A Mixing of Novels: Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

One of my favorite scenes in Slaughterhouse Five was the scene in chapter five where Billy is in the mental hospital. I'm not entirely certain why this scene has captured my fancy, but it's partly due to what his ward-mate Elliot Rosewater brings to the scene. I don't really like Billy Pilgrim much; he's too passive. He doesn't really care about anything, and he doesn't have much of a personality as far as I can tell. Elliot, on the other hand, is a much more interesting character. Especially considering the fact that Elliot Rosewater is actually directly out of another Kurt Vonnegut book that I am currently reading: God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. When I first read his name in the mental hospital scene I thought "hey, that's the name of the guy in the book I'm reading." When Vonnegut mentioned that Elliot Rosewater had also been a soldier and had accidentally killed a fourteen year old German volunteer fireman because he mistook him for a soldier, I was like, "Wait. This must be the exact same Elliot Rosewater. That's kind of odd, why not just make up a new character." Vonnegut just plucked him out of one of his novels and stuck him in another.

Vonnegut actually mixes aspects between the novels God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five more than once. It's like Vonnegut's novels exist in a world of their own and he just draws different aspects from it for his different books. Kilgore Trout and his badly written sci-fi is also a part of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which I suppose only makes sense since it was Elliot who introduced Billy to his books in the first place. What really surprised me was that the old "woman attempting to have sex with a Shetland pony" picture made an appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as well, as the porn of choice of a character's fourteen-year-old son. I mean, really, what's so significant about that photo? It's photo description makes it sound more ridiculous/disturbing than actually "sexy", and I'm not sure what kind of point Vonnegut is trying to make by utilizing that image so readily (if there even is a point at all; I suppose Vonnegut could just have a very limited imagination.) It just seemed to me like an unnecessary bit to consciously include in both novels.

Anyway, back to the Slaughterhouse Five mental hospital scene. Neither Billy nor Elliot really enjoy life or have any desire to continue living on earth. I like the way Vonnegut puts it when he's talking about how Billy covers his head whenever his mother comes to visit and he says "She made him feel embarrassed and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all." It's so matter-of -fact and honest. It's not something you would expect to find in a novel (though Vonnegut is full of surprises). None of the books that I have read have really delved into someone just not liking life on earth, yet its totally relateable. I'm sure  everyone at some point has thought that maybe life wasn't worth it. Of course, Billy has a typical, childish, passive reaction to not liking life and just covers his head with a blanket. Elliot pretty much has decided that life is pointless as well, but I really like his way of approaching it. he tries different things and actually does some searching to try and improve his outlook on life. I really like the interaction between Billy's mother and Eliot where he was trying being ardently sympathetic with people to see if that made life more enjoyable. It's such a seemingly genuine interaction, though for all we know Elliot doesn't care at all and is just giving generic answers (as Vonnegut puts it, "loving echoes") and supporting everything Billy's mother says, replying with things like "That's a good thing to do." and "A boy needs a father." It sounds like it could be a very real, and touching conversation, but it's so empty and void of actual content. I can't pinpoint exactly what I appreciate about that hollow interaction, but perhaps it's just the optimism.

I didn't really like Elliot Rosewater in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater nearly as much as I like his appearance in Slaughterhouse Five. In "his" book I suppose you could call it, Elliot is just a really rich heir who drinks, runs around as a volunteer fireman in some tiny little town in Indiana named after his family, and pretty much runs a psychiatrist hotline on the phone in his office to whoever feels like calling him. His family and everyone at the company he's inherited thinks he's insane, his former wife appears to have been emotionally damaged by antics. In Slaughterhouse Five, however, there is less triviality about him and more depth. He seems much more respectable and down to earth, though he may not like living on it.

So it goes.

One of the things I noticed about Slaughterhouse Five when I first read this book (and I am among the ones that have read it before for World Since 1945) was Vonnegut's shameless overuse of the phrase "so it goes". At first it would really bother me. It would be one of those small technical things like Reed's use of numerals instead of spelling out the number like you're "supposed to" that would just get on my nerves. Vonnegut mentioned that the Tralfamadorians would say "so it goes" whenever someone would die, and that's about as far as he would go to address the subject. He always uses it after he has just described some tragic event, and I suppose what else can you say. He uses "so it goes" to quickly divert from the tragic event he has just talked about and move on. I suppose that follows the Tralfamadorian view of time, how people never actually die because they are still living somewhere in time, since it wouldn't make sense to get sad over death. Vonnegut definitely doesn't seem to want to dwell on any traumatic event, which he alludes to when he talks about the story of Lot and his wife and says that "people aren't supposed to look back." Rather than dramatizing every horrific thing he tells us like many books do, he sort of brushes it off with a kind of "whatever" attitude that provides an emotional detachment. I think I like it better that way. I think it makes the events that he's talking have more of an impact since he makes them seem commonplace and with an air of "I see that all the time". It also makes the reader conscience of every time he uses "so it goes", so you really notice and remember when he's talking about something tragic that he's witnessed. If the only thing you remember from the book is how often he uses so it goes I guess you wouldn't be in that bad of shape. You would remember that meant that there were a lot of tragic things that happened during the bombing of Dresden. And I suppose that's something.

Reflections on Mumbo Jumbo

When we first started Mumbo Jumbo, I felt completely overwhelmed by the rush of new characters, confusing scenes involving an obscure "epidemic", and phrases such as doo-whack-a-doo which isn't even English. With Ragtime, the plot was pretty straight forward and you could pretty much predict when Doctorow was going to change viewpoints and follow another character for a while; and Ragtime was just overall a much easier read. I initially approached Mumbo Jumbo the same way I had approached Ragtime: as though it were clear, straightforward, and something I could just read through  once and be able to get the quiz down. Well, my first Mumbo Jumbo quiz certainly would prove that wrong. I realized that if I was going to retain anything I had read I was going to have to take notes on the chapters, and read in a area with no distractions. I suppose Mumbo Jumbo was an enjoyable enough book; there were definitely some humorous scenes, and strange happenings like in the Moses story to keep your attention.
The most useful thing I have learned (partly through frustration, but mainly through reading my panel presentation article by Roxanne Harde) to keep in mind while reading Mumbo Jumbo is to not take Reed's words too literally, but also don't take everything at face value. If you take things too literally, then it would be very easy to get offended by the book. on the other hand, if you aren't looking into the story for a deeper meaning/ allusion at all then you can miss a lot of what Reed's saying.
I can't exactly say I like Mumbo Jumbo. It's not really my favorite style of writing with all the randomness and bending of well known stories, but I got through it. 

LAW(L)D

I'm beginning to like reading Mumbo Jumbo more and more. I think I am learning to appreciate Reed's writing style and I am understanding his sense of humor more. Reed clearly enjoyed himself while writing Mumbo Jumbo. I especially saw this come to light in the scene in chapter 45  involving Hinckle von Vampton, W.W., and W.W.'s dad. The ridiculousness of the entire scenario is just unbelievable. We have Hinckle going to desperate measures to turn W.W. into the ideal Android by lightening his skin with creme because he is "too dark", only to have a burly, black man barge in and yell, arguably quite stereotypically, things like "Lawd we axes you to pray over this boy......mmmmmmm". He then proceeds to punch Hinckle out cold and rough up Gould, then stuff his son in a cotton sack and take him back to Re-mote, Mississippi.

Looking past the hilarity and general chaos surrounding this scene for a moment, a point is made by W.W.'s father showing up in relation to the story. W.W.'s father is portrayed as a very rough character, yet he realizes that the Benign Monster magazine is not respectable and he doesn't want his son to write for it and be associated with it. In this way, the illusion that Hinckle has about how his magazine will undermine the Jes Grew movement is shattered in the reader's eyes since, along with Nathan Brown's rejection of the magazine earlier in the novel,  none of the black people take the magazine seriously.

When W.W.'s father is asked by one of the deacons with him how he's going to justify beating Hinckle and Gould, he simply replies "John 2:14"which is a bible verse. I looked  it up and it says "In the temple courts he found them selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there." (ESV translation). This doesn't really say much by itself, but in verse 15 it talks about how Jesus overturns the money-changer tables and takes out a whip and drives out the people doing business in the temple. I took this to mean in relation to the rest of the story that Hinckle and the Benign Monster were tarnishing the reputation of the black community by trying to pass off their garbage magazine as a black magazine, just as the money-lenders and merchants in the temple were tarnishing the holiness of the temple by turning it into a marketplace. WWJD? Punch Hinckle in the face.

What Just Happened...

My initial reaction to reading the first nine chapters of Mumbo Jumbo was the realization that I had processed none of it and had no idea what was going on. My next thought was "oh shit, I have to give a panel presentation on this." Reed is so elusive with what he's talking about like how he refers to Jes Grew as an epidemic and then alludes to music. Maybe my vocabulary isn't advanced enough to comprehend what he's saying. I had tried to start reading Mumbo Jumbo  in the locker room before basketball, but was getting nowhere, so I gave up and decided to read it later at home. I wasn't sure what Jes Grew was for at least four chapters. I got a pretty good idea of what Jes Grew was eventually, but it was frustrating not getting what  was going on for so long. Some sort of hook to get the reader interested is important, but this was ridiculous. Compounding my frustrations was the fact that Reed kept using numerals instead of spelling the word out, and for no purpose. If he was trying to make a subtle point or the numerals somehow related to the title or the plot that would be one thing, but I just found it annoying.
When we talked about the book in class and read through the first chapter and I heard what other people had to say about the book, my frustrations were lessened and I went from "I hate this book" to "I guess it's not so bad." Hopefully, the plot will become more clear as the book goes on and I will to hate the book less and less.

Tateh and Capitalism

Tateh's story in a lot of ways is the perfect picture of the American Dream (ignoring the fact that he's not technically American). Tateh starts out in extreme poverty and through his own creative genius and skill he is able to make a fortune and pull himself out of the slums life. He is able to make the capitalist system work for him whereas before he was toiling under it and rebelling against it., though I wouldn't call him a capitalist. Despite Tateh's newly acclaimed affluence, I don't believe he has changed his opinions. Tateh merely realized that though the socialist ideals were valuable and something he still believed in, he realized that they were simply that: ideals. He did the sensible and responsible thing, considering he had a young daughter to support and protect, and left the socialist strike. It wasn't as though Tateh denounced socialism and made a conscious decision to become a capitalist, he just left to find something else that would make his life better since the socialist movement hadn't gotten him anything thus far. I feel as though Tateh would treat people working under him well and give them adequate pay since he was once in their position, and that's what really separates him from actual capitalists. (I do think it's an interesting note that its not until Tateh leaves the socialist movement for good that he makes it big with his art; it makes me wonder if Doctorow sees any value in socialism or movements of the sort).

Sarah

I've been very intrigued with the character Sarah. When we first met her, she was basically only a tool for Mother for her own selfish gains, mainly the child; Mother didn't pay much attention to her. Only when Coalhouse Walker comes around  and she realizes Sarah will have to be actively apart of the relationship if this romance is going to happen does she start to interact with her more. As far as her role in the novel, she only really serves as the vehicle for Coalhouse to enter the story. I didn't really think much at first of Doctorow skimming over Sarah so quickly and shoving her in an attic. However, after reading how she left the house and tried to talk to the Vice President to plead on Coalhouse's behalf  then ends up getting killed, I was kind of surprised and a little disappointed because that meant that we wouldn't get to learn more about her since Doctorow killed her off so soon.

I mean if you think about it, she's much more interesting than many of the characters such as Younger Brother, and Doctorow devotes a lot of time talking about him. Sarah gets pregnant by a well-to-do pianist who is much older than she is (and we don't even know if it was consensual or not) then bites the cord and tries to bury the child, and is caught. That's some crazy shit. And we have no idea why she did any of it, or the complications of her and Coalhouse's relationship. I was also surprised that no one in the family even really tried to learn about Sarah. She's living in their house, you'd think they'd ask her where she came from or something, if nothing more than for peace of mind to know that they didn't just let some crazy delinquent into their house. Even Mother, who strikes me as a busybody, doesn't try to get the scoop even though she's the one who invited them in in the first place. It seems to me like there was a really interesting story right there, but Doctorow kind of buries it under everything else that's happening, and we don't get to hear any of it.