Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a fiction novel about a protagonist named Billy Pilgrim, a novel which traces his life from his involvement in World War 2 up to his death. Although the ending of the novel actually occurs at the end of the war, after the German city of Dresden has been bombed, an event which Kurt Vonnegut himself actually witnessed. This is because Billy Pilgrim doesn't live a linear life, but instead travels to different parts of it as he becomes "unstuck" in time.

There are a few interesting things about this story:

- The author as a character in the plot. At the very beginning there is an autobiographical sequence from Kurt Vonnegut about a few events that actually happened which precede the story. After that, Kurt makes cameo appearances in Billy's story. There is a meld of fiction and non-fiction.

- The concept of the fourth dimension as seen by the Tralfamadorians. In the story, Billy gets taken to the planet Tralfamadore where he is kept in a zoo by the green plunger-like creatures named the Tralfamadorians. They see things in a four-dimensional way, which is described in the book. I like the fact the book brings out that kind of idea, where concepts like time and space are discussed, as to just being a story with only the way the main character sees things. A good theme at this point is the topic of 'free will', to quote:

"If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."

I personally think that Vonnegut writes things like that in order to bring out thoughts in the reader which try to get past subjectivity.

- The parts of time in Billy's life which constitute the plot are often connected by an object or theme that relates to another point in time. If you read the book you can try and spot them. It's as if Billy is brought to different points in his life through being reminded of them by something that is in the current period of time he is in.

The blurb of my copy of the book (the cover of it is the same as the picture here) says: "Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know." I think this story is quite a post-modern story, one coming out of the modernist era. That is as much as I can put my finger on, but as for how the blurb describes it, I can't really be sure. I can only imagine that Billy Pilgrim as a character is quite avoidant of dwelling on things, until the near the end of the story where he cries and seems to start having a breakdown. He finds out why when he jumps in time again, back to the aftermath of the Dresden bombing.
My opinion is that the novel has a good amount of content to offer. The style is written in a factual and explanatory tone, and the bits to think about come from the big, or varied, or unusual ideas in the story as opposed to hidden little nuances you get which run throughout the book or come up in what a character says. For example, when Kurt Vonnegut describes the end of the war, and the soldiers captured being traded between sides in a field. When I consider the reality of that situation it makes war seem far less serious and important than it should be for people. To think that people would KILL others for ideals they believed in is a concept that seems like a load of shit when you picture two sides, trading off prisoners to go home and live a normal life and that's the end. It makes it look more like an unnecessary game, or just a thing to do like a pastime, one that is devoid of any glory or righteousness or victory.

The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise

Hah, while looking for a picture to post this with on google images, I came across a few pictures of Russell Brand with the book in his hand, and the book even seemed to have page markers inside made from large pieces of paper in it. That could be loose pages though. I have the same old copy of the book, which is quite fragile.

Distractions aside, I find The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise by R.D. Laing a very important book. It is a book about many things, ultimately, as it comments on society and existence. There are lots of things I thought about that backed up the points being made in the book in general life, whereas Laing made them to do with psychiatry and schizophrenia, which is the authors field of expertise. And so the audience of this book would most likely be interested in psychiatry. Sometimes it is written loosely from an anthropological point of view too, so anyone studying anthropology should be interested in it.

If you're going to read it, I'm going to tell you that you should probably read it carefully.

Since I've got a 1970's copy of the book, which has a different blurb to the modern one going about now, I will transcribe the blurb of that edition for the readers of this blog:
" Is there anywhere such a thing as a normal man?

Modern society clamps a straitjacket of conformity on every child that's born. In the process man's potentialities are devastated and the terms 'sanity' and 'madness' become ambiguous. The schizophrenic may simply be someone who has been unable to suppress his normal instincts and conform to an abnormal society.

The whole question of 'normality' is raised in this new book by Dr. Laing, the author of The Divided Self. In the fog of psychological ambiguities, as he sees it, we cannot rely on the navigators, just because the theories of experts about alienation too often manifests the very faults they describe. The authors argument leads him to explore the psychological weapons of constriction, deprivation, splitting, and projection; and he does not hesitate to call on science, rhetoric, poetry, and polemic to support his points. If he leaves us with little more than the bitter taste of truth in this modern dilemma, at least he believes that 'as long as there are survivors, there is still hope.'

That's all I'm going to write about this. If anyone happens to read or have read the book and would like to talk about a certain point made in it or just discuss it in general I'd probably like that. It is my favourite book and it is a necessary one in my point of view.

I Am Legend

If you recognise this title, chances are you've watched the film I Am Legend rather than read the book. That's fine and all, and I would make a complete book-to-film commentary about it, but both the stories are actually very far removed from each other. Some details are the same, but they're too superficial. If I were forced to write a unifying blurb for both it would go:

'Robert Neville has alone survived an apocalypse where everyone else turns to monsters. He used to have a wife. He tries to find a cure at some points. By day it is okay to go out, but by night the monsters roam the world. Near the end he does meet a woman who changes the balance of the story, but the stories are so completely different and so are the women and I can't really elaborate more than that.'

The first notable thing about the book I Am Legend is that back in 1954, it encouraged the idea of "zombie apocalypse" to arise as a genre, even though the book uses vampires. Despite what other sources may tell you by the way, they are vampires, vampires more than anything else. Don't listen to wikipedia telling you they're zombies.
For example, in the story, they:
- are allergic to sunlight which burns them
- only come out at night
- despise garlic
- can't stand the symbol of Jesus, the cross
- drink blood
- are quite savage and predatory
- die from a wooden stake to the heart.

They are vampires as much as the vampires from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are, so don't call them zombies, k.

I have a few hypotheses other than stupidity as to why the film has deviated so far from the book. And by stupidity, I mean that the people responsible for making the film who had read it didn't know what they were doing, and couldn't read into the moral of the story at all. To them it was just pictures in their head that happened and had no meaning.

While some people are genuinely like that, I like to assume the best and that there is reasoning behind what they do, so here the possible reasons in order of optimism, from high to low, as to why they botched up the story and consequently the very good and interesting meaning of the book:

1) The movie was a celebration of the book, thanking it for opening up the genre to make apocalyptic style films what they are today, so they made it in name and likeness, but instead changed it to show how far the genre had developed, Hollywood-style and with modern touches. While this is highly unlikely and I have found no reason in any of the other commentary on it to suggest it is true, I would like to believe it the most because I don't want to live in a shit world where everything is crap and has crap reasoning behind it.

2) The book is old, and many of the things surrounding it are a bit outdated, so they discarded most of it. Because making the monsters like vampires is like, sooo 1900, and the main protagonists race and education and other details should be changed to reflect more what people are like today, and also, why have the monsters caused by bacteria when you can have VIRUSES instead? and so on.
To me, this is somewhat fair enough. The 1950's were a stupid time in many ways as far as I'm concerned.
However, continuing with this point, the story is changed up to the point where it takes the piss and a soft and hopeful ending is made of it that you don't have to give much depth and thought to, when compared. As the idea of society as it is now open to being at all wrong or strange in any way is completely unacceptable? That's more depressing than the idea of the ending of the book itself. Note though that I'm not giving it away.

3) The movie is merely a rip off of a book with a good name because the copyright is out of date (I don't know how copyrights actually work but I heard once that music copyrights run out 50 years after it's release, so after that you can do anything with the music) and so they're trying to pass off an old idea as original, while sticking to the conventions of Hollywood in the most people-pleasing way, and this just a way of getting as much money as possible.

I would recommend this book to fans of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic stories, which is a genre that I like. The book is nicely written too, and isn't too long. Read it if you want to.

Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom

Love's Executioner is a fiction book based on psychotherapy and the human psyche, written by Irvin D. Yalom, who is a psychotherapist and also the main protagonist (the therapist) among each of the stories.

There are ten stories:
1) Love's Executioner
2) "If Rape Were Legal..."
3) Fat Lady
4) "The Wrong One Died"
5) "I Never Thought It Would Happen To Me"
6) "Do Not Go Gentle"
7) Two Smiles
8) Three Unopened Letters
9) Therapeutic Monogamy
10) In Search of the Dreamer

Each of these stories unwinds a new experience with a new patient as "Dr Yalom" uncovers their reasons of being, and the existential position underlying the problems they have. He also discusses interactions between himself and his patients, dream interpretations, and mistakes and fears he makes being a therapist. Although each story is about the patient, it is always told from his side.

In the prologue, he lists the existential factors which underlie the patients problems.
They are:
1) "the inevitablity of death for each of us and those we love;"
2) "the freedom to make our lives as we will;"
3) "our ultimate aloneness; "
4) "and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life."

Throughout the pages it becomes apparent where these "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" arrive, and for the most part, how they are resolved. He explores every possibility of resolving these facts to offer wisdom and redemption.

And through this diverse way it is certainly a book for anyone. The people in the stories are only related through going to therapy and every case is different, every personality different. There is a lot of variation, and a lot of interesting things to think about through every page. It is a storybook and a book on life which is very clear and thorough in what it is saying through the examples and discussion.

I like all the stories for different reasons but the most prominent part for me was the Epilogue of "Two Smiles". An extract:
"A series of distorting prisms block the knowing of the other. Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician listened to the sounds of life with an ear pressed against a patient's rib cage. Imagine two minds pressed tight together and, like paramecia exchanging micronuclei, directly transferring thought images: that would be union nonpareil."
He continues to explain that we cannot know the other because of of limits to image and language, and what we choose to disclose.

Anyhow, this book is good because it deals with strong raw themes such as death and gets to the point very quickly. And even though the identities of the people are invented, and the dialogue made up, and with some factual truth, it is still honest in the respect that nothing is taboo and everything is explored or permitted to be explored. Some things are negative, some things are positive. It is also very open-ended and doesn't act as a resolute guide. It encourages thought, feeling and change, and that is why I would recommend this book.

He's Just Not That Into You

He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo is a self-help book targeted at women who form romantic attachments in their head with men who either have no clue, or have actually expressed disinterest and clearly don't want to be with them.
I can't really put an age demographic on this, but I do know that when I was a teenage girl, this kind of behaviour was prevalent amongst my friends and I. That sounds like I'm making out teenage girls to be more sad and silly than the rest of the population, but you could argue it's actually just a defence tactic against how immature and selfishly under-developed the male gender can be at puberty. But even then girls can be just as much so, and no-one's really the same.
You see, that's the problem with putting general labels for specific and complex and sometimes almost isolated individuals, BUT, before I start to delve into semantics and the philosophy of meaning, I will continue to review this book!
So, I'm not going to act like I've never developed a few dozen imaginary romantic attachments in the past. Most of the interactions I had with men I liked were in my head. But everything can be perfect if it's in your mind. Unlike real life.

The book addresses the issue of taking these romantic attachments TOO FAR. That is, bringing them into real life, or, if said attachment is somewhat already brought into real life in fair reason, taking the attachment too far in a way that blinds your intuition. And by intuition I mean those little easy to ignore signals that are telling you to get the fuck out of a relationship before he resorts to stabbing you to death because he can't get a grip on the emotions that you're giving him by overacting in the dramatic way that you do to him.

OH, and by the way, at the start it says "the stories you will read in this book are illustrative examples, not based on specific events or people." That means that all of the examples are lies. That also means this book has no scientific grounding what-so-fucking-ever, as there is NO evidence to back up what they're telling you. This book is merely the guidance you can also receive from a well-meaning member of family, or a friend, or neighbour, but if you don't have any of those, you should probably go get some. Or you can just ask that guy you like, LOL!
The chapters are laid out by supposed behaviour that men display when "he's just not that into you", (for example, "He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Asking You Out" or "He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Calling You") each chapter discussing different examples, variations, and what the opposite of said behaviour should look like. It even gives you patronising colouring-in exercises as if you can't read.
If you are going to read this book, you can decrease the span of your life wasted on reading it by going through the chapter titles instead. That is all you have to do. In fact, I'm going to save your journey to the book shop and instead decrease my life span in order to write out the titles for you, AND I'll even do it in pretty pink and pretty yellow colours for this blog:
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Asking You Out.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Calling You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Dating You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Not Having Sex With You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Having Sex With Someone Else.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He Only Wants To See You When He's Drunk.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He Doesn't Want To Marry You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Breaking Up With You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Disappeared On You.
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's Married (And Other Insane Variations Of Being Unavailable).
- He's Just Not That Into You If He's a Selfish Jerk, a Bully, or a Really Big Freak.

Whew, typing that out was a public service if there ever was one. It felt like I was having a women's domestic abuse intervention with a schizophrenic, who invents increasingly more wild stories about her ghost boyfriend in order to deny reality. The reality being that she is you and you're being made to read this on a computer screen as a last resort. Deny it and we'll have to increase your dosage.
Ultimately, this book is a plastic tacky fad book that has murdered part of a rainforest. Instead, you should learn about what psychology calls "attachment" by looking up experiments the famous psychologist Harry Harlow did to monkeys, and then you might appreciate the relationships you already have a lot more, and realise how cruel people can be, especially when you don't even know them because you're too busy creating imaginary scenarios in your head about them.

There are two nice things I will say about this book:
1) It helps women set very clear boundaries, assuming they must have never had any clear definable ones, using the very specific stories and rules outlined in each chapter, for what they should consider acceptable behaviour so that they can be more content in their relationships, as opposed to disappointed, confused, or obsessed over a man for no reason.
2) It is supposedly written by both a man and a woman to allow the reader to give more validity to what is being said.

There are however, a few things I don't like about this book:
1) The self indulgence. To me this seems to be reflected by the informal style, but to be specific there are things said within the book which are self indulgent. For example, they say that after reading it there may be "the realization that we're geniuses and that we've changed your life. Okay, maybe not." Now why write a contradictory sentence like that if you weren't just doing it to be self-indulgent? The author Liz often comes up with phrases throughout the book on how writing it has affected her and changed her. Also Liz often mentions "Greg's annoying voice inside our heads", to which I'm afraid I couldn't hear particularly well, because I assumed he was trying to write objective information, not merely dictate his opinion... or... what?
There's even a chapter (in my free Glamour magazine edition) only for "real fans who have taken the book seriously." Because the book is self-indulgent enough to think they've gathered a cult following.

2) I simply believe you cannot expect everything at once. (Consider the title of the chapter: "He's Just Not That Into You If He Doesn't Want To Marry You.") This book does not teach when, in what context, it is acceptable to reject the behaviours outlined. In other words, you shouldn't be expecting a man to call you or have sex with you or say you're in a relationship if you don't even know him. The book seems to discourage the fact that there is such a thing as socializing, or flirting or showing why you would be dating material for him, but I suppose that's what the other fad books are for. Self-help writers wouldn't have a job if the advice actually worked.

3) This book is not truly helpful, because as a book that analyses aspects of human nature, it does not try to change the possibly scripted/unhelpful thoughts and feelings that are going on inside these women, but instead gives in to them through Liz, who in every chapter tries to identify with the reader entitled "Here's why this one is hard, by Liz". Maybe these women have some bitterness to lose, Liz? Maybe they've been force fed some stereotypes, and/or gender training which rails against them? More importantly, why are all these supposedly crazy men doing this to apparently poor innocent girls? Again, those questions might be answered if you spend the rest of your money on other books in the genre.

All in all, this book is shit. Even if you read it, the outcome will always be the same, and you may as well have not opened the book (clue: he's just not that into you.)