Racine Zackula and I work at the Wichita Public Library. I am the fiction selection librarian of the library, so I order all the fiction for adults. I really have the best job in the world.
I've chosen Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut as a book that I would save from being burned. And I discovered it when I was 18. And it's funny because even at 18 I just I knew parts and bits of why I liked it. But then going back on other readings, then I knew it was because of the language.
Kurt Vonnegut was a man that was taking a tired subject--I think they had gotten done with World War II--you know, to take that great war and show this other side of it. He didn't have that experience in World War II, he had a bad experience and he saw the suffering and he saw the hurt and he had to do something unique which was turning into a science fiction novel and have his protagonist be taken by the aliens and to jump back and forth in time. And Vonnegut kind of shocked people at times. I think he threw in things that would be unexpected or taboo at that time, to talk about things that people didn't talk about in polite society. So all of those things, I think, worked to make this a great piece of fiction because it's not conventional. It's not.
And one thing that I learned--Kurt Vonnegut is the age... he released this book the same age I am now. And looking back on my life, he wanted to take something that was really meaningful in his life and he's taking something that's deeply personal, something that people have written about a lot, you know, 'War is bad.' How do I make this different? How do I make this art?
And I think he succeeded on many fronts.