Slaughterhouse Five

Design by Evan McHugh

I never expected that this would become a funny read. Countless chuckles, smiles, and pages later, I thought this novel deserved its status as one of the leading anti war literature of all time. For those who seek the humanist view of war and its folly, this is a recommended text.

This is so far my best Vonnegut Jr read after The Sirens of Titan five years ago and last year, his fiction anthology Armageddon in Restrospect where the author openly declared his distaste for war. The main question of the novel is this: Was it really necessary to bomb Dresden in February 13, 1945 and keep it a secret many years after bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Vonnegut retells his own story as a Prisoner of War in Dresden in a playful but biting way for the main character Billy Pilgrim. Non accusatory but cautionary, narrating Billy Pilgrim's story is so easy to follow when the author tells it at the same tone as your grandfather did in retelling war exploits and misadventures during the second World War. I look at this novel as essentially an autobiography disguised as a postmodern novel, sans the sci fi elements of time and space travel as the magic of this book comes naturally from the author's unlimited, black humor-flavored humanism.

The first chapter is a very good chapter, the author clearly explains why the tribute to Mary O'Hare and why it's subtitled "The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death." This novel never runs out of funny and sarcastic scenes, as much as references to other books a bibliophile might need for further experience. They are the following:

"The Destruction of Dresden" by David Irving
"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay
"Words for the Wind" by Theodore Roethke
"Celine and His Vision" by Erika Ostrovsky
"Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann
"The Execution of Private Slovik" by William Bradford Huie
"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane
"The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

And then there are the "fictional" novels by a fictional author Kilgore Trout:
"Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension"
"The Gospel From Outer Space"
"The Big Board"

Contrary to popular belief, Kilgore Trout is not an allusion of Kurt Vonnegut, but of his colleague in sci fi community Theodore Sturgeon. The author admitted this after Sturgeon died in 1985. But Kilgore Trout's struggles as a sci fi author almost mirrors that of Vonnegut than Sturgeon's making the readers think that Trout may be an indirect or rather partial allusion of the author himself.

I can see this novel as a classic man's book, given the writing style very easy to understand and free from flowery and post-industrial invented words of the postmodernist. Vonnegut writes in a simplistic language, his narrative is short but effective and hits the bull'seye. This is pobably the main reason why the book is highly regarded as a classic, a premium literature listed as one of the Top 100 Modern Books by Time Magazine.

This novel I believe, is certified Food for the Soul.

source

Category: Anti War, Science Fiction
Rating: 5 tablespoons of malt syrup

When The Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe

This is my first attempt in joining Read Philippines' Book of the Month for June 2012. I actually voted for this novel, but this book originally published in 2002 has its flaws. I can see that it's not very realistic, nor strictly contextualized in the Philippine setting and this would have explained why most readers of Asian Historical Fiction remained neutral and would prefer the more prominent Ilustrado novel by Syjuco as a recommended text. This book probably needs an editor but it's understandable given the enthusiasm of the author (she tells it like a balikbayan sharing her own adventures from a strange land) in forming a synergy of variable folk and war stories to become a singular novel in the end.

Here are what I notice:

• The title itself. Used by a Filipino patriarch as an analogy of the Second World War to his children, elephants were depicted as the American and Japanese forces while the chickens scampering were pictured as the Filipinos. On the surface it may sound appropriate since elephants are essentially foreign animals to the country just like the Japs and the Americans but the father in the story used an analogy, and I think it's better to use an animal that all children in the war-thorn Manila were familliar like a water buffalo or carabao. There are no elephants in the Philippines, not yet in the zoo during the war thorn era of WWII. I prefer to rephrase what Mang Carlito said in the book like this: "When the buffalos dance, the chickens must be careful." It's much easier (and amusing) to imagine it as a Filipino child.
• Another contextual miscue is the usage of "snow" in a simile. "The evenings in our cordillera village were always deliciously hot, with the scent of the white sampaguita flowers that grew like flakes of snow around our house." The narrator here is a Filipino native in WWII telling a childhood story to Filipino audience, asking them to imagine snow flakes sprouting around the house. The problem is, there's no snow in the Philippines.
• "All Soul's Day, also known as Todos Los Santos, happened on the evening of October 31. Halloween, they call it in the States." What happens on the evening of October 31 is indeed Halloween, and then All Saints Day or Todos Los Santos the following morning of November 1. However, All Souls Day or Araw ng mga Patay, occurs on November 2. 

I dont want to elaborate further on some spelling and historical miscues (like the weird prominence of Boracay in 1940s) nor ponder on the "uncharacteristic" breakdown of a revolutionary hero and the sudden fear of bleeding to death when you already killed a lot and can easily kill more human being. But we all know that a coin has two faces and seeing the brighter side of the novel is still a rewarding and probably redeeming act. Reading the fantastic stories full of traditional values like unity and sense of family inspires me more not to let go of the colorful history of my people's race in Asia.

There is no contention that the author Tess Uriza Holthe was inspired by her father's experience as a young boy in this country during the second World War. You can sense her enthusiasm and pride in retelling the folk tales we are all familiar with as Filipinos, and it's admirable. It was an amalgam of stories within a story, sometimes amusing, sometimes inspiring, and also heartbreaking. It's probably the best description of this novel, as it mirrors the collective Filipino and its struggle for independence and sense of national identity from its Asian, Hispanic, and American experience.

My favorite quote from the book: "I do not hide, Alejandro. Remember this day. Remember how everyone fought together. Keep it in your heart, and never let anyone divide us again. As for me, I will try to build something from what remains. My soul needs time to heal. I go now to see where this new peace shall lead us. Please, tell the others goodbye." 



Genre: Historical Fiction, Folk Tales, WWII, Anti War Literature
Rating: 3.9 kilos of rice 

Armageddon in Retrospect

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The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

It's not my intention to create a hype given that the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about to be shown in the UK this month and the rest of the world probably later. The reading world is already full of "hype" and I don't want to desecrate Le Carre's work because of these silly "hypes." For the first place, Tinker Tailor may not be released in movie theaters here in the Philippines and I just want to read a Le Carre book imprisoned earlier on my shelf for a very long time and maybe reading it is better than leaving it to collect dusts (or termites) and remain unread.

For the record I have 3 initial Le Carre reads and in order, they are "The Tailor of Panama," "Single & Single," and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." I enjoyed them all. Prior to this I also dabbled into Tom Clancy's world of military intrigues; "The Hunt for Red October," "Politika," and "Patriot Games." Last year, I enjoyed Tim Powers' uber-hybrid story "Declare" (hybrid in the sense that it was a cross-genre between territories of historical fiction, sci fi, dark fantasy, and espionage). Furthermore, six years ago I felt the chill by the story of a saboteur-gone-wrong Verloc in Joseph Conrad's psychological thriller "The Secret Agent."

In all of these initial experiences within the world of espionage fiction and seeing how readers today love popular fiction, I drew a hypothesis that there can only be two kinds of a spy novel: the first kind bores you to death because the politics are realistic (if not allusive), and the second one entertained you to life because of cheap thrills, gadgets, and naked chicks. 

This made Le Carre novels apparently boring to younger readers and Ian Fleming's, commercially viable to novice readers. Nothing much to blame, politics (or history) is exclusive only for the mature readers.

But now that I am an 'old' reader it's quiet different. Global politics did not bore me anymore, it was very informative and it opened my eye. The chick was never dumb though simple, still you would want to fall for. There were action scenes but they were not the center of the novel. The center of the novel was about this dark mantra--the philosophy of any professional espionage work. This mantra states that in the real world there is no such thing as "black and white." Always been and always will be. Grey areas will never go and nothing can change that.

The most important attribute of this novel is its unpredictability--in a very good and thrilling way. Originally published in 1963, the setting is in the 1950's revolving on the post WWII espionage and counter-espionage conflicts between the communist East Germany and the monarchic Great Britain. It was a classic spy war, an unseen showdown between the forces of Abteilung and agents of the Circus. The Berlin Wall still exists here and I like it when Le Carre started the story there, and also ended it all there. Perfectly symbolic. A good closure, a return to zero when you draw that proverbial, circular line. And you will enjoy this in a light reading pace of 223 pages.
       
Now I know why this book is heavily regarded as the top espionage novel of the past century and why Time Magazine inducted this thriller in its list of 100 Best Novels of the modern era.

Le Carre's credibility as a former member of Her Majesty's Secret Service--the MI6 is unquestionable and his deep insight into the complex world (or abyss?) of espionage is unfathomable. This is perhaps, his signature book but we hope for more as long as he still writes realistic and complex stories highly relevant through the ages. That makes a novel classic.


Unforgettable Lines:

"That's because you don't want to think, you don't dare! There's some poison in your mind, some hate. You're a fanatic, Alec, I know you are, but I dont know what about. You're a fanatic who doesn't want to convert people, and that's a dangerous thing. You're like a man who's...sworn vengeance or something."  
page 35

Sometimes he thought of Liz. He would direct his mind toward her briefly like the shutter of a camera, recall for a moment the soft-hard touch of her long body, then put her from his memory. Leamas was not a man accustomed to living on dreams.  
page 43

He was contemptuous of his cellmates, and they hated him. They hated him because he succeeded in being what each in his heart longed to be: a mystery. 
page 43

"I am a worker," the woman replied acidly. "The concept of brain workers as a higher category must be destroyed. There are no categories, only workers; no antithesis between physical and mental labor. Haven't you read Lenin?" 
"Then the people in this prison are intellectuals?"
The woman smiled. "Yes," she said, "they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state."
page 204



Genre: Espionage Fiction
Rating: 5 blistering sentry rounds out of 5

Banned Books Week 2010

Celebrating the freedom to read banned books has already started at 25th of September and will end this Saturday, the 2nd of October. Though I know I'm off by at least half a week, I believe it's  never too late to give banned books a chance to finally realize their true value, being proof of history themselves. They were banned due to political, moral, and biased reasons but nevertheless, any form of expression by any author or individual who only wanted to tell their sides of the story is a very valid point for us to listen (or read, to be exact).

This year, my most memorable reading experience with a politically banned book is reading the Diary of Anne Frank. It was banned in Lebanon for portraying Jews, Israel, or Zionism "favorably." Crazy it may sound, the very old mantra about "one country's hero is just another country's heretic" is still, highly relevant in a politically-divided world of this Global Age. What an irony.

Here's my short review for Anne Frank's Diary over the Shelfari group.

ALA | Banned Books Week 2010
List of Banned Books @ Wikipedia

What are you reading now, AUTOMATON?

Joe Haldeman's The Forever War

Robert Heinlein once commented that this novel by Joe Haldeman is better and much superior than Starship Troopers. I can clearly see why.

Published in 1974, this Science Fiction masterpiece is a very straightforward telling of a Vietnam War Veteran about an interstellar war between Earthlings and Taurans - alien beings from Aldebaran colony, constellation Taurus. The war that took place in the future within the timeframe of 1143 years is actually almost allegorical to what happened in the Vietnam War. Like all kinds of War in our history, this one started with a gross neglect in communication between the two factions. And the reader will know this only by the end of the story. And just like any War being waged past and present (think of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan), the prime body spearheading the war (that gains from the killings) is the one who controls the information and the media.     

This novel trips with recurring social issues not just about the idiosyncrasy of war, but also about feminism, gender equality, and misogyny. I like the idea of male soldier sharing a bed with a female soldier and they actually look for a partner that they obviously like before going to sleep. But later on in the novel, It's easy understand the protagonist Will Mandella regarding his homophobia with one of his "comrades" because this time, men and women are not the only pair of genders taking part in humanity's cause. 

I like Haldeman's concept on the collapsar stargate - a portal where any spaceship can "jump" between galaxies through Einstein's geodesic line. But traveling near the speed of light has its dire consequence. Because the time frame of the space traveler will become weird and different to that of an Earth inhabitant, the traveler leaving and returning to Earth will spend only several years compared to the Earth inhabitant spending tens up to a hundred of years. Upon Mandella's return to Earth, he's lucky meeting his mother alive and a very old woman, while his brother, almost the age of his father as he recalls. From the mind conditioning and hypnosis to enhance the soldiers' bloodlust, to the automatic camouflage armors, up to the regeneration of lost limbs, the science is plausible in this novel.

What is an alien? Is it the herbivore/psychic 'teddy bear' milling around, or the laser-toting human invading the alien planet? This is just one of Haldeman's beautiful mind plays in the novel. 

The best part is at the end when Major Mandella got an archived message from his lover Mary, apparently still alive from a distant planet - a garden planet called the Middle Finger. And they all lived happily ever after in a galaxy, far, far away...



some memorable passages:

"Any more questions?" Nobody raised a hand.

"OK. Tench-hut!" We staggered upright and he looked at us expectantly.

"Fuck you, sir," came the familiar tired chorus.

"Louder!"

"FUCK YOU, SIR!" One of the army's less-inspired moral devices.

--------------------

The 1143-year old war had been begun on false pretenses and only continued because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was "Why did you start this thing?" and the answer was "Me?"

My rating: 4 collapsars out of 5
Genre: Science Fiction