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.