‘‘Slaughterhouse-Five’’ (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut: A Pilgrim’s Journey in Non-Linear Time

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, was published on March 30th, 1969 and is now half — a — century old. Or was it published yesterday? Or right now? Or tomorrow? All three. Possibly.

Published at the height of the Vietnam War, his novel is the result of what Vonnegut describes as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about the firebombing of Dresden, Germany which he witnessed as an American POW incarcerated in a former slaughterhouse (Schlachthof-fünf, Slaughterhouse-Five). The destruction of this non-military city so late in the war is still highly controversial, and that controversy is central to Vonnegut’s book.

Here are the bare bones of the story: Billy Pilgrim, “tall and weak, and shaped like a bottle of Coca-Cola,” was born in Ilium, N.Y., the only child of a barber there. After graduating from Ilium High School, he attended night sessions at the Ilium School of Optometry for one semester before being drafted for military service in World War II. He served with the infantry in Europe and was taken prisoner…