Re: off-topic Vonnegut sighting update

[Birgitte Jorgensen <bj@kemmunet.net.mt>]

Elmer Elevator wrote:

> (...)
> > I'm actually not the world's greatest Kurt V fan, but I am an army veteran, and
> > think "Slaughterhouse 5" (his actual WWII memoir of being a young dogface POW
> > during the Allied firebombing of Dresden) is the greatest anti-war book ever
> > written. It pulls no punches, it has no agenda.

Bradley P Lehman wrote:

> (...) But the book is better, despite that.  Terrific book.  And it can be read
> in only slightly more time than it takes to watch the film.  Not that time
> is linear anyway here on Tralfamadore.

I'm afraid I'd have to side with Glenn Gould on this one, who wrote about the film:
"...the sheer virtuosity of the transcription may prove the greatest stumbling block
for this undeniably virtuosic piece of cinema." To me, the film was a muddled,
grandiose failure, with a grand, distinctly unmuddled soundtrack.

And of the book Gould said, and I agree: "I suspect that much of his [Vonnegut's]
work will date quickly and reveal the supposed profundities of an opus like
'Slaughterhouse-Five' as the inevitable clichés of an overgeneralized,
underparticularized view of humanity."

But then, I was not at Dresden in 1945 (I may have been on Tralfamadore for all I
know), and neither was Gould for that matter.

I don't know which work of literature epitomized WWII for Gould, but to my mind the
most powerful anti-war book, for all wars and for all time, is "Johnny Got His Gun"
by Dalton Trumbo. Apparently, there is a film version with the incomparable Donald
Sutherland, which I have regrettably never seen but which I am certain would not
even require a musical score to elicit the most profound emotional response from an
audience. But a warning: Trumbo's book contains no sci-fi fantasy trips; it cuts
deeply and painfully into the heart of the human experience. It's a searing
indictment against war, told from the perspective of single man, and is so powerful
that it is almost unbearable to read.

-Birgitte Jorgensen