Kindle can be inspiring, as the ad says, especially for those of us who always have our devices near by.
For example, if it hadn’t been for a recent Amazon Store search, I might not be rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and would not remember too much about Billy Pilgrim and Tralfamadore.
So what, one might ask? After conceding that Vonnegut was one of greatest writers of all time, the answer is that I tend to forget that war has been glorified ad infinitum. This novel portrays, how ever obliquely, the cruel firebombing of Dresden at the end of World War Two and each time I pick it up, Vonnegut startles me with a moving existentialism. The absurdity of war could not be clearer.
However, to this very day, the government of the United States, in spite all wisdom to the contrary, perpetuates the malignant theory that war has any other actual purpose than the slaughter of human beings.
Thus, I recommend Vonnegut’s haunting little phrase when a death or deaths happen, “So it goes”, be written on our hearts. Maybe that way we would not forget that, even if none of us escape it, our government should not be the perpetrator of death.
War, huh, yeah. What is it good for. Absolutely nothing
