Slaughterhouse Five, Veniss Underground

Jenna and I listened to Slaughterhouse Five, and it was a good way to experience the book, I think. I'd read it a long time ago, but it was nice to get back to it. The book is more layered than I remembered.

I had thought that the book presents Billy Pilgrim's view of the world as a good one to have -- things happen, and we have no control over most of them, and the best thing to do is to look at the pretty things and not the ugly things. But, on re-reading, I now think the book is more nuanced than that -- Billy Pilgrim is not Vonnegut, and Vonnegut is explicit about that. Is Vonnegut the narrator? That's less clear-cut, but I tend to think that he is.

The narrator says that Billy's view is difficult to accept, even disquieting. Even when he seems to be approving of it, when he seems to say that there's nothing anyone can do about the horrors of Viet Nam, he's clearly not really following Billy's path, since that would mean ignoring Viet Nam, not talking about how evil it is. It's a very despairing philosophy dressed up as a comforting one -- if you can't change anything, it doesn't really matter what you do. I think the clearest evidence that Vonnegut himself doesn't hold to that position is that he wrote other books, books which urge us to change the way we do things. If every moment is just what it is, and everything is set in stone, then there'd be no point to writing anything -- everyone would do just what he always did.

This weekend I read Jeff VanderMeer's very short novel Veniss Underground. The whole thing clocks in at 180 pages, with another 4 short stories filling another 90 pages. But those 180 pages pack as much wonder as much longer books. VanderMeer introduces us to Veniss, a far future city that's falling apart, with genetic engineering run completely amok, citizens selling body parts to others, and an under-city that's almost hellish.

There are three sections, each about double the size of the previous one, and told in the three persons (the first story is first-person, the second is second-person, and the third is third-person). This has a subtle effect -- the first section's viewpoint character is incredibly annoying because he's so self-centered. By getting to know him so well, we don't care as much when he ends up meeting a bad end. The second-person section is more dream-like, and feels more distant, partly because second-person narration is such a rare technique that it draws attention to itself just by using it. The viewpoint character here is the linchpin of the three sections, and I think it's interesting that she's so distant, even after we're done with her section. The last section's viewpoint character chooses to act rather than think, so it's fitting that his section is the least interior-focused.

Aside from the stylistic quirks, the story is filled with religious imagery (a sort of Golgotha, but the crucifixes are placed by this story's god; that same god-like character lives inside a giant whale; one of the characters carries around a talking head on a plate called John the Baptist; the examples just go on and on). I'm not sure what it ultimately adds up to, unless maybe a sort of Gnostic vision of the world -- the creator has become crazy, and the whole mess needs to be swept away so that the good god can come in and set things right. It'll bear some thinking, always a good thing.