Slaughterhouse-Five, Ch. 5-10

Before he became famous for novels such as Jurassic Park, Congo, and Twister, Michael Crichton wrote a review of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

The following are excerpts of Crichton’s review:

“We live in an age of great seriousness. We are accustomed to getting our art in heavy, pretentious doses. Anything funny is suspect, and anything simple is doubly suspect. Here we come to the difficulty with Kurt Vonnegut. His style is effortless, naive, almost childlike. There are no big words and no complicated sentences. It is an extraordinarily difficult style, but that fact is lost on anyone who has never tried to write that way.”

“It is a classic sequence of reactions to any Vonnegut book. One begins smugly, enjoying the sharp wit of a compatriot as he carves up Common Foes. But the sharp wit does not stop, and sooner or later it is directed against the Wrong Targets. Finally it is directed against oneself. It is this switch in midstream, this change in affiliation, which is so disturbing. He becomes an offensive writer, because he will not choose sides, ascribing blame and penalty, identifying good guys and bad.”

“A Vonnegut book is not cute or precious. It is literally awful, for Vonnegut is one of the few writers able to lift the lid of the garbage can, and dispassionately examine the contents. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the author quotes his father as saying, "You never wrote a story with a villain in it." This may be true, but Vonnegut never wrote a story with a hero in it, either. In Slaughterhouse-Five he also says, "Nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting," and it is within this framework that he writes about an event that should qualify for all those adjectives— the firebombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut experienced as a prisoner of war in Germany.”

Crichton calls Vonnegut's writing offensive and awful. Explain why you agree or disagree with Michael Crichton’s view of Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five.

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