the slaughterhouse, and the only exit leads to a moonscape of smoking rubble.

In the first chapter, Vonnegut (or the character who claims to be Vonnegut) travels back to Dresden, the city whose destruction he witnessed as a POW. He brings a book with himErika Ostrovskys Cline and His Vision. Cline was a soldier wounded in World War I, and upon his return home, he suffered sleeplessness and auditory hallucinations. At night, while those untouched by the war dreamt, he penned grotesque novels. He wrote, No art is possible without a dance with death.

There is death in Slaughterhouse-Five, death on almost every page. Some are deaths of individuals, others occur in the thousands. So it goes. The dance goes round and round, picking up partners along the way. The dance swirls through time and space. Our partner is a master, light on his feet, as old as time itself, and when he whispers in our ear, we smile at the absurdity of all that has come before. Death holds us close, and when we return the embrace, we understand the hollowness of worldly desires and the foolishness of men, their stupidity, their brutality. We laugh. What else can we do?