Dresden 1945 or Baghdad 2007 ... seems all the same to me.

Dresden, February 1945
Well, I guess I finally really read Slaughterhouse Five this time. I didn't put it down until well after midnight last night and it was like nothing I ever have ever read ... including Slaughterhouse Five the first time--more than twenty years ago. As you know--or maybe don't--I am into one of those read-everything-he-ever-wrote stages of my life (again), but this time it's Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It wasn't only about one of the many 20th Century apocalyptic stories of mayhem (the fire-bombing of Dresden by our unknowing pilots towards the end of WWII); it was also a crazy/not-so-crazy autobiographical sketch of KV himself.

I've never been there, never done that ... yet I was more or less there (Vietnam for one and the first Gulf War for another) and surely more or less done that. Reading the book again--this time devouring it--was like experiencing a dream that never ends.

If you haven't read the book, do so! You will become Billy Pilgrim. It ain't pretty, but, as KV would say it, "hello, farewell, hello, farewell ..."

I have always believed that he was the very best writer of my time; now I believe it ... again.


Baghdad, April 2007 ... and so it goes ...