Book of a lifetime: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

From The Independent archive: Elanor Dymott is shown the horrors of the Dresden firebombing by a book that travels back and forth through time, through trauma and laughter, into something quite unexpected

So it goes: Kurt Vonnegut photographed in 1965 by Bernard Gotfryd (Public domain)

According to Ford Madox Ford, a novelist wishing to “get a man in” must capture the gradual making of an acquaintance which happens in real life: a strong impression at the outset, followed by a working backwards and forwards over his past. A first meeting with a gentleman in one’s golf club, Ford notes, is the start of a process which cannot accurately be reflected by working a life chronologically.

For years, I had a jumbled and imprecise awareness of the author of Slaughterhouse-Five. My golf club meeting with Vonnegut came in the form of a newspaper article. By graphs mapped onto a horizontal “Beginning – Entropy” axis and a vertical “Good Fortune – I’ll Fortune” one, he demonstrated classic storylines. Hamlet, he said, when mapped in such a way, is no apparent masterpiece. What makes it recognisable as one, he explained, is the fact that its author tells us the truth.

The timing of my next encounter, Slaughterhouse-Five, was accidental. The novel’s cover turned outwards in a bookshop, a flash of yellow light. I knew it was about the Dresden firebombing. I’d a notion there would be a bunker, and destruction. That the story might read like many stories of war. I was, in short, completely unprepared.