Just picked an early source for convenience, the author sneaks in a jab at the Soviets that I obviously find disgusting for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows what would happen to “the Russians” soon after the events described.
idk, I’m inclined to say that Vonnegut was a significant part of the cultural basis for the hysteria around it, and considering that he calls it “the biggest massacre in European history” when there were multiple massacres committed by the Nazis that were greater (e.g. the annihilation of Warsaw) is pretty distasteful.
To a credulous audience, an effective way to open a book, but that’s as much credit as I can give it.
To hear out the other side, obviously the allies seeking to rehabilitate Nazis before the bodies had even cooled in the Nuremberg gallows was a bigger contribution to the history of Aggrieved Fascists than any novel, but on the other hand hearing out the other side seems to be more than Vonnegut bothered with before regurgitating Nazi propaganda.
It’s been a lot of years since I read Vonnegut and it’s the imagery that sticks with me more than anything else. I did not remember that specific quote but it’s pretty cringe. For whatever can be said about the moral weight of the bombing of Dresden it was definitely not the biggest massacre in European history. I’ll always say I like Vonnegut and definitely important part of my pipeline but he’s got Iowa writers workshop brain worms like many of his contemporaries.
My laymen’s understanding of the subject is that basically the CIA needed a culture counterpoint to the artistic output of the Soviet Union and this was a part of that. They deliberately cultivated a mileu of “I’m a socialist but Stalin was a fascist” because it allowed them to highlight the progressive values and free speech of the U.S. while painting the Soviets as an authoritarian police state. It’s not as simple as “The CIA invented post-modernism” but they certainly helped
Author is Polish, and the maybe unwritten but absolutely serious requirement to publish anything in Poland is to take a jab at the Soviets. You won’t believe the completely random and unrelated manner it is sometimes done. Though that requirement is more about books than internet articles, but some people still feel the compulsion.
Not saying Vonnegut couldn’t have done better historical research, but Slaughterhouse 5 was not intended as historical analysis and is much more a psychological novel about PTSD and the effects of war on the mind of someone who lived through the brutality taken from his personal experience of being a POW during the Dresden bombing. He picks up what amounts to an early pop-history American source and doesn’t really critically analyze it - just takes at face value its account of the event that he mostly focuses on from his personal, micro-perspective. I don’t know if later in life he was confronted with more accurate accounts of the Dresden bombing and whether he commented on the inaccuracy of his books, but you can understand the literary appeal to a surviver of the Dresden bombing being presented with an official history that confirms what he emotionally felt while in the middle of it. He even presents it that way in the first chapter - describing himself and his army buddy as basically ignorant to the macro history of the event until they crack open a book decades later that describes it that way. When the “author” of the referenced book appears in the story itself, he is presented as one of the most deplorable characters confronted in the book. Essentially a bloodthirsty maniac that is both unapologetic while being aware that his conclusions are unsupportable (feeling the need to get confirmation of his statements of belief from a person that he does not even acknowledge to be conscious or cognizant). All that is to say, if the only thing one takes from Slaughterhouse 5 was that it is “bad history” and somehow nazi-aplogia for exaggerating the extent of death in Dresden, or worse, if someone avoids the book altogether because of the accusation, they are really missing out.
I mean, you say “micro-perspective” but the book still opens on “biggest massacre in European history”, doesn’t it? idk, it doesn’t seem very phenomenological 2 me
CW: graphic brutality of all kinds: https://witoldniesluchowski.com/greatest-massacre-in-the-european-history/
Just picked an early source for convenience, the author sneaks in a jab at the Soviets that I obviously find disgusting for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows what would happen to “the Russians” soon after the events described.
idk, I’m inclined to say that Vonnegut was a significant part of the cultural basis for the hysteria around it, and considering that he calls it “the biggest massacre in European history” when there were multiple massacres committed by the Nazis that were greater (e.g. the annihilation of Warsaw) is pretty distasteful.
To a credulous audience, an effective way to open a book, but that’s as much credit as I can give it.
To hear out the other side, obviously the allies seeking to rehabilitate Nazis before the bodies had even cooled in the Nuremberg gallows was a bigger contribution to the history of Aggrieved Fascists than any novel, but on the other hand hearing out the other side seems to be more than Vonnegut bothered with before regurgitating Nazi propaganda.
Edit, CC: @anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net @Tiocfaidhcaisarla@hexbear.net
It’s been a lot of years since I read Vonnegut and it’s the imagery that sticks with me more than anything else. I did not remember that specific quote but it’s pretty cringe. For whatever can be said about the moral weight of the bombing of Dresden it was definitely not the biggest massacre in European history. I’ll always say I like Vonnegut and definitely important part of my pipeline but he’s got Iowa writers workshop brain worms like many of his contemporaries.
Could you explain the reference? I don’t know what Iowa writers’ workshop is referring to or what its brainworms are.
Just from cursory googling
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2019/05/07/how-the-iowa-writers-workshop-saved-kurt-vonneguts-fledgling-career/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4x3vg3/how-the-cia-turned-american-literature-into-a-content-farm
My laymen’s understanding of the subject is that basically the CIA needed a culture counterpoint to the artistic output of the Soviet Union and this was a part of that. They deliberately cultivated a mileu of “I’m a socialist but Stalin was a fascist” because it allowed them to highlight the progressive values and free speech of the U.S. while painting the Soviets as an authoritarian police state. It’s not as simple as “The CIA invented post-modernism” but they certainly helped
Author is Polish, and the maybe unwritten but absolutely serious requirement to publish anything in Poland is to take a jab at the Soviets. You won’t believe the completely random and unrelated manner it is sometimes done. Though that requirement is more about books than internet articles, but some people still feel the compulsion.
Not saying Vonnegut couldn’t have done better historical research, but Slaughterhouse 5 was not intended as historical analysis and is much more a psychological novel about PTSD and the effects of war on the mind of someone who lived through the brutality taken from his personal experience of being a POW during the Dresden bombing. He picks up what amounts to an early pop-history American source and doesn’t really critically analyze it - just takes at face value its account of the event that he mostly focuses on from his personal, micro-perspective. I don’t know if later in life he was confronted with more accurate accounts of the Dresden bombing and whether he commented on the inaccuracy of his books, but you can understand the literary appeal to a surviver of the Dresden bombing being presented with an official history that confirms what he emotionally felt while in the middle of it. He even presents it that way in the first chapter - describing himself and his army buddy as basically ignorant to the macro history of the event until they crack open a book decades later that describes it that way. When the “author” of the referenced book appears in the story itself, he is presented as one of the most deplorable characters confronted in the book. Essentially a bloodthirsty maniac that is both unapologetic while being aware that his conclusions are unsupportable (feeling the need to get confirmation of his statements of belief from a person that he does not even acknowledge to be conscious or cognizant). All that is to say, if the only thing one takes from Slaughterhouse 5 was that it is “bad history” and somehow nazi-aplogia for exaggerating the extent of death in Dresden, or worse, if someone avoids the book altogether because of the accusation, they are really missing out.
I mean, you say “micro-perspective” but the book still opens on “biggest massacre in European history”, doesn’t it? idk, it doesn’t seem very phenomenological 2 me
Interesting, thanks for the mention!
I thought I was in trouble. Haha