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29 reviews for:
The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five
Tom Roston
3.73 AVERAGE
29 reviews for:
The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five
Tom Roston
3.73 AVERAGE
This book feels like the author, who is very obviously a fan of Vonnegut, really wanted to write a book about him, but so many people already have that he felt he had to force an angle.
The best parts of this book are about the versions of Slaughterhouse Five that Vonnegut chose not to go with, as well as the biographical tidbits. However, once the author makes it a point to convince us that maybe Vonnegut had PTSD and that he wrote the book as a way to deal with his war trauma (which is an interesting point), he gets a bit lost and stays there for a while. There are large swaths of the book that don't mention Vonnegut once, but are only about PTSD's history in the US military. Which is fine if that's what you want to read about but the title of the book is misleading: the many lives of Slaughterhouse Five. The book is not totally about that.
It is also disappointing to find out that the people one admires are assholes. And Vonnegut definitely seems like one (whatever the reason, maybe PTSD, childhood trauma, etc) and often this is glossed over. One of the main reasons I felt this, was that when Vonnegut got a teaching job in Iowa, he was happy "to have the opportunity to get away from his family for a couple of years." The author writes nearly these exact words and then moves on. I'm sure the family he was so eager to get away from was very thrilled for him.
I guess, overall, there were parts of this book I enjoyed and others that I felt were a stretch or self-indulgent. It definitely made me want to reread Slaughterhouse Five again, and I'm going to do that right now. So that's something.
The best parts of this book are about the versions of Slaughterhouse Five that Vonnegut chose not to go with, as well as the biographical tidbits. However, once the author makes it a point to convince us that maybe Vonnegut had PTSD and that he wrote the book as a way to deal with his war trauma (which is an interesting point), he gets a bit lost and stays there for a while. There are large swaths of the book that don't mention Vonnegut once, but are only about PTSD's history in the US military. Which is fine if that's what you want to read about but the title of the book is misleading: the many lives of Slaughterhouse Five. The book is not totally about that.
It is also disappointing to find out that the people one admires are assholes. And Vonnegut definitely seems like one (whatever the reason, maybe PTSD, childhood trauma, etc) and often this is glossed over. One of the main reasons I felt this, was that when Vonnegut got a teaching job in Iowa, he was happy "to have the opportunity to get away from his family for a couple of years." The author writes nearly these exact words and then moves on. I'm sure the family he was so eager to get away from was very thrilled for him.
I guess, overall, there were parts of this book I enjoyed and others that I felt were a stretch or self-indulgent. It definitely made me want to reread Slaughterhouse Five again, and I'm going to do that right now. So that's something.
I've just read a lot of this information before so its getting pretty slow and I want to read something else lol
“How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
Is Slaughterhouse Five less a work of pure science fiction and more of an autobiographical expression of post traumatic stress? Tom Roston’s reexamination of Vonnegut’s best known book makes a fairly strong case for the presence of PTSD.
This is not a hard sell. Vonnegut survived the fire-bombing of Dresden for christ’s sake—how could any rational human being with an iota of compassion not respond negatively to the mass incineration of women and children? How could memories like that not manifest themselves through a person’s creative articulations? Roston is a very good writer and I highly recommend his book, but one does not necessarily need to be inordinately persuasive when pointing out the elephant in the room.
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On a personal note, shouldn’t we drop the D from PTSD? The question isn’t why do soldiers suffer psychological fallout from their war experiences but rather, why doesn’t EVERY combat veteran exhibit some form of depression, detachment or guilt? Maybe it’s those who come away from the atrocities of war without some form of psychological baggage that should be scrutinized (imho). Having post-traumatic stress is the rule rather than the exception. Let’s eliminate the stigma.
Is Slaughterhouse Five less a work of pure science fiction and more of an autobiographical expression of post traumatic stress? Tom Roston’s reexamination of Vonnegut’s best known book makes a fairly strong case for the presence of PTSD.
This is not a hard sell. Vonnegut survived the fire-bombing of Dresden for christ’s sake—how could any rational human being with an iota of compassion not respond negatively to the mass incineration of women and children? How could memories like that not manifest themselves through a person’s creative articulations? Roston is a very good writer and I highly recommend his book, but one does not necessarily need to be inordinately persuasive when pointing out the elephant in the room.
__________________________________
On a personal note, shouldn’t we drop the D from PTSD? The question isn’t why do soldiers suffer psychological fallout from their war experiences but rather, why doesn’t EVERY combat veteran exhibit some form of depression, detachment or guilt? Maybe it’s those who come away from the atrocities of war without some form of psychological baggage that should be scrutinized (imho). Having post-traumatic stress is the rule rather than the exception. Let’s eliminate the stigma.
Though not quite the book I expected it to be, enjoyable and enlightening none the less.
This felt like a bit of 2 things - a long love letter about a favorite author and a deep look in to PTSD and whether said writer had it. The first frew chapters were catchy - talking about POW and murdered Nazi guards and I was curious as to what I was getting in to. I loved that Kurt's kids were also curious and gave their blessing for it be researched.
But the rest was heavy. It was a lot of war and what Kurt Vonnegut went through. It was a little history about the war, the time period. But from there it's a pretty deep dive in to PTSD, signs of it and other authors and their opinions. It was interesting but maybe not what I was hoping it would be.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
But the rest was heavy. It was a lot of war and what Kurt Vonnegut went through. It was a little history about the war, the time period. But from there it's a pretty deep dive in to PTSD, signs of it and other authors and their opinions. It was interesting but maybe not what I was hoping it would be.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book is thoughtful and very well written but truthfully I think my main takeaway is the absolute delight of knowing that one of Vonnegut’s grandchildren is named Buck Squibb
Could Slaughterhouse-Five be about PTSD? Tom Roston presents an interesting take on that incredible novel and makes his case with lots of research and interview. I will definitely be thinking about all this when I re-read Slaughterhouse-Five this year.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Generally speaking it is a good book for those looking to learn more about Vonnegut and the PTSD interpretation of Slaughterhouse 5. That being said there is a section where the author compares modern cellphone/ social media usage to PTSD which is really reductive of PTSD. It's also somehow reductive of younger generations ability to self regulate social media usage and separate real life from online.
Slaughterhouse-Five is currently my favourite novel, and so it should go without saying that I was predisposed to enjoy this book. I found this book to be largely very interesting and I am now excited to reread Slaughterhouse-Five with some of the new insights gained here. The early chapters in particular I found fascinating, as they deal with Vonnegut’s process of writing and rewriting (and rewriting!) Slaughterhouse-Five. The latter half of the book becomes a brief history of PTSD (and how use of the term has evolved from one war to the next). This was very interesting also, however less so for me than the previous chapters of the book.