The Burning of Slaughter House Five

Lucy and Corbett cover the 1974 school book burning of Slaughter House Five.  Lucy eats up her time reading it like a crazy person, only to suggest therapy to the author.  Lots of talk about World War 2 and aliens, so it all makes perfect sense.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to What You Missed When You Didn't Exist. I am Corbett and I am 54.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

And I am Lucy, and I'm twenty-five.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Ugh. So old.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

You or me?

unknown 0:42

Both.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

But as I said before, this is What You Missed When You Didn't Exist. And in this show we talk about things that happened from 1970 to the year 2000, the time when Lucy was not existing.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Much like she is now. It's kind of nice to exist, I will admit. Enjoy your time while you can. And you know what, Lucy, this time around, I am going to be talking to you on a very fair footing about being an English teacher.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Ooh. Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Very fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Very much you're gonna have input on this, I expect. Because this is one of those things that I didn't actually realize. I thought it happened much later. I didn't realize it happened so close to uh 1974. Well, 1973 and 74, and then again in 83, and then again in 2011.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

But believe it or not, that's in my time.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, I know this is hard to believe. There are people who do not like books.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

No way. Are you so serious?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I I know. Unbelievable in every single way of the word. But in uh 1973, was it Minnesota? I want to say it was Minnesota. No, it was North Dakota. There was a English teacher, a 26-year-old English teacher, who assigned the book Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. You don't have to act that surprised. You read it all recently.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Well, I did, yes. But I think I know where it's going.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

The teacher assigned it to a high school class to read. It's a fairly short book, but Kurt Vonnegut had a very tormented life, to be fair, about his growing up and dealing with stuff. Needless to say, the class actually, from what I read, the feedback was the class overall was like, this is good. This is a really good book. With the exception of one child who thought it was offensive, told their parents, and pretty much everything you'd expect to happen after that happened.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

The big moment was when the principal threw all 30 some odd books into the school's furnace. Make sure nobody would ever read it. Because you know what really helps a book being set on fire.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

You know, somebody should write a book about that.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Oh yeah. Schools have furnaces? Like side, like, oh, because it wasn't a it's in North Dakota.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

It's cold in the winter. You've gotta you're gonna want to have some kind of centralized heating.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

But someone had to manually man the furnace.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, typically you'd have a maintenance guy who keeps it running.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

That's so crazy.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

And back then it probably was all wood.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

And but coal.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

And books.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

So terrible.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I think the one cool thing about this, and and and that's a pretty broad statement, but the one cool thing is Kurt Vonnegut, the author of the book, wrote the principal and told him, You have the right to burn this because I was a veteran and and lived this so you could burn it. And he goes into a lot more details. And I will recommend if you get a chance, look it up online. There's full written versions of it and discussions about it in every single way. It's a really well-written letter because he's a good author. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 3:50

That's true. I mean, just to cover a little bit of background on Kurt Vonnegut, he was I was gonna say I want to know the trauma he experienced because this book is traumatic in a way that someone is not coping with it in therapy, and they're like, you know what, I'm just gonna write about it and laugh about it the whole time, and it'll be fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Well, let me he does have a weird take on stuff. I hate to say it, he's a lot reading his bio was just enough to like, wow, I really relate to this guy, which is sad because he has had some horrific stuff happen. And that's the nicest way I can put it. He went to Cornell University, and I don't know if you know where that is, but it's a pretty well-known university. He was in Cornell in 1940, I want to say, which I don't know if you're aware of time, but back then there was a big war, and everybody was going off to war except for people who were in college or had, you know, some kind of 4F exemption. He was in Cornell and put out an article that was considered satirical, and they didn't appreciate it, and he got kicked. So he immediately joined the U.S. Army. He didn't he didn't wait to get conscripted, I don't believe. He he was worried he was going to get drafted. So he's like, screw this, I'll just go join. Because everybody was ready to go fight the war anyway. Yeah. So in 1943, he goes into the army, gets trained, he becomes like a howitzer, like an uh artillery guy. Okay, and gets shipped off to go fight in the war. He fought as a support crew for the D-Day invasion, so it wasn't specifically on the beach, but he was probably part of people ready to fire out toward the beach or make sure to get information back to and from. And and D-Day is a pretty big one.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

There's a lot of people dying, a lot of things happening that are terrible. Now, okay, let's jump a little further ahead. And then he survives D-Day, and he gets to go on leave to go home from Mother's Day, where he found out his mother just overdosed the day before he got there.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah. So he goes back to in Europe and he's part of the Battle of the Bulge almost right after. And the Battle of the Bulge, so you know, is one of the biggest pushes of the uh Allied forces pushing into the European front, and it was a pretty bloody fought war. It was uh Hitler's push back against it. Well, Hitler Mussolini's pushback against it. Yeah. And he got caught with 50 other soldiers, at least, and taken to Dresden for a camp there. Now, for anybody who's a war buff or a World War II guy, they already know the word Dresden and know what's about to happen. Yep, it's bad. Oh, now you know? This is the really bad part.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

I found about it in the book. He wrote about it.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Oh, okay. Well, you've got to learn it firsthand, which is an experience he puts into slaughterhouse vibe directly.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

He when he was put into the camp, he was put into a what's called a working camp. He literally worked in a slaughterhouse, you know, a uh a butchery type place. And he also made milk? No, it wasn't milk, it was uh syrup or no malt.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Yes, malt.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

He was put to work on a regular basis, and then the bombing of Dresden happened. And he he really does describe Dresden as a beautiful city. It's one of his first big cities to ever visit in his life because he's a small town guy.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

The bombing of Dresden is probably I don't know if I'd even want to rank it. The only reason it's outranked by the top two bombings, of course, is because those were nuclear bombs. But the other two big ones I would say would be the bombing of Dresden and the bombing of the firebombing of Tokyo. And these were like just literally the entire Air Force in the air dropping every bomb possible to devastate the town. And it was horrific because they literally dropped them on every single, it was like eight square miles of devastation in the center of the town. It was brutal. So anyway, he survives all of this and deals with a lot of personal infighting in the camp because people are trying to make things, they're trying to fight back or fight each other or just whatever they want to do. And you you kind of get some of this in Slaughterhouse 5, the book. And he comes back, and like a lot of people who come back for more, he has this trauma that he's dealing with. And he deals with it through a lot of books and short stories. He starts writing right away, I think like right after. Because he comes back, gets married.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Um he must, because his book gets published in 67.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Well, he's actually had several books published up to that point. He works for General Electric for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Which is in another book where he talks a lot about that. I believe it was Cat's Cradle. I want to say Cat's Cradle. And a lot of them are very science fiction-y. He likes talking about other worlds, although he's really talking about our world every time. So anyway, he writes a book called Slaughterhouse Five. Uh I don't know if I can summarize it very well. It's a very confusing story because it jumps around and it goes with the assumption that time isn't linear. And if you can wrap your head around that one, in other words, you could be born and die in the same breath because it's all just part of the story. Yeah. Actually, you just read it. If you were to write a short synopsis, how would you t approach it? Because it felt like it was a scrapbook of his life because of the uh the aliens. And I forget the name of the aliens. They have a really weird name.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

The tri Oh my gosh, wait, I have it highlighted somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Talidarians?

SPEAKER_03 8:50

The Tal The Treflodarians or something.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

It's this long, ridiculous name. Honestly, based on how much of Kurt Vonnegut's life you told me, it's basically his life, but also he gets abducted by aliens at some point and lives out a separate life. So it's kind of a mix of those scenes jumping around all the time, which was so annoying. I hated it so much.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

You and your mother.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Well, it's like he was trying to write a movie and it well, it became a movie. I'm sure it would make more sense as a movie, but as a book, it's so confusing because it doesn't say, like, hey, we're shifting to this time period now. It's you just get this introduction to the movie.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It doesn't explain all that until the end. Yeah. In in the end, it explains why, but you have to kind of go through it and like, wait, now we're back in in World War II. Why, why is he living out his life in the 60s? What happened with this? And how is that happening? Yeah. Who's this new girl who showed up? I think the Aborigines of Australia have a concept of life that's very similar that your life is like a book and you could flip back and forth to whatever parts you want to watch or be part of or whatever when you when you're when you're alive and when you're when you're dead and when you're alive are kind of almost all the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

It's really very unusual. But at the same time, I think that was Kurt Vonnegut's take on it. And he on answering that letter he wrote to the principal, he seemed very much actually. Did you read that letter? I don't know if you did or not.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

I did not. I did not get the chance to. I was trying to cram this book.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Cram it.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

I should have just had you watch the movie. It's faster.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

No, the books are always better than the movie.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

That's probably true. It would make just about it is jumpy, like jumping from one thing to another until you get to the end and go, oh, that's why it all happens that way. So there's that.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Yeah. It seems like current Ronnegate really needs to go to therapy because it seems like all of this trauma he's experienced in his life, he shoves into a book. And it's kind of that moment of when you have something traumatic happen to you, you just tend to relive it because you're trying to figure out what happened or what could change or that kind of thing. And it just seems like he gets caught in so many of those loops because something triggers a memory and he's like, Oh, let me go and talk about this. Let me go and think about this, because it just triggered me. And so it's so jumpy, so traumatic. It kind of idolizes war, which is interesting. And I could see why it got banned because it it talks about some very, very mature things.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

You can see why it got banned. I can see you agree with it getting banned.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Well, you said that there were different reasons as to why it got banned earlier.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Well, why it got burned. Specifically 1973 was it getting burned.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Which is a really big difference. Because in 1983, it was just banned in a big way. There was a um, I think it was in New York, there was a library that pulled it and several other books, and it was one of the ones listed on the top because of the burning that happened 10 years before. I think the burning was more fascinating, not so much because of the burning, but because the author himself wrote to the the principal, and it was like obvious in the paper that the principal had no idea what the book was about.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Oh, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

And just and just went by what the parent said that it's obscene and we need to destroy it. No need to discover this for myself. And even in his letter, Kurt Vonnegut, you know, points out like this does deal with mature topics because it deals with life. And we all deal with life, which he I don't think he was pushing it on little kids. I know like later versions of this, it's changed to middle school or putting it into elementary school hands. Like, that's high schoolers. And I will admit, high schoolers, you're you're bordering on going to college, and yeah, but I would say junior or senior year.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

I would not give this to freshmen or sophomores.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

All I know is high school for sure. Yeah, I don't have the details of all of it, but I do remember the general beginnings of book burnings, and we've talked about like the satanic panic and stuff in the past, and this is kind of in that zone of we don't want our kids to grow up faster than they need to.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah. This was him kind of dealing with a lot of life.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah. It's kind of a lot, like, there's an entire couple pages about different ways to torture people, and apparently the main character Billy's like, hmm, that sounds interesting. I love thinking about different ways to torture people. And you're like, what? There's like deep sex talks with the aliens and being like, here's how sex happens and here's how life works with the Tralfamadorians. That's the name of the aliens.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

There's a picture of breasts in here just for funsies.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Well, you've got to know what they look like.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

I guess, because no one knows.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

I will say one thing I did find offensive. Well, not offensive. I I found like I don't know if I could handle it, is he's essentially in a zoo.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

I mean, he it doesn't mean well, he I think he mentions it at one point. Yeah, it's kind of in that zone of, you know, we're just gonna watch and observe everything you do. And like, um, weird.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah, very weird, very strange.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

They're in his but he went he went from war into a corporate environment, so a lot of his stuff kind of stems from pointing out how the corporate world is a little broken and war is usually not great. I'm kind of surprised you got glorifying war because most of his stuff is very much antithetical to it.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Well, at the very beginning, there was a line where I think he just talks about the fact that we see all this violence in books and in movies, and he himself is talking about it in his books, and it also became a movie. And so I think his mom was saying that wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. And in a sense, I think that's his opinion, is that wars are romanticized by books and movies. So not he's romanticizing it, but the idea of war being something that is romanticized. Because it's one of the biggest genres, I would say, among male readers is talking about war and violence.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

That is kind of a standard. Once you hit 35, you pretty much have to become a World War II buff.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Pretty much. Except you write about read books about truckers, so Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

That's me though. I'm weird. I mean, I presume if you threw that out there, you would get immediately thrown on a list. Oh my god. Because you're dealing with seventh graders though.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yes. No, it's hard. And I can I can kind of relate to the 26-year-old teaching vibes, because you're just trying to get kids to engage with a text and getting something that draws their attention in by something wild, like talking about sex with aliens. I'm sure that would definitely get your kids to pay attention in class.

unknown 15:41

Obviously.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

But again, different age groups need different kinds of, I guess, stimulation. Seems like a weird way to put it, but engagement.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, you're getting them excited about reading.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Yes. Yeah. So I think overall it is a good book. I think it would be really fun to read and talk about in college. I don't know if I would give it to high schoolers unless they were maybe in junior or senior year of high school.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Well, you're also looking at a different generation.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Because then it was common to, well, beat your kids.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

This is true.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

It was way more common to swear up and down with them in the room. And for some reason, that was really becoming commonplace about that time. I think one of his statements in the letter was something along the lines of, This is the way you're brought up and this is what you see all the time. And I don't know if that's common now, but back then, yeah, I kind of agree with him.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

I wonder if it's common in a different way, though, because I think kids are still learning to swear and still engage with these different topics through social media, not necessarily through their parents. So I think it's a little bit different. But I also think that Kurt Vonnegut should have definitely gone to therapy.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Like, yep, that happens. Dude, process your trauma, go to therapy.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Again, I can relate to this guy. It's sad, but it's easier to laugh and joke it up because otherwise you just cry all the time. Because life is horrible. Yeah. But there's moments where you get to have a little joy, and that's okay too. True. This was just mostly interesting to me because of the fact that Kurt Vonnegut wrote wrote a high school principal, just a high school principal, not wrote some big book. You know, he he specifically wrote to him. And I don't even know if it was, I presume it had to have been read by him at some point because it became published somewhere else.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Or maybe Kurt left a copy of it for people to know. Like, I sent him this, and he said, I think in the news articles I went through, he never responded. The principal never responded, or said anything else about it. Once it was done, it was done until I think 1983 when the New York banning happened. Each time the banning was attempted, it was for, well, different reasons, really.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Because I could see some language I could see because of the sex jokes in there. And I could also see religion a little bit because he talks a lot about Jesus and the Tralfamadorians in the same sentence. So I could see like he's getting rid of the glorification of God or something. And probably a little bit about the violence, just because there are a lot of not a lot, but a couple of like gory points. But again, he covers up everything by saying, Eh, so it goes. I if I had to see so it goes one more time. He wrote it like in every paragraph. It's like, oh, that happened. Bummer.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Well, it's kind of true. I mean, that's it just happens that way. For him, he's looking at it from the perspective of it's already happened. Yeah. It's like you reliving something in the past that you can no longer change. Yeah. And he's talking about the future. The thing I think is interesting, uh the character, oh, what's his name? Billy Pilgrim. I think he, as a younger version of himself, started feeling that sensation of knowing the future, but it's hard to tell. I I I I don't know. That's really kind of a personal decision, I guess, there.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Yeah. Did you know that there was a different title for the book though?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Oh, no, I didn't.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

It was initially going to be called The Children's Crusade, a duty dance with death, but then it got changed to the Slaughterhouse Five.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it makes more sense, I think. Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

Well, he talks about the Children's Crusade a lot more in the book because he only brings out Slaughterhouse Five once, and it's like at the very, very end. So I think they were thinking that it would save some suspense. And Kurt Vonnegut compares the Dresden bombing with Hiroshima. He says that Dresden was worse.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Well, that's the thing. It was constant. It wasn't one single bomb. This is the same thing with Tokyo firebombing. It wasn't one single bomb, it was a plethora of bombs being dropped.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

You know, imagine an armada of flying vessels overhead dropping thousands and thousands of bombs. It wasn't just one single blast, it was constant.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

The devastation was about the same. The amount of damage done as far as the space, the only difference is, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they suffered radiation. There was a lingering effect of even worse. But the sad thing is, uh, all these big bombings that happened, I think they were in March of that year. Maybe February or March, I don't remember. But they're in Tokyo and Dresden were done about the same time. Europe surrendered, I think, in May, just a few months later. And then Tokyo surrendered in, I want to say August, because August is when they dropped the other bombs.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Mmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

So all these massive bombings were undercut by one, well, two really, really big bombs. So yeah, bombing people is horrible. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 20:45

True.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

So it goes.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

No trauma. Trauma. People need to go to therapy and not use sarcasm and satire to cut away from their grief.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I feel personally attacked.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Well, you should, because you gave that skill to me, and now I have to work through it.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Uh it's a rough one. It's an interesting moment in history, and it does lead to the cascade of several other books that are burned, banned, thrown into piles. And I I hate to say this. This is the one thing that generationally speaking is probably going to continue because I don't think there's ever a time when people don't need to set books on fire. Why? It's the only way they can feel powerful about it. Yep. My best advice is keep writing books.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

And keep reading books.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Both are very valuable.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Yes. And you can use your trauma to write more books.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Or go to therapy.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Or go to therapy.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

For what you missed when you didn't exist, uh, read a book.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

Or write a book. Then go to therapy.