Chirps and the rest.

So the book came to an end.

Only until the very last page and the very last word did I come to understand the book thoroughly.

You see, Vonnegut makes a good job of writing a decent novel. He uses a good quantity of symbols, allusions, irony, and satire; he develops complex characters like Billy Pilgrim and Kilgore Trout, and even takes the trouble to make himself a character in the story. He marvels the reader and inspires quality reflection, and yet he ends the book with the disenchanting onomatopoeia that is "Poo-tee-weet?" (Plus a question mark, that makes it even more confusing)

But as I thought about it, and connected all the pieces in the book, the bird’s chirp suddenly made sense.

In the beggining of the book Vonnegut says there's nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, in fact "Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again" So, everything dies, except for the birds, who are the only ones that spit silly little sounds like “Poo-tee-weet?” out of their  beaks. Then a few pages after Vonnegut says “This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.” Meaning it was written by a person who looked back at the past.

The fact that the book so suddenly ends with “Poo-tee-weet?” means the book is a failure. It had to be written, but in the end, Vonnegut doesn’t love it. “I’ve finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun.”

And in my opinion, he made the strongest statement on war by providing this ending, because “Poo-tee-weet?” completely cancels, vaporizes, and annuls any significance the story-line could ever aspire to have, and ultimately says, I have nothing to say about war, it is what it is: stupid. 

Metafiction it is.

Pg. 125 revealed Vonnegut as a real character in the story. “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.”

You see, just when you think you’ve got this book all figured out, these sorts of things happen, and they mess with your mind. As usual, I now have more questions than answers about Billy Pilgrim’s identity.

Was Billy Pilgrim a real person? Or is he a recompilation of personalities Vonnegut met in the war?

Why does the author choose to make himself a character in the story?

Who’s the narrator then? Because we see “Moments later he said, ‘There they go, there they go.´” He meant his brains. And then we see Vonnegut’s direct intervention (“That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.”) He switches from third to first person.

And also, why would Vonnegut choose to introduce himself in the story as a guy taking an ugly dump in a latrine?

I’m thinking I’ll have to read further on to answer these questions and I’ll restrain from looking it up on Wikipedia.

Anyway, this new twist on the story makes it even more interesting. I’m gonna go ahead and say that Vonnegut’s appearance serves the purpose of giving the story the realism time traveling and aliens took away. About Billy Pilgrim, I’m still puzzled about him. Today, Sunday, October 2 I think Billy is a personification of Vonnegut’s experience; he represents what every soldier once felt in the war. This is how I feel today, but a couple of pages could change my mind. 

The Aid of Alien Eyes

This weekend I checked out Diego Rodriguez’s blog “Click Here to Continue” and among his entries, I found one with a very interesting interpretation of a little detail in the book. The first time we see the “mustard gas and roses” description is in Ch.1, where Vonnegut describes the smell of his drunken breath as mustard gas and roses. But then in Ch.4, in the night of his daughter’s wedding, before being kidnapped by the Trafamadorians, Billy Pilgrim receives an anonymous call, but nobody talks and the narrator says “he could almost smell his breath- mustard gas and roses”. 

Diego notices this and insinuates that the caller is Vonnegut himself, making Ch.1 a part of the story, and placing Vonnegut as a character in the book. It is an interesting theory and I congratulate Diego for noticing it, because it gives yet another perspective of the book. It reminded me of A Clockwork Orange when Alex and his droogs break into an isolated cottage where he finds a manuscript called "A Clockwork Orange". This I understand is called Metafiction, and I think Vonnegut is making use of that literary device in this book.

This little phone call only makes the reader more confused. I though Billy Pilgrim was a personification of Vonnegut’s war traumas, created, in a way, to materialize his pain so he could physically end it. So, Billy Pilgrim was Kurt Vonnegut. But if Vonnegut is in the story as himself, then who is Billy Pilgrim, what is Billy Pilgrim?

I’m starting to suspect the phone call has a more transcendent than I thought, which leads me to think I should pay even more attention to the little details in the book.

Diego also drew my attention to the actual description of the smell “mustard gas and roses” I can almost feel it in my nostrils. Also, there must be a weird connection between alcohol and flowers (which aren’t exactly the most similar things in the world) because this is the second time I’ve encountered them united in literature. The first time was in a surrealistic book called “Opio en las Nubes” by Rafael Chaparro Madeido, who paints a very particular almost dreamlike Bogota, hard to describe. The book’s characters drink alcohol as much as they breath, and romanticize the concept of a decadent, reckless life. They constantly repeat the phrase “Me gusta el olor de vodka con las flores” (I like the smell of vodka with flowers).

Going back to Billy Pilgrim, I shall pay close attention to the future of the book to see if the phone call has a more profound meaning. 

The Order

"Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again."

Edition by: Cristina Serrano and Francisco Serna.

Who's The Real Victim?

Without a doubt, in times of war, everybody is a victim. We hear about injured civilians, genocides, torture, etc.  And we think about the soldiers as the bad guy. But in reality, they are as much a victim of war as any other civilian.  

“We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.”Often the army is composed by teens who know not what they’re doing, and whose life after the war turns out as disappointing and sad as one never expected. Yet we don’t hear a lot about them. “Heroic” acts in the war often obscure the rest of the veterans’ lives. Governments don’t want us to know what happened to the soldiers after the war. They want to promote service, and there’s no way anyone would enlist in an army knowing the side effects war has upon you.

“Most of the privates on Billy’s car were very young-at the end of childhood.”

As ironic as it may sound, soldiers in war are not fighting the enemy, they’re fighting themselves. A student from Oklahoma fights a student from Frankfurt. A chef from New Orleans shoots a chef from Berlin. American plumbers fight Russian plumbers. So it goes.

The uniform these men wear hides the identity of an individual. Want it or not, if the boy survives, life will go on, and he will have to go back to society, unpleasantly realizing everything’s the same, except for him. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is one of the common post-war syndromes, but there are thousands of traumas that hunt the private’s life forever.

  War makes us forget about the individual. Vonnegut recognizes the humanity of the privates “Human beings in there were excreting…When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.” Chapter three reminded me of the Buddhist monk that spoke to us earlier this month. His name is Claude Anshin Thomas, and as a veteran, he had to face all the demons war left on him.  

Kids go to war for various reasons: they want to stand up for their country; they are told it’s the best thing to do, they have heroic fantasies, or they simply think it’s the only way. In Billy’s case, he was “needed in the headquarters company of an infantry regiment fighting in Luxembourg.”

In Claude Anshin’s case, he thought it was the only way to go. He thought no further, “I volunteered to go to Vietnam because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn’t understand the nature of war or violence” (Pg. 5, At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, Claude Anshin Thomas, 2004)

But soon enough they realize it’s not the adventure everyone portrayed it was. War is useless, war is anarchy. People need to realize that. Vonnegut says, “There were about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, staring into the flames-thinking whatever there was to think, which was zero” War is a simple as that, zero.

Billy’s life after the war is sad as well. Even though he achieved some wealth (which is not the case for most veterans) he is an alcoholic, he is “unenthusiastic about living”, and has to live with a burden on a past, a present, and a future that he cannot change.

The older Billy has a hard time sleeping and spontaneously starts to cry. In one of those sporadic crying attacks, Billy becomes unstuck in time, he blinks and is back in the war still crying. “It was a winter wind that was bringing tears to his eyes.” War may end, people may move on with their lives, but anywhere these soldiers go, they will feel the harsh winter wind blow in their faces. 

The Gunner's Dream-Pink Floyd

Billy Pilgrim's Life (Until Ch. 5)

1922- Born, Ilium, NY (Pg. 23)

1930- Trip to Santa Fe (Pg. 39)

1939- Graduated from Ilium High school (Pg. 23)

1943- Captured by Germans (Pg. 55)

1944- First time he became unstuck in time (Pg. 30)

1944- Went to Germany, last German attack (Pg. 32)

1945- Honorably discharged from war (Pg. 24)

1957- Elected president of the Lion’s Club (Pg. 49-50)

1958- Banquet of Honor of Little League team

1961- New Years Optometrist Party, cheated on wife. (Pg. 46)

1965- Visits mother in Retirement Home, and mother dies (Pg. 44)

1967- Captured by Aliens (Pg. 25)

1968- Survive plane crash (Pg. 25)

Ticking Away

“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

What is it to be unstuck in time?

Is it that I’ll be sitting on my desk, in the eve of the night, writing this blog entry, and with a blink suddenly it will be year 2000, and I’ll be at my brother’s first communion sitting in the middle of my parent’s bulgy attires, wearing a cute little blue dress and white stockings, while observing in boredom the heights of the church’s ceiling, wondering why does the virgin seem so sad? And how much longer is this? And then with another blink I’ll be in the year 2010 on a Sunday, 4:00 am, killed by exhaustion, sunk in a bed that hasn’t been made for two weeks, watching Trainspotting for the third time in a row, wondering who the F I am on a Sunday morning, all while my mother is asking me what I had for dinner this evening, and with another blink I’ll be back to answer her: Arroz con pollo?

It must be exhausting to appear in another stage of life without any previous notice. But again, as said in the book “It [time] is 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.”

And as a person who always wants what it can’t have, the idea that time doesn’t exist is quite seductive.

That every moment is universal, like another brick is being added to Khafre’s pyramid as I’m writing this blog. That I have already ceased to exist, and posterior generations are doing their thing while I’m thinking about them, all the while the next minute of my life could take place in cradle entertaining myself with some amusing teddy bears, or tomorrow at school asking Mr. Tangen if my blog entries have improved. As said in the book: “All the moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will.”

I would love to be unstuck in time. Then I wouldn’t have to live life, but rather be a spectator of it, like living a constant dream. Then Death wouldn’t be so painful because “…when a person dies he only appears to die.” And I’d probably lose irrational fears of loneliness, death and consequences.

If there’s anything that is close to making be unstuck in time is music.

This song (no kidding) vividly revives a car ride in Villa de Leyva. Details can be spared, the feeling is there.

Slaughterhouse Five: Amusing Quotes

Chapter 1:

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and television.” (pg.4)

“We were United World Federalists back then. I don’t know what we are now. Telephoners I guess.” (pg. 11)

Chapter 2:

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” (pg. 39)

“All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet.” (Pg. 29)

Chapter 5:

"Another time, Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, 'I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, o people just aren't going to want to go on living." (Pg.101)

"Ho nice-to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." (Pg. 105)

"It was very excting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love" (Pg. 132)

Give up on forgeting- Ch. 1

“All of this happened, more or less.” Is the sentence that initiates the book Slaughterhouse Five. With this we’ve been warned of the exposure of rawness and reality,

More or less.

Yet this first chapter is a testimony of an unidentified author who’s a veteran and intends to write about the war. The identity of the speaker is never explicitly revealed, but congruencies with Kurt Vonnegut’s life lead us to believe it is him who is speaking. Kurt Vonnegut's Biography

The story of the book doesn’t take place yet, but as he retells the story of his life we see that war scars everybody, and that writing this book was the way for Vonnegut to be in peace with his past.

He mentions that he was once asked by a movie-maker called Harrison Star if it was an anti war book, the one he was writing, to which he responded,

“Yes, I guess.”

And then Harrison Star tells him, “You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books? I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead’.”

Vonnegut consents. War is therefore unstoppable for him.

Yet he writes the book anyway.

Without a doubt is Kurt Vonnegut against war. In many phrases scattered around the chapter he gets this point across:

“It is short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because the is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” (Referring to the book) (Pg. 19)

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres…not to work for companies which make massacre machinery.” (Pg. 19)

The last page of the chapter really gives sense to all the writing. Vonnegut makes reference to the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, and King Lot’s wife, who was told not to look back to where her home and her people were, but did look back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

With this reference, he consolidates with his past as Vonnegut says “People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”

And then states that this book is a failure as it was written by a pillar of salt. But Vonnegut is in reality embracing his human nature with this book. He remembers one last time, because war is a part of him, because he needed look back.

So it goes.

The Perfect Life by John Koethe

I’ve always thought words are the most powerful weapon. Poetry will most likely confirm this statement. But after reading “The Perfect Life”, it seemed like words had never made so much sense. A piece of writing has never touched my heart as much as this poem did. Reading it felt as pleasurable as tasting your favorite chocolate bar, and as overwhelming as watching a person die.

As I finished reading the poem, my face gestured angst like it has never done before.

I felt rigid,

stale,

faded.

Coincidentally, I was listening to Erik Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies” while reading the poem for the first time. Words and notes coupled in perfection, the music seemed to capture the poem’s essence flawlessly. And as a sublime, impressionist master piece, the soundtrack served as a canvas for all the emotions the poem transmitted. Listening to the music truly enhanced the experience.

The poem alone reminded me of my father. Although he’s not a grim person, I sense he fells just like John Koethe. My still life painting was inspired on a reflection of his. Once I asked him about his major realizations in life, and he said, “You know when you have big dreams and aspirations, and you just sit throughout life, and then realize you’re too old to make them come true.”

All this makes me wonder about life in general. We are given a limited amount of time in this earth. What’s the perfect life then? Who said you can waste it? In the end it all comes down to being awake, and then not. Is there really a standard for living?