Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

I've been waking up with the phrase "I've come unstuck in time" in my head for the past few months.   Vonnegut has been calling me from the other side, beckoning me to re-read this book.

Some wonderful text snippets from a brilliant man, sorely missed in my universe.  So it goes.

(lovely title page)

Slaughterhouse-Five

OR

THE CHILDREN'S

CRUSADE

A DUTY-DANCE WITH DEATH

BY

Kurt Vonnegut

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.

THIS IS A NOVEL

SOMEWHAT IN THE TELEGRAPHIC SCHIZOPHRENIC

MANNER OF TALES

OF THE PLANET TRALFAMADORE,

WHERE THE FLYING SAUCERS

COME FROM.

PEACE.

<3

The queer earth was a mosaic of sleepers who nestled like spoons.

And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either.  They see them as great millepedes--"with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other."

Billy Pilgrim was on fire, having stood too lose to the glowing stove.  The hem of his little coat was burning.  It was a quiet, patient sort of fire--like the burning of punk.

"How's the patient?" he asked Derby.

"Dead to the world."

"But not actually dead."

"No."

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."

Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more.  Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades.  Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.

"Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed.  He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved.  His prose was frightful.  Only his ideas were good.

More later, when I finish re-reading.