| Slaughterhouse-Five |
| 1 | Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five Annotation "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time." So begins Vonnegut's absurdist 1969 classic. Hawke rises to the occasion of performing this sliced-and-diced narrative, which is part sci-fi and partially based on Vonnegut's experience as a American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the firebombing of 1945 that killed thousands of civilians. Billy travels in time and space, stopping here and there throughout his life, including his long visit to the planet Tralfamador, where he is mated with a porn star. |
| 2 | Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1969. Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1970. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death A fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod and smoking too much, who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe," a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. |
| 3 | This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace. For Mary O'Hare and Gerhard Muller. The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes, But the little Lord Jesus No crying He makes. 1 All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. |
| 4 | Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. |
| 5 | His name was Gerhard Muller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. |
| 6 | His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes. He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said: "I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will." I like that very much: "If the accident will." I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. |
| 7 | When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big. But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then — not enough of them to make a book, anyway. |
| 8 | And not many words come now, either, when I have become an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. I think of how useless the Dresden part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has been to write about, and I am reminded of the famous limerick: There was a young man from Stamboul, Who soliloquized thus to his tool: "You took all my wealth And you ruined my health, And now you won't pee, you old fool" And I'm reminded, too, of the song that goes: My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there. |
| 9 | The people I meet when I walk down the street, They say, "What's your name?" And I say, "My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin..." And so on to infinity. Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden. I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, "Is it an anti-war book?" "Yes," I said. |
| 10 | "I guess." "You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" "No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?" "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'» What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. |
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В отрывке №22 есть пробел перед знаком вопроса.
№10: между запятой и открывающей одинарной кавычкой пропущен пробел в