Slaughterhouse-Five

Captured by Germans after World War II's Battle of the Bulge, soldier Kurt Vonnegut and other prisoners were taken to Dresden. There, they were confined in a cement enclosure used for butchering livestock called Slaughterhouse-Five. Several weeks later, American and British planes firebombed Dresden, killing 135, 000 civilians and leveling the city. By taking cover in an underground meat locker, the prisoners survived. Vonnegut spent two decades coming to grips with the experience, producing this classic American novel as his ultimate response to the ordeal. Introduced by esteemed scholar Harold Bloom, this new collection of full-length critical essays discusses Vonnegut's searing vision of the atrocities of war.

Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations, a series of more than 100 volumes, presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels, and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and The Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Each volume opens with an introductory essay and editor's note by Harold Bloom and includes a bibliography, a chronology of the writer's life and works, and notes on the contributors. Taken together, Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations provides a comprehensive critical guide to the most vital and influential works of the Western literary tradition.

Unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's shattered survivor of the Dresden bombing, relives his life over and over again under the gaze of aliens; he comes at last to some understanding of the human comedy. The basis of George Roy's great 1972 film and perhaps the signature student's novel in the 1960's embracing protest and the absurdity of war.

Publishers Weekly

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time." So begins Vonnegut's absurdist 1969 classic. Hawke rises to the occasion of performing this sliced-and-diced narrative, which is part sci-fi and partially based on Vonnegut's experience as a American prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the firebombing of 1945 that killed thousands of civilians. Billy travels in time and space, stopping here and there throughout his life, including his long visit to the planet Tralfamador, where he is mated with a porn star. Hawke adopts a confidential, whisper-like tone for his reading. Listening to him is like listening to someone tell you a story in the back of a bus-the perfect pitch for this book. After the novel ends, Vonnegut himself speaks for a short while about his survival of the Dresden firestorm and describes and names the man who inspired this story. Tacked on to the very end of this audio smorgasbord is music, a dance single that uses a vintage recording of Vonnegut reading from the book. Though Hawke's reading is excellent, one cannot help but wish Vonnegut himself had read the entire text. (Nov. 2003) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

One of our most popular, respected, and controversial literary critics, Yale University professor Harold Bloom s books about, variously, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the classic literature are as erudite as they are accessible.