By Bob Tedder • Through my numerous years of reading I have trod many a peripatetic mile over assorted paths of the world’s literary landscape. In my fruitless campaign to read them all rarely do I stop to linger multiple times over even the best books the world has to offer. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade” is one of the rare exceptions. It is, at least from the personal perspective of five readings, without doubt one of America’s if not the world’s great novels.
The phrase “great novel” implies a weighty tome burdened by obscurity of purpose and density of prose. That’s not the case here, for Vonnegut states his plot and purposes with a plain, clear lexicon accessible to middle-school-and-above reading abilities. If necessary, the close reader may identify themes and motifs ranging from ineffectiveness of free will, the complexity and foolishness of humankind – especially males of the species – and the irrelevance of time when applied to human endeavor. All readers, however, discover the book is inexorably linked to and concerned with the destructiveness of war. This revelation comes early on and without question encompasses all of the previously mentioned underlying currents of the novel.
In addition to the accessibility of his vocabulary and the prevalence of his dominant theme, Vonnegut spins a carefully crafted tale in a short amount of time and space (141 pages). And make no mistake about it, Vonnegut after his opening autobiographical chapter makes his concern with space and time perfectly clear with the opening paragraph of chapter two. There the novel’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is introduced as being “unstuck in time,” “having seen his birth and death many times … and (is one who) pays random visits to all the events in between.”
It is, however, the World War II firebombing of Dresden – the one event that shaped POW Vonnegut’s life and Billy Pilgrim’s world – which embodies the book’s dominant message. Even though it contains science fiction elements – if one counts Billy’s enforced public mating in a planet Tralfamadorian zoo – do not dismiss this book. Vonnegut once observed his works were often shut away in a drawer labeled “science fiction” only occasionally opened to serve as a urinal for the critics. Time has proved him wrong. “Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade” is not locked in any drawer, at least locally. It’s available at the Speckled Paw where I figure three visits – a latte, a coffee and perhaps a springtime smoothie – will get the average reader through one of America’s greatest novels.