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4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
Not my favorite Vonnegut but if you're into his work you can't go wrong. Racism is bad, being a dick is bad, don't pretend to be a dick "as a joke" or whatever and pretend that you're not bad.
Wow! Another certified Vonnegut classic. I have yet to read one that I haven't liked. When I was debating what book to read next (choices were this and [book:South and West: From a Notebook|32842454] by Didion), unanimous support for this across two Discord servers. One friend said this is their all time favorite Vonnegut.
Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. I read Slaughterhouse-Five once a year (very white-bread, I know, sue me), and I have the big Library of America set that I'm working through. I love his voice and his pleading for us to be better. To listen to our better angels. [book:Slaughterhouse-Five|4981] comes nearly ten years after this work, but there is a lot of it in here.
<blockquote>"An eighty-eight was set up in it, and the gun was manned by boys about fifteen or sixteen years old. There was a success story for Heinz's late wife---boys that young, and yet with men's uniforms and a fully-armed death trap all their own."</blockquote>
Hard not to think about Slaughterhouse-Five, the Children's Crusade.
There's also just a lot about what Vonnegut says right up front as the moral: be careful what you pretend to be, because that's what you become. Act as if ye have faith, and faith shall be given to ye. Put it another way, Leo McGarry says on the West Wing, fake it til ya make it. It's the flip side of that same coin. I love it.
It is of course frustratingly prescient because we humans make the same mistakes on a schedule that'd make a stationmaster jealous.
<blockquote>
Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.
Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell---keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in mose cases.
The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information---
</blockquote>
That is how the Nazi's took a functioning republic into one of the deadliest totalitarian regimes in history. It took about 53 for Hitler to end democracy in the Weimar Republic, <a href='https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/'>apparently</a>. He gained power in January 1933. Dachau opened in March.
The willful filing off of gear teeth. A valuation of ignorance. A valuation of national pride over all else. A revulsion to immigration, civil liberties, hope, and love.
It is hard to read this book and not feel a little depressed about where we are in 2025, 64 years later. As hard as it is, I basically refuse to be a pessimist. I don't know how or why I have that resistance in me. But I still believe that this world can be better today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow, today, and so on. Not all better, and some days maybe not net-better. But I think and hope it is a cumulative thing. And if I don't believe that, then I don't know what the point of it is. So, I will choose to believe it.
Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. I read Slaughterhouse-Five once a year (very white-bread, I know, sue me), and I have the big Library of America set that I'm working through. I love his voice and his pleading for us to be better. To listen to our better angels. [book:Slaughterhouse-Five|4981] comes nearly ten years after this work, but there is a lot of it in here.
<blockquote>"An eighty-eight was set up in it, and the gun was manned by boys about fifteen or sixteen years old. There was a success story for Heinz's late wife---boys that young, and yet with men's uniforms and a fully-armed death trap all their own."</blockquote>
Hard not to think about Slaughterhouse-Five, the Children's Crusade.
There's also just a lot about what Vonnegut says right up front as the moral: be careful what you pretend to be, because that's what you become. Act as if ye have faith, and faith shall be given to ye. Put it another way, Leo McGarry says on the West Wing, fake it til ya make it. It's the flip side of that same coin. I love it.
It is of course frustratingly prescient because we humans make the same mistakes on a schedule that'd make a stationmaster jealous.
<blockquote>
Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.
Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell---keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in mose cases.
The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information---
</blockquote>
That is how the Nazi's took a functioning republic into one of the deadliest totalitarian regimes in history. It took about 53 for Hitler to end democracy in the Weimar Republic, <a href='https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/'>apparently</a>. He gained power in January 1933. Dachau opened in March.
The willful filing off of gear teeth. A valuation of ignorance. A valuation of national pride over all else. A revulsion to immigration, civil liberties, hope, and love.
It is hard to read this book and not feel a little depressed about where we are in 2025, 64 years later. As hard as it is, I basically refuse to be a pessimist. I don't know how or why I have that resistance in me. But I still believe that this world can be better today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow, today, and so on. Not all better, and some days maybe not net-better. But I think and hope it is a cumulative thing. And if I don't believe that, then I don't know what the point of it is. So, I will choose to believe it.
dark
funny
medium-paced
challenging
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
lighthearted
sad
fast-paced
Kurt Vonnegut once again proving himself to be one of the great American authors. This story is startling in its frankness and lovely in its humanizing. It has some truly poetic language. What I love about Vonnegut is how he is both endlessly in love with the world and yet brutally honest about it's horrors. Great fast read but covered the design on the front while reading in public (vintage cover)!
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
While not one of Vonnegut's more well-known texts, it was definitely one of my favorites. The story centers on a man awaiting a hearing as a war criminal and Nazi propagandist. The work serves as a larger critique about the susceptibility of the unthinking and unquestioning masses to the whims of dangerous ideologues, regardless of whether said ideologue actually believes the things he or she is spouting...hmm, for some reason this seems timely. So many excellent passages and quotes that will serve me well as I navigate the craziness that is 2017.