Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Slaughterhouse Five

My favorite quote:

"This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt."

This book provides commentaries on war and time.

The author compares writing an anti-war book to writing an anti-glacier book. War is destructive and terrible, but unstoppable.

He writes about time fourth-dimensionally. The main character jumps from time to time in his life. This perspective means he never really dies, but experiences death at a particular instant, while still being perfectly alive at other times.

I think the best analogy the author makes is the pillar of salt. He implies that there is something importantly human about looking back, as Lot's wife did.

Although this book presented some interesting perspective and ideas, I don't think it was really good enough for the "Greatest 100" list.

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