So did aliens actually abduct him and is that why he's unstuck in time?
Or is he imagining it all in his head and basing what he believes off things he takes subconciously from his real life?
Because I think both arguments can be made.
or does it not matter.
>>7764301
reddit general?
>>7764309
lol. this book really was shite
>>7764309
what does sh5 have to do with reddit?
>>7764346
Bitter people don't like popular things.
>>7764346
people are elitist as fuck on this board
"All this happened, more or less."
That is literally the first sentence of this book. It could not be more obvious that you didn't read it
>"all this happened, more or less."
that's during the authors portion.
not during the Billy Pilgram segment.
Seems like you didn't read the book.
>>7764384
It's a novel ffs, none of it happened
>>7764391
>refuses to engage with literature
>posts on literature board
why?
>>7764399
shut the fuck up
Vonnegut has the style to use a simple phrase, then another simple phrase and make a cheap, but sometimes pretty fitting joke on them. That's basically the whole book's prose, but I like SH5 the best for its slightly bizarre twist of scifi integration on a war novel.that is, it has no real literary value desu
>>7764463
I'm so happy desu and senpai are censored now, cause it means when you see them you can immediately disregard the post
>>7764380
However, despite wading through mounds of reviews of the book (from contemporaneous old media accounts to recent lengthy blog posts), as well as whole websites devoted to the man and even just this one book, perhaps the most cogent comment I read on the book came from an anonymous Amazon reviewer who offhandedly compared Pynchon’s book to Kurt Vonnegut’s lean 1968 masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five- which deals with a great many of the same issues, in the same era, in this manner (I paraphrase): if one views Vonnegut’s book as a world class sprinter running the 100 yard dash, then Pynchon’s book is a fat man attempting to not die while running a marathon. This, more than any other half-assed, mealy-mouthed review by a pseudo-Academic pretending to declaim the book as a masterpiece, gets to the heart of why the book fails colossally.
>>7764380
how embarassing is it that someone can misunderstand such a simple book as badly as this and still feel like they're somehow better than the author
>>7764380
Bitter.
>blah blah blah shitposting
So it goes
>>7764738
seriously
>>7764301
>Or is he imagining it all in his head and basing what he believes off things he takes subconciously from his real life?
Yes, but
>or does it not matter.
mostly this.
The alien abduction story is very outlandish, wish-fullfilling (remember all that amazing sex he has with the actress), and confused. A lot of it is ridiculous and almost nonsensical, the narrative is very fractured in time and space, between realistic and bizarre. Some parts of the story are very brutal(the man in the mohawk who dies of dry heaves) and then suddenly comforting(everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt). It serves as a sort of psychological buffer for Pilgrim to not have to face up to the realities of the Dresden bombardment he witnessed - it was actually aliens, the flashbacks are him being 'unstuck in time'. In other words, nothing Pilgrim could do about it. The source of Pilgrims problems seems to be in his real life experiences, and how after all those years he's still not able to really cope with them, or at least wholly face up to them. His daughters reaction also seems to imply that Pilgrim is suffering from some kind of early onset dementia.
But remember that you're reading Vonnegut, and Vonnegut often writes these kind of outlandish stories. Vonnegut actually appears in the story as a character, and the introduction makes it clear that the story of Billy Pilgrim is in large part the story of Kurt Vonnegut. Pilgrim is a mouthpiece for Vonnegut, and Pilgrim experiences the story of his World War II experience in a messed up half-ridiculous way just as Vonnegut is telling you his story in a messed up half-ridiculous way. The messing up of fiction and reality is very deliberate. Pigrims story being possibly aliens and possibly true is too.
So it goes is the worst repetition.
Even Murakami did it better in Dance, Dance, Dance
>>7764775
Well, if the sole person having an experience with those beings is a POW who survived one of the most destructive bombings in the second world war, I think there's more than a "coherent reason" to assume that that whole segment of the plot is just a schizophrenic fantasy. I wouldn't take the literary inclination of the author as chief argument, especially since he based certain parts of the book on his own life.
Personally, I think it's just a purposeful blend of the two. The Tralfamadore exists in a sort of paradoxical superposition - both as real and as a mere delusion - and that's done on purpose, in order to keep you thinking and struggling to understand (like a koan).
>>7764783
In my opinion, it was quite good. It signified a complete existential surrender to the horrors of the world. "Bad things happened, happen and will happen," is the meaning I get from it. One could view it as a defeatist position, but in my opinion it has more of a buddhist/gnostic subtext. Time is seen as a slavemaster that keep man chained to his own past, present and future, but when that's gone, suffering becomes obsolete.
(btw Billy sees himself as an endless centipede existing throughout time - that's a very buddhist idea)
>people are unironically engaged in trying to understand vonnegut cause it's too hard for them
the /reddit/ invasion is real
just nuke this board
>>7766211
This
>>7764380
>go on Reddit books
This makes sense. You're angry that Reddit has actually read an insightful book and now you have to act contrarian. Typical lit. Downsaged.
Long time since I read this book but it's clearly in his imagination. Doesn't he meet a character who reads trashy scifi novels? This has seeped into his consciousness.
>>7764499
What are you talking about?
>>7766211
why is reddit ruining our board
>>7766434
that's what I got out of it
there are several hints
>being an optometrist, issuing people glasses
>tramalfadores give him "glasses" to essentially understand the 4th dimension
>knows a sci-fi writer that was a self-insert, who writes about the wackiest shit
>tramalfadores are literally toilet plungers
there are more that I don't remember.
>>7764301
they like the aliums from south park
Am I funny yet?
>>7764380
I agree with this, the book was fucking garbage. Only reason it's remembered is because it was the first book to have a schizo narrator
>>7764380
Vonnegut's entire style was writing scifi books in a child-like style. To some extent it was because he was terrible at prose, but on another level it was an intentional choice because it meshed with the sentimentalist goals of his writing.
This was an extremely disappointing read
