This book is one if those modern classics which I fully expected not to understand. Even halfway through it I didn't understand and I wasn't all that bothered.
I like 40% get it now, after letting it gestate for 3 days.
So the basic idea is that Billy Pilgrim is an optometrist who is a vice-chaplain in the war. He is at the fire-bombing of Dresden, and survives. He makes it home, marries, becomes an eminent member of the community, and is kidnapped by aliens and held in a zoo on a foreign planet, but when he returns they do a time warp so he doesn't miss any time on earth. Eventually he dies. So it goes.
That's s the thing the guy always says when someone dies. So it goes. It creates this interesting level if disconnection between Billy Pilgrim and his circumstances. He's a wholly non-introspective character. When he is stuck on the alien planet they tell him that there's awful stuff and good stuff, and if you don't ever think about the bad stuff then you'll be reasonably happy. Billy Pilgrim does exactly that. Even in the aftermath of the firebombing he is not very upset. So it goes. It's kind of the pre-Disney hakuna matata.
So now I realize why that attitude is so ludicrous. Billy Pilgrim gets to the end of his life not having experienced anything, only having observed it. It reminds me that a big part of participating in life is allowing our inner self interact with our environment, growing and learning from our experiences.
Or when awful stuff happens we can shrug, So it goes, and never try to change it.
It's my new catchphrase now. So it goes.
Vonnegut is a brilliant writer. Barely even noticed I was reading half the time. It reminded me in style of The Catcher in the Rye, only with less whiny teenagers. Also SO quotable:
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Beauty! Now note this was published in the late fifties and may no longer be as true. I still love it though.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience the best of the beat poet era, although Vonnegut was not himself a poet. Nothing salacious, just some good countercultural philosophy, and prose which engages the reader in a disengaged character.
Up next: A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala by George W. Lovell. Thanks for loaning it to me, Essie.
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