Going to War

The Children's Crusade, an alternative title for Slaughterhouse-Five, suggests that the people who fought in World War II were more babies than men. That they were innocent children not heroic warriors.

In chapter one, the "author" or character of the author, has a conversation with Mary O'Hare about how he should portray those who fought. Mary tells him:

"You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And War will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." (18)

 Mary is thinking about who fights war, who leaves home and puts their life on the line. And I think that is an important question Vonnegut is trying to raise about all wars.

I think it is likely that he is thinking about the Vietnam War in his mind, because it was going on as he wrote the novel. The Vietnam War was fought by generally younger men than those who fought in WWII. People disagree about the average age of a Vietnam soldier, but it appears to be somewhere between 19-22.

One of the things that many interviewees in our counterculture oral history project mentioned is that they didn't know anything other than John Wayne. It was an accepted idea that if America was in a war, the young men went and served just like their fathers had in WWII. Or it was until the anti-Vietnam movement took off.

One of the interviewees, Joseph Miller, who served during the war, said:

We didn’t know anything about war, really, it was all movies, it was all John Wayne. Nobody really bled, nobody really got hurt.

 I think perhaps this is what Vonnegut is trying to do with his novel. He wants to put out a war novel that isn't about John Wayne, that doesn't paint pictures of heroism and glory without showing the real cost and pain of war.

I really agree with what he is trying to do. My friend's brother and his best friend have both joined the National Guard, and I hear they are planning to go active in the army (meaning they could be sent overseas) when they graduate from college. They want to make a career in the military. My cousin is also going to school to be a pilot in the air force. I worry about them because I'm not sure if they know what war is like, that they are as likely to come back in a casket or with PTSD than as a hero whose name will be in the history books. I think they may be more like children, more like Billy Pilgrim, than they see themselves as.

So maybe writing an anti-war novel is kind of like writing an anti-glacier novel. But at least Vonnegut is trying to show young people the other side of the movies.

 

Postmodernist Parallels

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who kept seeing parallel topics and ideas in the postmodernist books we've read this semester - Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo and now the beginning of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Let me just start a basic list of parallels ideas/topics I've seen in at least two novels so far:

• Houdini (Rag +MJ)
• Slumming (Evelyn and Thor Wintergreen (MJ 89))
• Ragtime music (Rag+MJ 89)
• Minstrelsy (Rag+MJ 136)
• The idea of a Negro experience (Rag+MJ 117)
• Ford Motor Car Company (Rag+SF 23)

Obviously a lot of these parallels come from the fact that Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo were written about the same time period so major events and historical people are the same in both books. But I wonder if there is some reflection of the time that the books were written in the authors' choice of events and characters.

For example, let's look at the issue of the Ford Motor Car Company and Henry Ford which are mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five and carefully examined in Ragtime. Ford is an epitome of the hard-work-gets-you-somewhere philosophy and his cars are a prime example of American consumerism in the 20th century. Fast forward to the 1960s and 70s, when our postmodernist novels were written, and there is a growing movement that rejects both of those philosophies. Young people are just chilling, hanging out, listening to music. They may not have a career goal in mind, in fact "career goals" sound pretty ludicrous next to images of hippies and the youth of the counterculture. These young people also rejected consumerism to some degree, moving to communes or living off the land. If you watch a couple counterculture movies in World since 1945, you may also think they all ditched the general rules of personal hygiene!

So maybe one reason that Ford comes up in these postmodernist novels is that he and his car company stand in such stark contrast to some of the things that are going on as the novels are being written. The contrast helps the authors distinguish the 1910s and 1920s from the time of writing. Just as when a modern reader notices the strangeness of certain values in a historical novel about puritans, the 1970s reader (and others since then) would feel a certain distance from the mindset and values of the 1910s and 1920s as encapsulated in Henry Ford.

I could go on about some of the other parallels, like how the Negro experience concept is very reflective of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but I hope the explanation of Ford gives you the idea. Plus, I know there are more parallels that I marked or noticed but can't find now that I am trying to write about them. If you notice any, let me know!

New Grammatical Thinking

Semicolons have always been my grammatical weakness. When I was younger, I knew that I didn't know how to use a semicolon so I just didn't use it. But I thought I knew when to use commas.

Because I thought there was a RIGHT way to use commas. You know, like the way the grammar book tells you.

Obviously, Ishmael Reed needs to go back to elementary school grammar class or else there is a totally different way of looking at the rules and conventions of writing that I never learned. Here is one of his "sentences."

The dazzling parodying punning mischievous pre-Joycean style-play of your Cakewalking your Calinda your Minstrelsy give-and-take of the ultra absurd. (152)

Pardon me, the humble unpublished student, but if I ever wrote that in a paper I would be murdered by my English teachers.

"Use commas!" they would say. "You need a clear subject and a verb!"

"Clarify, clarify, clarify."

But here I am, reading this sentence in a book in an English class and it isn't being used as an example of poor grammar. Instead it is praised as an example of cleverly stepping outside the bounds of grammatical and structural conventions to question why they exist in the first place.

Welcome to the world of postmodernist writing where you can no longer call bad grammar, "Bad grammar." No, you have to appreciate the courage it takes to break the mold and believe that there is no absolute right or wrong even in grammar.

Maybe it is a good thing, a way of bringing new thoughts into the world. But whatever it is, that sentence still doesn't make a lot of sense. What is a "give-and-take of the ultra absurd"?

Traveling Art Detention Centers

During today's assembly did anyone else think about our discussion about Centers of Art Detention (a.k.a. museums) from this morning?

Not that Uni Gym is like a museum, but the idea that western civilization has a way of removing people and artifacts from their native environment to "showcase" and "educate" people about the rest of the world, or rather, to devalue and weaken the original culture.

When I think about the assembly, I think it is kind of sad. Our western culture has swept away so much of what culture was here before Europeans arrived that now people from those original cultures have to perform their culture in front of other people for "entertainment."

For example, over the summer I took a trip to South Dakota. We visited a reservation on our way, and we learned from our leaders, and from what our eyes saw, about the huge problems that the people living there faced. We learned about unemployment, the way our government treats the people, the living conditions, the schools, and the battles they have fought for rights we take for granted. Going to visit their world, to inhabit their world for a few hours, challenged my ideas and my understanding of their culture.

The assembly, on the other hand, taught me very little about Gene's world and may have increased some of my stereotypes. I said "awesome" a few times, I learned that I am "awesome," that I am a "storyteller," and that I should follow my heart. I watched Gene do a dance and play some music that in Uni Gym seemed ridiculous. Were I walking with him in Alaska, watching him do those same acts in the environment in which they have true beauty and meaning, I think I would have found it moving and beautiful. As it was, I had to stop myself from seeing him as a fulfillment of many stereotypes I have about Indians.

Isn't this what Reed implies by using "Centers of Art Detention"? That museums remove art from a context in which they have true beauty and significance and put them in places where school children can point at them and say, "that is so weird"? That western civilization must keep other cultures safe from their own artifacts and rituals?

A disconcerting idea, but it kind of explains the guilty feeling I get when checking out exhibits on Africa in a museum. Do you get it too? The kind of feeling like something just isn't quite right about you standing on that marble floor starring at an Egyptian mummy? Do you get it when you look at artifacts in museums about your own culture? Because I don't. I don't feel wrong when I stare at a diorama in the Abraham Lincoln Museum. Is it because museums about my own culture are just celebrations and educational exhibits, while exhibits about other cultures are designed to diminish those ways of life in my eyes?

If you weren't in 2nd hour for this discussion, you might check out page 15 in Mumbo Jumbo. I think it might make you question what was really going on during today's Uni Period.

Too much of a good thing

You know how when you are a little too enthusiastic about putting sprinkles on sugar cookies, your mother usually says something like, "Remember, there can be too much of a good thing"?

That's what I feel like telling Ishmael Reed.

It isn't that I don't like his book, because I think I do. I mean, it is very weird different and unusual (notice the Reed style lack of commas) but I'm finding it creative and engaging as well.

It's just all his unexplained allusions. There are just WAY too many.

Tonight alone I have three full notebook pages of things I looked up, and I didn't write paragraphs about each one! I just wrote something like, "Black Herman=stage magician (Benjamin Rucker). Sold patent medicine early. Harlem=home base. Buried alive a lot."I googled 32 people phases songs places and religions. And I still feel like I'm missing stuff.

It's like Reed is just POURING allusions out of his mind onto the page instead of sprinkling them lightly around to add hints of extra sweetness. I'm a little overwhelmed, 42 pages in and I already have over six pages of reference information, information that is essential to understanding his meaning.

Maybe it is just me, but I feel like Reed needs a little help remember the common adage about too much of a good thing!