Slaughter House Five - Vonnegut is a Genius and I am so over it.

So this is not the first time I have read this book.  I read it in my early 20's sometime.  I loved it.  Vonnegut pulled off the perfect anti war novel.  He really is a genius.  And what other 20th century literary great had a scene in freaking Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield?

But a couple of weeks ago, for some reason I decided to pick it up again, and this time I read it with my older mind and thoughts.  I was disappointed.  Most books that I re-read as I get older, I find that I appreciate more.  But there is something about this one that worked the opposite way.  Over 10 years ago, I got Billy Pilgrim.  I got that he was an outsider and saw horrible things that nobody else got. It made him sad and be alone all the time and slowly drove him into believing that he was living on another planet, living in an alien zoo with a 20 year old Hollywood actress.  So, Billy Pilgrim's innocence and his descent into an alternate reality showed how horrible the rest of society was.

But this time when I read his story, I just didn't see it. Even though Vonnegut alludes to Billy Pilgrim being an allegory for Christ, he just isn't.  Billy Pilgrim is just a self absorbed goof-ball.  He does not show one bit of compassion or even general human interest toward basically anyone other than his insane author friend, Kilgore Trout.  Such lines like these really struck me as summing it up:

When his mother is visiting him in the hospital and talking to his only friend in the bed beside him: "And on and on it went - that duet between the dumb praying lady and big hollow man who was so full of loving echoes."

Of his mother "She was a perfectly nice, standard issue, brown haired, white woman with a high-school education."

Of his son Robert: "Billy liked him, but didn't know him very well.  Billy help couldn't help suspecting that there wasn't much to know about Robert."

He is traumatized by visiting the Grand Canyon as a child.  Although his wife is loving and devoted, he hates her.  He hates his fellow soldiers.  He hates America. He pretty much has contempt for everyone he meets.

Who thinks this shit? And the more I thought about it, I realized there were some really good parallels in other literature in this era (50's and 60's).  Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, and Fahrenheit 451, all display similar themes, although not quite as obnoxiously.  It pretty much goes like this, "I am different and smart and completely miserable.  If you are happy in this world you must be stupid and worthless.  So, I am going to just wander around and complain and mope.  And this is going to so justify my existence."  

In fact, at the end of all of these books, the protagonist ends up living in some type of isolation (mental hospital, alien zoo, Sweden, out lands with other hobos), away from all of the stupid, common folks.

What is the motivation behind all of this?  Sure, bad stuff happens to Billy (his father and wife dying, stuff he sees in war).  And encounters bad people.  So freaking what?  That is life!  But he does absolutely nothing, no action what so ever.  There is nothing new about the "individual versus society" theme, but in earlier periods the struggle was treated different.  The individual actually did something.  Tom Joad (Grapes of Wrath) saw a lot of bad shit too.  Know what he did?  He freaking killed a bad guy!!!  Imagine that! I guess I just have a different mindset about the world when it come to literature.  I want to see things how they are, the beauty and ugliness in all of it.  Spare me the pseudo intellectual judgment.  You aren't necessarily and better or worse than the others so give it up.  Do something!

So to summarize this rant....It is the freaking Grand Canyon.  Enjoy it!