I seem to be the only one that dislikes the guy, the character has this “aw shucks me?” quality where he is so goofy but actually ends up hurting people. Hell I kinda felt he did bear some responsibility for mashing the dudes unshoed feet over and over.
He marries into money, and then spends decades miserable dreaming of a porn star(he drags his wife and kids to a porn movie with predictable results). His wife obviously loves him, hell she freaks out on hearing he has been in a plane crash and through hysteria kills herself while trying to reach him. He never shows on bit of care that this has happened, he doesn’t give a shit that she is dead.
Oh but hey he gets his wishes fulfilled when a porn actress he lusts over is magically transported to his Trafalga…falama…whatever dome so he can mate with her to his hearts content. He doesn’t know shit about her, he just feel in lust with her image.
God Billy annoyed me so much I kinda agreed with the assassination :smack: Grow a godamn backbone, stock the self pity, and make a life for yourself and stop hurting others Billy.
Well while he can visit the past, she is gone and there will be no new time or experiences with her.
EDIT:Also he never worries about his son with the porn star, raised in a dome as a zoo animal? Trafalmadorian version of The Truman Show? I dunno and Billy doesn’t care.
I thought he simply went insane after his wife died . So it goes. And the whole “unstuck in time” thing is simply what his mind is coming up with as he stares at the wall in a catatonic state in some institution
This was kind of my take on it. Whatever parts should be considered ‘real’ or not, it’s clearly occurring in the mind of someone who’s a couple of tacos short of a combination platter.
While it was certainly an interesting book and I get the picture that Vonnegut was trying to paint, I still feel like I don’t get the genius of the book. Can anyone explain why they love it so much?
Nah, that’'s not Vonnegut. He didn’t want to get stuck in the SF ghetto, but he was a science fiction writer. He was loved sf ideas and was had a knack for coming up with them – many of them assigned to his Kilgore Trout character. Having a story occur entirely in the mind of a crazy person isn’t something he’d do unless there was a good twist he could put on it, otherwise it’s hackneyed.
Okay, remind me. It has been years since I read any Vonnegut.
Does Billy recycle his experiences, possibly living each event in his live an infinite number of times? Or does he experience each moment once, just as we do, only in a non-sequential manner?
I"m hard pressed to think of any sympathetic Vonnegut protagonist. Most of his novels are still enjoyable and worthy of the praise they receive from young adults who are just learning that not all stories have to be about virtuous heroes or have happy endings.
And the fact that they are often hilarious and heartbreaking doesn’t hurt.
I find Billy alternately sympathetic and slap-worthy, depending on where he is in his life, but the narrator manages to pass no judgements on him whatsoever, which is the point. Billy, like everyone else, just “is.”
In any case:
[ul]
[li]Howard Campbell is quite sympathetic in Mother Night (which happens to be one of my favorite novels).[/li][li]Eugene Debs Hartke, from Hocus Pocus, is pretty sympathetic.[/li][li]Rudy Waltz, the protagonist of Deadeye Dick, is sympathetic, though his story is incredibly depressing.[/li][li]Malachi Constant, fron The Sirens of Titan, starts out as a douche but his experiences transform him into a very sympathetic protagonist.[/li][/ul]
On a slight tangent, I find it kind of annoying that expressing a liking for Vonnegut can get you dismissed as either “young” (i.e. unsophisticated) or pretentious, depending on the person making the judgment. I love the guy.