4. Slaughterhouse Five - The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death By Kurt Vonnegut - Recommended Book

Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death
                                                           By Kurt Vonnegut - Recommended Book.

                         I had never read Kurt Vonnegut before. To be honest I was a little afraid to start. I was afraid I wouldn't understand it, that he'd be over my head.  To be even more honest, it worried me that Vonnegut is one of my brother's favorite authors. Not because we have such different taste, but because I didn't want to disappoint him.

                         When you find someone who likes the same book, a certain bond is created; it is a very real, literary way of saying, "I get you," or "I'm the same way." When you're kids growing up in the same house you're linked together by shared experiences and having the same parents, but as you get older, when you start to discover who you are separate from your family, threads of what connected you start to fade into the background. Suddenly, your childhood bonds don't seem so relevant, and you start to wonder if you can maintain a meaningful relationship as adults.

                          As a kid I idolized my brother - even his weird friends (Sorry, Mark, or Kevin, or whichever one of the dudes happens to read this).  I always wanted to know what he was up to, what music he liked, what hockey team he was following, and what he believed in. I measured my coolness by his example, and hoped that one day I would climb to a rank above "troll under the stairs."  As I got older, I made lasting friendships of my own and had new experiences. I formed my own opinions and beliefs and discovered things that were important to me, independent of my siblings. I guess I always felt just a bit different; we all had different personalities and interests and goals and ideas. Maybe that's what makes things fun, each of us having something new to bring to the table. But still it's reassuring when there's that flicker of recognition, of understanding, of seeing a bit of yourself in someone else. And there's no better means than that of loving the same book.

                        I realize I haven't talked about the book one bit. I'm not giving this one to you; you'll need to read it for yourself.  Seventy years after most of the events in this book  took place, Vonnegut's message still holds up. Being in graduate school I thought I'd be oh so clever to relate what I read to the modernist movement I am currently examining. But while Slaughterhouse Five may have carried over some modernist elements, Vonnegut didn't write it to fit into a movement (from what I have read Slaughterhouse Five is typically characterized as post-modernist anyway). He wrote about the subtleties and meaninglessness we all experience. As my brother pointed out, the lesson Pilgrim learned about time from the Tralfamadorians is "just an idea of permanence to sooth the idea of helpless insignificance." Though life is messy and is often painful, we try to find ways as human beings to make sense of it all.

                  Aside from my appreciation for the straight forward text throughout, my favorite quote comes from the beginning of the book, while reflecting on his own life Vonnegut wrote:

                                       Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous
                                       or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said
                                       to me, "You know - you never wrote a story with a villain
                                       in it."

                                        I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after
                                        the war.  (8)

Who we are, what is normal, it's all relative. People are not good or bad; cliche I know, life is not black and white.  Vonnegut's experience in Dresden and his education afterward showed him that and shaped his writing; as in life, we see no hero, no bad guy, just people muddling through life the only way they know how.

               Admittedly, I put tabs all over the pages of this book, imagining I would discuss each one, either here or in person, but that would be painful and go on for days. And in order to serve those tabs justice I would need to re-read the book right here and now. So instead of preaching and posturing anymore than I already have, I will leave a list of fragments I marked while reading for you to think about if you've read Slaughterhouse Five (or perhaps, to entice you to do so). Enjoy!


Please feel free to comment.

- "So it goes" (2). First occurrence.

- "Sooner or later I go to bed, and my wife asks me what time it is. She always has to know the time. Sometimes I don't know, and I say, 'Search me'" (7).

- "We were connected to the institutions that supported us by means of pneumatic tubes which ran under the streets of Chicago" (8).

    What are pneumatic tubes, and is this true? Never knew this about Chicago.

- "History in her solemn page informs us that the crusaders were but ignorant and savage men, that their motives were those of bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway was one of blood and tears" (15).

- "Through a misunderstanding, some children reported for duty at Genoa, where no slave ships were waiting. They were fed and sheltered and questioned kingly by good people there - then given a little money and a lot of advice and sent back home" (16).

- "I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee" (18).

- "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
    I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
    I learn by going where I have to go" (quoted in Vonnegut 19). 

- "No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote" (19).

- "It's just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever" (25).

-  "...There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects..." (84).

- "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" (123).

- "His bare feet were blue and ivory" (140).
     
 Blue and ivory is repeated multiple times; I did not mark the first or all occurrences.

- "Somebody behind him in the box car said, 'Oz.' That was I. That was me. The only other city I'd ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana" (141).

- "He got a few paragraphs into it, and then he realized he had read it before - years ago, in the veteran's hospital. [The Big Board]  was about an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials. They were put on display in a zoo on a planet called Zircon-212" (192).
 
    I found the inclusion of this scene to be meant as a tell, a tip off to the reader that Pilgrim was confusing what he read in the science fiction books with what happened in his real life. He was traumatized by the war and suffered head injuries afterward, causing this break.

- "'I suppose they will all want dignity,' I said" (202).



Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 1994. Print.

3. Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach: Micro-History

Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
                            by Mary Roach - Micro-history

            

              I think I'd like to be compost. The idea of going back to the earth, nourishing a life in death, sounds pretty poetic. It also makes for a hell of a better place for loved ones to visit than a plot and stone.  It comes full circle; it's commemorative; it creates new life. So, if my family can stomach it and technology and laws have caught up, I'd like to be compost when I die (after, of course, donating all my usable organs).

             It sounds a little out there, OK, way out there. But if you put aside the socially constructed norms and our squeamish predisposition, it actually makes a lot of sense. Composting is cheaper, it's better for the environment, and it can be used to cultivate a beautiful memorial tree (or any plant of your choosing) to visit, instead of a cemetery.  

              While the process by which someone becomes compost is somewhat unpleasant, so is the process of cremation or embalming. The end results for those,  financial and ecological, are much more costly.  But what about God, you ask? Religious rites and ceremonies wouldn't have to change. And, in this way, we'd return to the earth, albeit in a more scientific manner, as it was intended. 

               I know, I am supposed to be discussing a book. Why am I going on about becoming compost? As you may be able to guess from the title of this book, Stiff discusses all imaginable ways a body may spend its afterlife. It journeys through the medical progress and safety measures gained through cadaver study to all possible choices we can make for ourselves once we go.  Composting struck my fancy.  

             Going into reading this book I was thinking I'd donate my body to science, that some good could come for others from my defective anatomy and subsequent medical adventures. But Roach warns that we don't get to choose. Once we donate our bodies, science decides what to do with it. And I'm not totally sold on that.  On one hand, some good could still come from it; on the other, cosmetic surgeons could be practicing face lifts on my severed head. Not okay.  

            So the choice became easy. When my time comes, I will donate any usable organs to the living, so life can go on, and, hopefully, the rest of me will do the same by going back to the earth. 

             Sorry, sorry. Enough with the morbid. I will stop grossing you out- for now.  

             Stiff doesn't fit into my Road Trip Challenge, but it does cover a space on my Bingo Card. Micro-history. I found this particular book on the Rory Gilmore Reading List. I figured, if it was good enough for Rory Gilmore, it was good enough for me.  I don't usually stray far from fiction. In fact, I don't ever, unless of course it's required by my instructor. (I'm currently working on my English/Creative Writing MA) Which is why I accepted this challenge to begin with. 

            Well, you should have seen some of the faces people made when I'd tell them I was reading this book. They were probably not unlike the faces you made when you read the first few paragraphs of this entry. Grossed out only begins to cover it, and looking at their expressions, I could see concern for my sanity.  But I maintain that my sanity is perfectly in tact, and so is that of Mary Roach. 

            Each chapter was more fascinating than the last; I never knew there were so many different things to do with dead bodies. Roach's humor was appropriate and timely, and while some of the details were  more than cringe worthy, they are facts of life that someone needs to think about. As they say, it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

           In actuality, these things we purposely avoid, or that never cross our minds, are extremely relevant to our daily lives. Crash tests, forensics, surgical study and practice, even organ donation - they all play a role in keeping us safe and, in many cases, ALIVE. They contribute to the advancement of medical treatment, crime investigation, and the development of safety features in the cars we drive.  Even the disposal of bodies plays a part in maintaining a healthy environment, reducing emissions and contamination. 

           Religion, from the start, influenced the handling of the dead.  In the western world it had a big hand in preventing the study of cadavers. Go figure, right? People were disgusted by the idea of donating their body to science and thought that if their body was desecrated in such a way it may affect their chances of reaching heaven.  Anatomists resorted to grave robbing, some even turned a blind eye to murder in the name of procuring bodies for dissection. Conversely, in some cultures tradition held, and may still, that parts of the body had healing capabilities if eaten.  This, too, is rumored to have lead to crimes against humanity.
   
          But as things do, people's opinions changed. Their ideas about sacrilege and tradition evolved with the needs of people, outside cultural influences, and new information (well, in some places).  As a result of some brave souls, people willing to be just a little bit weird, much progress has been made, without which I would not stand here - or sit at my computer - today. 


         I was not expecting to enjoy this book so much. It truly sparked my love of learning and invoked my critical thinking. I was not expecting to come away with such relevant knowledge. I suppose all I expected was to be extremely disgusted, to test the steel of my stomach. But the science, the history, the significance of the topic, so inextricably bound to us, utterly engaged me. So, if you can suspend your squeamishness momentarily, this one is definitely worth the read. 



Next up: Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

2. Captivated by You - Sylvia Day : Guilty Pleasure / New York

Captivated by You by Sylvia Day - Guilty Pleasure / New York

         I debated whether to use this book to fulfill the Guilty Pleasure box or the Romance Novel square. Ultimately, I decided to stick with Guilty Pleasure. It also covers New York on my Road Trip.

         I hate to be the person to crap all over a book, especially when I enjoyed it. That's why Guilty Pleasure is more apt for this reading selection.

         If  you haven't heard of it, Captivated by You is the 4th book in Sylvia Day's Crossfire Series. It focuses on the relationship of an abused billionaire, who's into S&M (sound familiar?),  with an abused, unsurpassably  beautiful woman. It chronicles their tumultuous relationship, the characters' broken pasts, their delinquent associates, and the struggles of being insanely rich.

        The logical portion of my brain is telling me this book was not well crafted in regard to, oh man, pretty much everything. The plot line, while entertaining, is completely unrealistic, as are many of the scenarios, the characters are somewhat cliche, the vocabulary was either redundant or over-reaching, and the dialogue was often unnatural, at times verging on cheesy.

       Yet I found myself entranced because, well, who doesn't like indulging in some fanciful, day-dreamy smut? The book does touch on some serious topics and you get a sense of some cohesive, methodical plot development, but I feel it falls a little short of authenticity and real "literary value".  If you're looking for that in a romance novel...



Coming soon: Stiff, The Curious Lives of  Human Cadavers by Mary Roach and Unlucky 13 by James Patterson

1. Bones Are Forever - Kathy Reichs : Author over 65

Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs - Author over 65

       

   This is one of my favorite authors and I thought that I would have to use my free space already, in order to count it in my Bingo Card Challenge. But, as I recently discovered, Kathy Reichs is Sixty-Six years old. Score! 

           I love her Temperance Brennan Series. First I love that the protagonist is a smart, bold, courageous woman. She's not just a detective, but a genius scientist. It's a great role to see a woman play. 

          This particular book is set totally in Canada ( so it doesn't qualify for the Road Trip Challenge), and it takes you across several regions. Reichs  offers a great sense of the various regions and indigenous people. The story line is not only excellent in suspense and crime drama, but is relevant to real-world current events - such as the diamond industry.  On occasion the book goes into scientific depth, which some might enjoy. For me, sometimes it's a bit out of my realm, but it can also serve to be very informative. I also love keeping up with the will-they-won't-they plot between Brennan and Ryan.  I thought it was well-paced, intriguing, clever, and entertaining.  One thing you can be sure of with Reichs' writing is that it is never cliche or predictable. Ever turn, every bit of evidence uncovered will get you thinking and result in dismantling an excellently crafted mystery. 

I would definitely recommend Bones are Forever, especially if this is your genre. 

Bingo and Road Trip Reading Challenge

I realize how narrow my reading tastes and conquests have been, not only in regard to genre, but also similar in subject matter. It's time that all changed .  So this year I decided to embark on a reading adventure. Using a Reading Bingo Card and the Road Trip Challenge, I will try my best to broaden my literature horizons. The Road Trip Challenge simply requires reading a book set in each of the 50 states. The Reading Bingo Card, I would assume, requires I get a bingo by reading books that fit the categories on the card below. It may be slightly ambitious, combined with the Road Trip Challenge, but I would like to instead fill the whole card. I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone in most cases to lessen the load a bit. Wish me luck! (And if you have any suggestions, recommendations are much appreciated!)