Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

*Mrs. Doubtfire voice* Well hellllooooooo there!
My last post was eons ago and I'm here to admit that I've been shit-out-of-excuses lazy lately. School ended. Summer began. You can connect the dots. Anyway, though my blogging efforts have fallen by the wayside, my nerd-a-licious reading efforts have not. I've been reading profusely this summer and, damn it, I plan to blog about it! So if all (two or three) of my readers are ready, I will begin my darling comeback post with a book review for the first novel I read this summer.


Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut


Just thinking about this novel creates a tornado-like super storm in my mind. In Vonnegut's most famous novel, he dishes it all out. And by "it" I mean that eccentric, unique, slightly violating weirdness that makes the man a genius. As is the case with most Vonnegut books, Slaughterhouse attempts to make a very bold point. Rather than woo readers with character studies, love stories, or adventures, Vonnegut captivates his fans with commentaries on the world at large. In particular, this book features a demented main character (Billy Pilgrim): World War II veteran, optometrist, and snowballing psycho.

Like Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five is not shy of gimmicks. The choppy paragraphs, repetition of phrases, and main plot line (alien abduction meets post war trauma) all come together to form a mishmash of Vonnegut genius. Billy Pilgrim has utterly lost control of his life since he fought in the second World War. As a result, he is placed under strict house arrest and must be looked after constantly by his young daughter. As the craziness begins to unravel, the reader learns that Billy Pilgrim can travel through time. A severe effect of his dementia, Billy Pilgrim imagines himself traveling back to wartime and forward to the future. Eventually, Pilgrim tells his young daughter that he was abducted and sent to the planet Tralfamadore. Well...leave it to Vonnegut to weave a story that twisted. Famously and hilariously anti-war, anti-violence, and anti-sanity, Slaughterhouse Five will not disappoint. To get a subjective view, it is definitely my favorite Kurt Vonnegut selection.

Now that I got that out of my system, I will leave you with some lovely photographs from local artist Andrew Tolentino. Rin Tin Tin is very proud to be a part of a great non-profit organization called ArtLoveMagic. Created solely to support artists, ALM is a big part of my life. I leave you with some of Andrew's mixed media as well as photography. If you have any artwork you would like to be showcased, let me know! I'd be happy to do a post about it.

Andrew Tolentino

Mixed Media




Photography