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Kurt Vonnegut was a writer, the only author that I can think, who completely changed my opinion of his work with one book. It wasn’t even one of his more famous books, “Galapagos” to be exact, but suddenly I understood why Vonnegut was considered as highly as he was. “Cat’s Cradle”, “Breakfast of Champions”, “Jailbird”, “Bluebeard”, “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater”, I consumed them all with a rabid intensity. I haven’t done much reading lately, haven’t really done much of anything accept ride through my waves of depression and try not to think about death too much, but Vonnegut stills holds a place as one my revered writers, alongside other such weirdos like Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs.
Ironically, or perhaps coincidentally, the first Vonnegut novel I ever read (back when I was a young asshole and not an old bastard) was in fact his most famous book “Slaughterhouse-Five”, and I can remember not really caring for it at all. I guess it just didn’t sit click with me at the time, and I kind of put him aside as an author years later. I eventually decided to give the story another shot, but rather than reread the book, I decided to watch the film version instead. The adaptation of a novel into a film is not a flawless process (Catch-22, whose film adaptation came out two years earlier, lost a lot in translation in my opinion), but I based my decision on two points: 1) It was directed by George Roy Hill, who also directed the infamous Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, The World According to Garp, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Slap Shot, and 2) Kurt Vonnegut himself went on record as saying he loved the film. If the author himself thinks the movie got it right, then it has to be good, right? Of course, Stephen King hated Kubrick’s version of “The Shining”, so maybe author approval isn’t the end all factor.
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. At one point he is an old man, with a wife, two children and a dog named Spot. At others he is a child, learning to swim for the first time. Still more he is a young man, an American POW’s imprisoned in Dresden in World War II. Somehow Pilgrim’s view of reality has been separated from the commonly accepted notion of time, causing to relive different points of his life. Others think him insane, but Billy Pilgrim knows the truth. He knows about the Tralfamadorians, and the beautiful woman that awaits him on their planet. You will too, if you watch this movie.
Slaughterhouse-Five is not a horror film, but it deals with a particularly horrific subject: war, and the effects it can have on the brain, the emotional (and in Billy’s case, literal) disconnection one has with reality. By that train of logic almost all war movies would fall under my criteria, but SH5 is also something of a science-fiction film, a genre which goes hand-in-hand with horror. It won’t leave you quaking in your boots this Halloween, but it might bend your mind a little, and isn’t that what we all want this holiday season?
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