I normally have other priorities, such as sleeping after a long day's work; I read a few pages, a whole chapter maybe, and doze off shamelessly. After all, literature is not my trade. I always have an article to finish, a translation to proof-read, a web page to create, a class to prepare, an exam to correct, and interpretation to fly to. And a damn thesis to hand in asap.
But this book...
It had been recommended to me by two of the most adorable, and adored, men in my life. My uncle Roy being the first.
After a whole afternoon in a huge bookshop in Calgary last summer, where I caught up with about fifteen 20th-Century classics in English labelled "you-absolutely-have-to-read-this", which I dutifully bought to fill up my suitcase with, Roy appeared at my Granddad's the following day with another half dozen from his own library.
Roy is one of those people who recommend books depending on what you will like and learn about, and not on what THEY think you should like or know about, which is the difference between someone who loves you and someone who wants to change you.
Anyhow, Slaughterhouse 5, Vonnegut Jr., 1969, was one of them. I had heard people mention it a thousand times, but I had never actually got 'round to buying it, lest of all reading it.
And there it sat, together with the rest of the books that I have been offered after the summer, "dead of laughter" as we say in Spanish, wondering when it would be its turn to be given a chance.
Until I received another copy this Xmas. From a passionately reliable source, trilingual, alterglobalist and delightfully humble.
Shite, I thought, the damn thing MUST be good, then.
I opened the first page last night... Jeezuz Christ. I haven't slept at all; I've read it twice over.
At 4 am came that old high-school feeling that it was gone. Forever. I would never enjoy it again the same way.
And the grown-up realisation I had to wake up in four hours, too.
Yet the Tralfamadorian disorientation I was experiencing was stronger than my sense of duty. I would have to go to work, of course, in due time, but there was no way in the world anyone would be able to stop me from re-reading Slaughterhouse 5 in bed in the early morning. Like Billy Pilgrim, I had come to this place voluntarily, alarmed by the outside world.
The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel.
Last time I fell that much in love with a book, I must have been younger than 20.
Lovely people, I'm sure you read the Novel already a long while ago but, if you haven't, I should tell you I am now the proud owner of two copies to lend ;-) And that one of them is my uncle's US-printed 1973 paperback edition, completely valueless; otherwise full of dusty sentiment.
Besitos,
M.
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