The reviews of Slaughterhouse-Five have been largely positive since the March 31, 1969 review in the New York Times stated: "you'll either love it, or push it back in the science-fiction corner."[41] It was Vonnegut's first novel to become a bestseller, staying on the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks and peaking at No. 4.[42] In 1970, Slaughterhouse-Five was nominated for best-novel Nebula and Hugo Awards. It lost both to The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. It has since been widely regarded as a classic anti-war novel, and has appeared in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.[43]
Censorship controversy
Slaughterhouse-Five has been the subject of many attempts at censorship due to its irreverent tone, purportedly obscene content and depictions of sex, American soldiers' use of profanity, and perceived heresy. It was one of the first literary acknowledgments that homosexual men, referred to in the novel as "fairies", were among the victims of the Holocaust.[44]
In the United States it has at times been banned from literature classes, removed from school libraries, and struck from literary curricula.[45] In 1972, following the ruling of Todd v. Rochester Community Schools, it was banned from Rochester Community Schools in Oakland County, Michigan.[46] The circuit judge described the book as "depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar and anti-Christian."[44] It was later reinstated.[47]
In 1973, Vonnegut learned of a school district in North Dakota that was antagonistic towards Slaughterhouse-Five. An English teacher at a high school in the district wanted to read the novel with their class. Charles McCarthy, the head of the school board, declared the novel inappropriate because of obscene language. All copies of Vonnegut's novel in the school were burned in a furnace.[48]
In a letter to McCarthy in 1973, Vonnegut defended his credibility, his character, and his work. In the letter, entitled "I Am Very Real", Vonnegut wrote that his books "beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are". He contended that his work should not be censored based on the general message in the novel.[49][48]
The U.S. Supreme Court considered the First Amendment implications of the removal of the book, among others, from public school libraries in the case of Island Trees School District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) and concluded that "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'" Slaughterhouse-Five is the sixty-seventh entry to the American Library Association's list of the "Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999" and number forty-six on the ALA's "Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009".[45] In August 2011, the novel was banned at the Republic High School in Missouri. The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library countered by offering 150 free copies of the novel to Republic High School students on a first-come, first-served basis.[50]
Criticism
Slaughterhouse-Five has been described as a quietist work, because Billy Pilgrim believes that the notion of free will is a quaint Earthling illusion.[51] According to Robert Merrill and Peter A. Scholl, "Vonnegut's critics seem to think that he is saying the same thing [as the Tralfamadorians]." For Anthony Burgess, "Slaughterhouse is a kind of evasion—in a sense, like J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan—in which we're being told to carry the horror of the Dresden bombing, and everything it implies, up to a level of fantasy..." For Charles Harris, "The main idea emerging from Slaughterhouse-Five seems to be that the proper response to life is one of resigned acceptance." For Alfred Kazin, "Vonnegut deprecates any attempt to see tragedy, that day, in Dresden...He likes to say, with arch fatalism, citing one horror after another, 'So it goes.'" For Tanner, "Vonnegut has...total sympathy with such quietistic impulses." The same notion is found throughout The Vonnegut Statement, a book of original essays written and collected by Vonnegut's most loyal academic fans.[51]
When confronted with the question of how the desire to improve the world fits with the notion of time presented in Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut responded "you understand, of course, that everything I say is horseshit."[52]
