Dresden

I thought the article for last night's reading was exceptionally interesting, even though it made me kind of angry. In particular, the sentence, "There was nothing exceptional about the bombing of Dresden," kind of made me want to stop reading immediately. In a way, I kind of feel like this article moved to discredit Vonnegut's account, to make the bombing of Dresden seem like nothing.

I don't see why we have to belittle the bombing of Dresden, just because it wasn't "exceptional" -- (What does exceptional mean, anyway? What about a bombing makes it "exceptional"?) -- doesn't mean it's not important. Vonnegut says 135,000 people died, a number he got from the author of a bestselling book by David Irving, but I feel like Packer is using the fact that Irving has now been discredited as a Nazi-sympathizer and anti-Semite to also discredit Vonnegut's book, and I don't really think that's fair. So what if the bombing of Dresden killed only 20-40,000 people instead of 135,000, and how can anyone have the nerve to use "only" in that sentence? 20,000 people is not worthy of an "only."

For one thing, it doesn't matter how many people the bombing killed, and for another, I don't even think the number is important to Vonnegut's argument. Vonnegut could have started using 20,000 in the beginning of the book and I still would have been shocked. Vonnegut is trying to write an anti-war novel, not a Nazi-sympathizer novel. He is, in no way, saying that by bombing Dresden, the Allies are on equal playing field with the Nazis. He's saying that war isn't a battle of good and evil, and he's saying that war gives people an excuse to do morally questionable things no matter what side they're on.

It also says somewhere in there that the Allies were carpet bombing civilians all over Germany -- why not write about those? Well, for a simple answer, it's Vonnegut's experiences, not just a book about bombings on Germany. He's giving it a personal edge, an effective personal edge, which makes me, anyway, see all those other bombings in a new light. 

So, I don't know. I kind of feel like this article is unnecessary. I didn't even think of taking Slaughterhouse Five in a Nazi-sympathizer direction until I read this article -- and I think it's kind of horrifying that someone would suggest that. Maybe that's naive of me to say, but I don't really care. I think Vonnegut treats the war in a very realistic light, which is something we don't get very often. He's not tarnishing the "good, angelic" Ally appearance, he's bringing them to a human level, which I think is really important when we talk about war.

I like your style.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm having a good time reading this book. From his irony to his odd repetitions, Vonnegut has a very unique writing style. The writing itself is very simple and unadorned, yet he somehow is able to remain attached. Unlike Doctorow, who is completely out of the picture in Ragtime, Vonnegut still has a very clear presence in his novel. 

The first chapter kind of set us up for it, even though I half expected his narration to be very distant because he called it a "failure." He includes himself in a lot of scenes, and even says things like, "I was there," kind of like how Ishmael Reed inserted himself into Mumbo Jumbo. Admittedly, it does kind of pull me out of the story for a moment, but I think for a war novel, it brings a whole new dimension to the story knowing that the person writing the story actually lived similar moments, too. 

I also sort of like Vonnegut's repetition of "So it goes." It kind of draws your attention to the deaths in the novel because it marks them with a catch phrase that you notice instead of simply glossing over them, which we are sometimes guilty of doing while reading other war novels. At the same time, when he says "So it goes," he's saying that life goes on without those people. It's almost as if he's saying, "These people died, and it's important, but at the same time no one cares, because no one can care." Life goes on no matter how you died. 

Finally, we were talking in class on Friday on how weird it was that Vonnegut gave up his climax in the first chapter. I think that's a really interesting way of writing a war novel, because we're not constantly focused on whether or not the characters are going to make it out alive, but instead we're thinking more about what they do when they're alive. Personally, I think that's a very unique and refreshing way to read a war novel. I like being able to focus on the characters more than constantly stressing over what's going to happen to them -- because believe me, I do. 

So I suppose it's a little bit late for a "First Impressions" blog post, seeing as how we're more than halfway through Slaughterhouse Five, but I feel like rather than things you only take in at the beginning of the novel, these elements of Vonnegut's style stay with us throughout the book. 

Slaughterhouse

I don't know, I guess I really like war stories. That's kind of a weird way to begin a blog entry, but I do. I like watching war movies, I like reading war books, I like listening to people telling war stories. Real war stories, though. My grandpa fought in World War II, so I often find myself in St. Louis or Chicago at reunions of his regiment. They don't really swap stories though, they just kind of sit together, remembering together, but not out loud.

That's kind of what I was reminded of, I guess, when Vonnegut and O'Hare were sitting at the table trying to remember the "good stuff," but they couldn't. My grandpa doesn't have "good stuff" to tell me. He always laughs when he says, "In the prison camp, I lost 45 pounds in 45 days." But that's not really that funny. Or when he tells me about the day of the prisoner exchange, and how he was the last one picked, and how the only thing he could do when he got to the other side was eat pancakes, and how they made him sick. He never really tells me how nervous he was, or how horrible it was.

But I mean, I can hear it in his words in other ways. He tells me about the Battle of the Bulge, and all he says is, "A lot of people froze in that battle." It's pretty simple, but it carries so much weight for him. How else do you describe something with so much death and destruction? He almost froze, he spent 30 days flat on his back in a field hospital as his legs cracked open and oozed. Doctors talked about amputation, but in the end he made it okay. He talks about his friends, points to them in pictures and says, "That's Hodges, he's dead now," in a simple way, yet one that is so powerful and sad.

This isn't really a blog post about the novel, which I kind of realize now. But I can't really think about this book without thinking about the things my grandfather's said to me. We talk a lot in class about how war is so glorified for everyone in America, but I've never really had a glorified view of war. Well, maybe, when I was very small, when I looked at the medals on the wall. A French Legion of Honor, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Prisoner of War -- I can go on, but I won't. Kids in elementary school would ask me if my grandpa fought in Vietnam, but I was proud to say no, that he'd fought the Nazis instead. It gave me more street cred on the playground.

But really, though, our family doesn't gather to listen to grandpa's wartime stories. He doesn't really like to talk about it, unless he's doing a presentation. It's more a silent presence looming over the glass boxes that held the ribbons, or over the trunk in the corner of the living room that still holds his knife and helmet, coat and boots. I only know so much because I've been to a few presentations and because I wrote a paper on him for Non-Fiction Writing last year.

So I guess, to make this related to class, I appreciate what Vonnegut is doing in writing an more accurate portrayal of the things that happen in wartime. My grandpa was only 18 when he got off the boats on Utah Beach, D+94, and I think he would very much agree that it was just a children's crusade. Vonnegut does a really good job of making me hate war more than I already do, but I can only see his memories in black and white. It'd be interesting, I think, to hear my grandfather's take on the novel -- to hear from someone who shares the memories in color.