As of yesterday, I have successfully finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which was an incredible read. There is no other good word than "harrowing." Cliche? Possibly. Fitting? Absolutely. The novel spins in and out of a tortured mind, between time and space, questionable reality, and definite existence. Although at times overwhelming, Vonnegut's prose never fails to engage: it's not like Hemingway but not Dickens either (for two extremes). I have noticed in trying to explain the plot of the novel to inquisitors, I have extreme difficulty doing the story justice. I cannot simply give a linear answer, mainly because I have not fully understood everything myself.
The message Vonnegut is trying to pass off is this: War is bad. PTSD is also bad. Drugs help, unless you do too many. This novel is not thrilling by any means, but it leaves one with more to contemplate. There are moments when I really wanted to tell Vonnegut to get over the weird pity for the main character, Billy Pilgrim. He seemed to act as if the war, and everything in it, was nothing. However, Pilgrim's life after the war was one big mess, and he simply went through the motions society expected him to, stopping only to pass off struggle as nothing. I don't know if I would re-read it soon, possibly later in life, but definitely not soon.
Having finished that book... I naturally bought another one: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I am extremely excited to get to read this, however, I must finish The Dream of Perpetual Motion first. I am really enjoying this read, but it feels like the author is trying to impress me with all of these fancy narration moves. All I feel is jarred: the writer being addressed by the author about the main character, who is actually the current narrator only sometime in the future. The real-world author, Dexter Palmer, is clearly influenced by Shakespeare, and being a doctorate holder, his knowledge is vast. This novel feels like he's trying to wrangle me into believing that he is talented and smart. Sometimes overdone and repetitive, words can become his burden. BUT, the saving grace is the actual plot. Man serving a prison sentence on a zeppelin, tortured constantly by the voice of the woman he loves, looking back on his past and how he reached his low. He does not speak for fear of further torment, for fear of losing some eternal fight with this woman. Prose and narration styles are experimented with and are typically successful. But try as I might there are some paragraphs so full of description I skim them and call it good. I also become very distracted by other things with this read, even my phone when it's in the other room.
But both of these novels, and all the rest of the ones I have finally unpacked, have just fueled my desire to keep reading. I am getting closer to being able to lose myself in a novel like I used to; so very exciting. I have also found my copy of 1Q84 which I have been dying to finish since I had to stop reading it in January (gee, thanks school). For now I am perpetually reading and always dreaming.
(originally published 13 June, 2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment