Hello and welcome to the Books and Writing Podcast, the podcast where we talk about everything from crafting books to reading them. I'm your host, Austin Valenzuela, a fantasy and science fiction writer based out of Tampa, I'm the author of the Dragon Speak series, a YA fantasy series about a young boy who attends a church where pastors sacrifice dragons and steal their magic. If you enjoy this podcast, I think you'll love my work. You can find it at
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All right, so today I came across a headline from CBS News that talked a little bit about book banning and specifically books being banned from Florida school libraries. I don't know exactly which grade or what level these books are being banned from. So I don't know if it's middle school.
or high school, but there are some really, really good books here that are being banned that I feel like just should not ever be banned from anywhere if you're old enough to read them. So I feel like the main debate here is between whether or not schools should be the people choosing which books your child reads or
whether it should be up to the parent. So if the parent doesn't want the child to read something like Kervonigit, which is what we're going to be talking about today, then that child probably won't read it because the parent will be hopefully watching over them and keep them from reading that sort of book if they don't want it. But in my opinion, I think it should definitely be up to the parent.
because as we're seeing now these very important books, we're talking about Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut are being banned when they're some of the most kind of philosophical, I guess you can call it like anti-war, just one of the books that you that will have many, many lessons to teach if you just sit down and read it.
better lessons than probably most teachers will be able to teach if you just sit down and spend time with this amazing book that this guy wrote. something like a Kervonagut for example has like war in it. It has really crazy descriptions of things that this guy has seen during his time at war.
His writing, although it's fiction a lot of times, has been called a way for him to peer into his own soul. So a lot of people feel like when they read more Kervoniget they kind of just start to understand his view on the world. And that's pretty cool. He's such a unique writer that that's kind of something that not a lot of writers do. So he definitely wrote from his soul. He wrote
of what he thought was true and he used themes that were hard to deal with in a way that's kind of comical. So in Slaughterhouse 5, for example, it's a book about a guy who is basically... they say at the very beginning of the book he's lost in time or he's unstuck in time and
What that means is that he kind of travels back and forth from his past to the future. It's like a funny kind of juxtaposition because he goes from the crazy and humane events of World War II and jumps all the way to some weird alien civilization that abducted him.
and understands time on a level that humans just don't get. A lot of people probably don't get this book if they don't just outright read it. So the point I was trying to make is that when you hear Slaughterhouse-Five, it sounds insane. Who would name their book Slaughterhouse-Five? What is that even about? You know what? I don't even want to know what it's about because it's...
obviously something I don't want my child to read. They should not expose themselves to something like this, blah, So a lot of people probably write it off right away. And if you kind of get caught up in this culture of writing books off without taking the time to figure out what they're actually about, then it's very easy to write so many
so many things away. For example, Game of Thrones is another book on this list. I don't necessarily think a high schooler should be reading Game of Thrones, but then again, my parents didn't let me read or my parents didn't let me play Grand Theft Auto, but I found a way around it and I played it with my friends. So these kids really want to read it. They probably will find a way around it.
It's best if we educate them about the book and maybe the things that they're going to confront while reading. But even better, I think that if you can have a conversation about this book and the themes in it and stuff, you can kind of walk this person through it and help them understand why certain things are like looked down upon and stuff like that. Another book.
or author, would say, Toni Morrison, another author, John Green. But I really wanted to focus today on Slaughterhouse Five because when I first read that book, I think it was like two years ago.
I remember telling my wife that it was one of my favorite books I've ever read because it's just so well written. The topics that he's covering is done in a way where you don't really have to work too hard to understand what he's saying, but what he's saying is extremely profound. But he's kind of taking the Hemingway approach to where he
doesn't use super flowery language and you don't really have to dig in to figure out what's going on. It's a high concept sci-fi book but it's done in a way that is accessible to maybe a high schooler and that's why I think it's probably the perfect book to read in high school in addition to a few other reasons. Another reason is because it teaches you so much about World War II and I said it's anti-war but it's
It's of obvious that this book is anti-war, there's so much on top of it. But just from the start you see the atrocities that took place during World War II. it shows you this in a perspective that makes you think that war is something that should never happen, something that is brutal and we should never ever bring back and always try to avoid at all costs.
And I believe that's the right outlook to have about war. And I don't think I've ever seen it put in a better, more concise way than it is in Slaughterhouse 5. So I'm gonna read just the Wikipedia plot here and go into why I personally thought this book was amazing.
And so here's how the plot begins. The novel's first chapter begins with, this happened, more or less. This introduction implies an unreliable narrator tells the story. Vonnegut utilizes a nonlinear, non-chronological description of events to reflect Billy Pilgrim's psychological state. Events become clear through flashbacks and descriptions of time travel experiences. In the first chapter, the narrator describes his writing of the book
his experiences as a University of Chicago anthropology student and a Chicago City News Bureau correspondent, his research on the Children's Crusade and the history of Dresden, and his visit to Cold War-era Europe with his wartime friend Bernard V. O'Hare. In the second chapter, Vonnegut introduces Billy Pilgrim, an American man from the fictional town of Ilium, New York. Billy believes that an extraterrestrial species from the planet
Charalphamador held him captive in an alien zoo and that he has experienced time travel Okay, so it's super as I said Comical kind of weird whimsical and it works so well for the story because in the first chapter He begins by saying all this happened more or less you already know that this is he's setting it up just with that short little sentence about he's setting it up for
something that is going to be kind of ludicrous, but something that we still kind of want to pay attention to because he right after that backs it all up with his experiences as an anthropology student, his research, and all this. I believe he says something about his writing in there too. And if you didn't know, Vonnegut was actually a member of a very, very esteemed writing
kind of program in Iowa that goes on every year. And so this is just a great, perfect example of Vonnegut and how he's going to eventually go into the rest of the story kind of speculating using this interesting, interesting character named Billy Pilgrim who claims that an alien species extraterrestrial
is well first off exists and had held him captive in an alien zoo so we don't even need to believe billy pilgrim for this entire story all this happened more or less we just need to kind of maybe think about well if it did happen what are the ramifications continuing on as a chaplain's assistant in the united states army during world war two
Billy is an ill-trained, disoriented, and fatalistic American soldier who discovers that he does not like war and refuses to fight. He is transferred from a base in South Carolina to the front line in Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge. He narrowly escapes death as the result of a string of events. He also meets Roland Weary, a patriot, warmonger, and sadistic bully who derides Billard's cowardice. The two of them are captured in 1944 by the Germans who confiscate
all of Wary's belongings and force him to wear wooden clogs that cut painfully into his feet. The resulting wounds become gangrenous, which eventually kills him. This is what I'm talking about and the harsh realities of World War II being shown in this story. He meets a guy with who probably represents a certain perspective of America at that time. He's a patriot, a warmonger, and kind of a bully, someone who gets after Billy for
wanting to make peace, not even understanding why he's here in this war. While Wary is dying in a railcar full of prisoners, he convinces a fellow soldier, Paul Lazaro, that Billy is to blame for his death. Lazaro vows to avenge Wary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is the sweetest thing in life. That's what Lazaro says. So Lazaro obviously represents a horrible perspective that...
Revenge is the number one thing that we should be chasing. And surprisingly, Lazaro is one of the characters that remains around most of the story. So I guess it, in a way, is pretty motivating. But, wary on their way to a camp, not Auschwitz, but a camp much like it, they are riding in a train. He describes the horrible realities of that train just
The fact that they're packed together, he couldn't move, no one would let Billy sit down and he's too scared to even ask for something like that. Lazaro is another person who's losing his mind, claiming to avenge Wary because he was just told by some literally random person that Billy is the one who killed him. So, at this exact time, Billy becomes unstuck in time. Billy travels through time to moments from his past and future.
The novel describes the transportation of Billy and the other prisoners into Germany. The German soldiers held their prisoners in the German city of Dresden. The prisoners had to work in contract labor. These events occurred in 1945. Contract labor, basically forced labor. Quote-unquote, they call it contract labor. The Germans detained Billy and his fellow prisoners in an empty slaughterhouse called Schlachthoff. I'm going to absolutely butcher this. Schlachthoff.
or Slaughterhouse 5. During the Allied bombing of Dresden, German guards hid their captives in the partially underground setting of the slaughterhouse. This protected those captives from complete annihilation. As a result, are among the few survivors of the firestorm that raged in the city between February 13 and 15, 1945. After VE Day in May 1945, Billy was transferred to the United States and received an honorable discharge in July 1945.
Billy is hospitalized with symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and placed under psychiatric care at a Veterans Affairs Hospital in Lake Placid. During Billy's at the hospital, Elliot Rosewater introduces him to the work of an obscure science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. Kilgore Trout comes up in multiple Kervonigat stories. A lot of his characters are intertwined. Kilgore Trout's funny and
Funny enough, he says in the book, up with amazing plots, but just cannot execute it. And Billy likes reading Kilgore Trout because of just the crazy plots that he kind of comes up with. He feels like it's someone who kind of understands him. But they're poorly executed and I guess Billy doesn't really care about that. I think Kervonigit, in a way, from a writer's perspective, is kind of...
representing himself as Kilgore Trout, someone who is trying to pull off these crazy plots and is struggling to do it. But, Kervonagat, on the other hand, is amazing at doing that. After his release, Billy marries Valencia Merble, whose father owns the Ilium School of Optometry that Billy later attends. Billy becomes a successful and wealthy optometrist. In 1947, Billy and Valencia conceive their first child, Robert
on their honeymoon in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Two years later, their second child, Barbara, was born. On Barbara's wedding night, Billy is abducted by a flying saucer and taken to a planet many light years away from Earth, called Tralfamador. The Tralfamadorians have the power to see in four dimensions. They simultaneously observe all points in the space-time continuum. They universally adopt a fatalistic worldview. Death means nothing to them, and their typical response to hearing about death is,
Quote-unquote so it goes That's a common theme throughout the story quote-unquote so it goes and it means a million different things in the context of what it's what it of how it is used but Basically kind of just it is what it is. So it goes these beings seen four dimensions Like I said earlier, they have a different view on time and they're abducting Billy to kind of unstuck him. So Billy
is unfortunately having an experience of perceiving four dimensions, observing all points in the space-time continuum, and jumping back and forth in a way that he doesn't control. So that would obviously be terrifying, annoying, and maybe fatalistic, but I don't think that Billy necessarily
represents that perspective. The Trafamadorians do. They tell them all the time, so it goes, so it goes. It's all like a meditation on death as well. So it goes. All of the horrible realities of World War II, so it goes. And Billy can't do anything about it because it is what it is. The Trafamadorians transport Billy to Trafamador and place him inside a transparent geodesic dome exhibit in a zoo.
The inside resembles a house on planet Earth. The Trafamadorians later abduct a pornographic film star named Montana Wildhack, who had disappeared on Earth and supposedly drowned in San Pedro Bay. The Trafamadorians intend to have her mate with Billy. Montana and Billy fall in love and have a child together. Billy is instantly sent back to Earth in a time warp to relive past or future moments of his life. Again, he's bouncing back and forth.
In 1968, and a co-pilot are the only survivors of a plane crash in Vermont. While driving to visit Billy in the hospital, Valencia crashes her car and dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. So it goes. Billy shares a hospital room with Bertram Rumford, a Harvard University history professor researching an official war history of the USAAF in World War II.
The USAAF is the United States Army Air Force. discuss the bombing of Dresden, which the professor initially refuses to believe Billy witnessed. Despite the significant loss of civilian life and the destruction of Dresden, they both regard the bombing as a justifiable act. So, it's something that Billy, despite being at the war, a prisoner of the war, literally hiding in Slaughterhouse 5, feeling the
Shaking ground and Surroundings as the entire city is being bombed. He saw it come going in it's described as a beautiful city a kind of cosmopolitan Mecca of the of Germany and yet he walks in and Experiences all this then leaves and just sees rubble pretty much and he's tasked to do things within the rubble that I'm sure we'll get to
But why was this justified? Why is the destruction of Dresden all justified and why would Billy agree to it? Because what he feels, what has happened and what he had witnessed in war is worth eliminating despite all of the significant loss and destruction. Billy's daughter takes him home to Ilium. He escapes and flees to New York City.
In Times Square he visits a pornographic bookstore where he discovers books written by Kilgore Trout and reads them. He discovers a science fiction novel titled The Big Board at the bookstore. The novel is about a couple abducted by extraterrestrials. The aliens trick the abductees into thinking they are managing investments on Earth, which excites the humans and, in turn, sparks interest in the observers. He also finds some magazine covers that mention Montana Wildhack's disappearance.
While Billy surveys the bookstore, one of Montana's pornographic films plays in the background. Later in the evening, when he discusses his time travels to Tralfamador on a radio talk show, he is ejected from the studio. He returns to his hotel room, falls asleep, and time travels back to 1945 in Dresden. Okay, so I'm thinking, why would I not want a high schooler to read this? Well, it's mentioning, one, a lot of
pornographic like I guess he goes to the pornographic store walks inside and it mentions a pornographic star. If you can't talk about this in high school you are not at the level of maturity that you should be. This should be discussed in class the fact that pornography is like a
topic that's avoided is ridiculous because you're basically just burying it under the rug and not wanting to see it even though it's something that is definitely there. And discussing this, discussing Montana Wildhack's disappearance, why they would bring a pornographic star to Billy and the fact that he still falls in love with her are all discussion points. It's not a reason to ban a book. It doesn't make any sense.
Billy and his fellow prisoners are tasked with locating and burying the dead. After a Maori New Zealand soldier working with Billy dies of dry heaves, the Germans begin cremating the bodies en masse with flamethrowers.
dies of dry heaves. So I feel like this is something that people need to understand whether you've read this book when you were 18 or whether you're reading it now, however old you are. Billy dies of dry heaves and or a soldier working with Billy dies of dry heaves and that is something that happened. It's insane. It's horrible and it's one of the harsh realities of war. So
Cremating the bodies en masse with flamethrowers is what the Germans did. German soldiers execute Billy's friend, Edgar Derby, for stealing a teapot. This Edgar Derby guy is someone you like. Someone who is like a friend in the book. Meanwhile, Lozaro is still alive. Eventually, all of the German soldiers leave to fight on the eastern front, leaving Billy and the other prisoners alone with tweeting birds.
as the war ends. They literally leave him in this bombed city of Dresden amongst the rebel without anywhere to go and nothing to eat. Through non-chronological storytelling, other parts of Billy's life are told throughout the book. After Billy is evicted from the radio studio, Barbara treats Billy as a child and often monitors him. Robert, I mean yeah, imagine someone telling you this after they've come back from war that they're
unstuck in time in that they are traveling back and forth between an alien planet where they are being kept with some porn star and are They literally met an alien species aren't able to go back and forth or tell anybody Like how to get there where they're at the name is literally Tralfamador the most ridiculous stupid name ever for an alien species
After Billy is evicted from the radio studio, Barbara treats Billy as a child and often monitors him. Robert becomes starkly anti-communist and lifts as a green beret and fights in the Vietnam War. Billy is eventually killed in 1976, at which point the United States has been partitioned into 20 separate countries and attacked by China with thermonuclear weapons. gives a speech in a baseball stadium in Chicago in which he predicts his own death and proclaims that, if you think death is a terrible thing,
then you have not understood a word I've Billy soon after is shot with a laser gun by an assassin commissioned by the elderly Lazaro so it all comes back around all comes back to Lazaro why is Lazaro the type of person who should kill Billy why is revenge kind of the thing that ends it all these are all questions that should be asked in the English class while you're going over this book
If you think of death as a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said is the last sentence Billy said. Why is that true? Because this whole book is about not being able to kind of change your fate in time. Whether it's true or not is not necessarily up to you. It's kind of a meditation on free will. Is it?
Is it something that exists or not? Do we have control or are we just jumping back and forth like the Trafamadorians do? And are we just kind of stuck in time in a way? The Trafamadorians don't believe they can change anything. He literally asks why why not change things and they say because that's such a kind of three-dimensional way of viewing the world. So
Lazaro is the one who commissioned an assassin to kill him with a laser gun. China bombed the US with thermonuclear weapons and the US is now 20 separate countries. So it's kind of a speculative ending to the story, but I think the fact that Lazaro killed him is very interesting.
kind of thing from his past that he is unable and unwilling and probably didn't even think about like changing comes back and finally finishes it because of nothing that he even did because of a lie that someone else told and Billy has no control over this yet again Billy is just along for the ride so why would that not be
A story that profound, why would that not be taught in schools? You could literally go over that for an entire quarter or semester or whatever they have. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And the only thing that I can come up with is that they've never read the book.
So to finish up, I found a really good reddit page talking about Slaughterhouse5. The person who posed the question here, this is in the kind of books thread r slash books, the person who posed the question said, I feel like Slaughterhouse5 is a masterpiece, but I don't think I can concisely explain why I think it's so.
Which is ironic, since there's nothing particularly elaborate about the prose. No lavish description required. So it goes, hits just as hard the hundredth time you read it. I can't even really explain what the book's purpose is, besides demonstrate how absurd it is to think any of us know the purpose of anything. Calling it an anti-war novel just doesn't do it justice. Like, of course it is. But it also just feels like one big cosmic shrug. I guess most of Vonnegut's books feel that way.
But I love Slaughterhouse-Five for the most of it, or the most for it, maybe because it celebrates humanity just as much as it condemns it." And that's a really great way to put it, but there even some better replies here. Pope underscore Asimov underscore three said, he's a different writer, and I know people hold Slaughterhouse-Five above the rest of his works, but I feel to fully understand it and him, you need to read more.
Almost all of his novels connect via shared characters and each one written adds more to who he was as a man. Until you read Timequake, that one is a novel and his life summary bottled into one book. Both depressing and optimistic. Vonnegut, again I don't know how he strikes this balance, this healthy balance of the Trafamadorian perspective that nothing matters and optimism. Like Billy.
who managed to live a pretty good life despite his insanity, even went on to speak and spread positive messages. But he's a genius at doing that and that's why he's such a good writer. Vonnegut is an enigma and in the end you'll pull out of his stories what you will based on your life and perspective. So if you've never read it, what you're gonna pull out of the story is that this is a book with a crazy name and I don't want my kids reading this. Even though you're hurting your kids so much by
not even, but I guess by not having an open mind to just go and examine the books on your own. And it's summed up quite well in the quote from the movie Back to School when the English professor tells Rodney Dangerfield, whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut, not knowing that it was Vonnegut himself who wrote that report. That's good when you kind of consider the character that he has that writes
Horrible books, but with great plots, Killgore Trout. That's kind of funny because I think Vonnegut, I guess, didn't necessarily like what he wrote all the time, or maybe sometimes. I think that's common for all writers. You struggle to really say what you're trying to say and it just never really feels perfect. I think that's him kind of thinking about that, but...
One last comment here from NoPrompt4648.
It just doesn't make sense to me that you wouldn't teach this in a high school class. makes no sense. It's perfect writing, perfect themes. Put it next to a history lesson about World War II. You just have no idea what you're doing if you ban this book. Once Upon a Lily Kiss said, the prose isn't lavish, but that doesn't mean it's not good.
He's good at prose the same way Hemingway was. He's a minimalist where simple words and sentences can sometimes have a very strong impact. This is why So It Goes is so famous and beloved. It's not like that's a fancy, thesaurus-baiting phrase, but in three simple words he captures perfectly one of the main themes and thesis of his novel. That we are all helpless to the constant death around us and that the individual is just a pawn for those that run nations and organize wars. It's definitely a concept.
and like a theme in it for sure. Another good example of this is All of This Happened. All of this like happened more or less that's hilarious and perfect at striking themes of the book. It's a deeply empathic novel that is sad but never nihilistic. It is full of love in a way that many writers never managed to capture even in happier novels.
I disagree with the other commenter that says you can't say why it's a masterpiece, obviously, as I just wrote two paragraphs about why it is and could keep going, and many other people have written many more paragraphs. Ultimately, it's a novel that exemplifies the ideal novel as portrayed by the Alien Guys, a collection of random and senseless scenes that come together to paint a beautiful picture only when taken together as a whole. Perfect. That was great. That was an amazing way to put it. It's like patching together a quilt.
and having something amazing when you're done. if you want that book banned, you're ridiculous, you have no idea what you're talking about, and maybe you should give it chance to read it. And yeah, thank you for listening. That is all.
Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to the Books and Writing Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want more stories, insights, or resources like this, you can check out my newsletter at valenswellesshorts.substack.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review or comment, and as always, follow me on social media for more updates and exclusive content. Until next time, happy reading, and please enjoy this quote from the great Kurt Vonnegut.
“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
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https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/florida-school-library-book-bans-list/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Host
00:48 The Debate on Book Banning
06:38 Exploring Slaughterhouse-Five
12:21 The Harsh Realities of War
18:28 The Tralfamadorian Perspective
24:40 The Profound Themes of Free Will
29:29 The Importance of Teaching Literature
33:02 The Beauty of Life and Its Challenges
33:02 Navigating Personal Growth and Transformation
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