This felt like a bit of 2 things - a long love letter about a favorite author and a deep look in to PTSD and whether said writer had it. The first frew chapters were catchy - talking about POW and murdered Nazi guards and I was curious as to what I was getting in to. I loved that Kurt's kids were also curious and gave their blessing for it be researched.

But the rest was heavy. It was a lot of war and what Kurt Vonnegut went through. It was a little history about the war, the time period. But from there it's a pretty deep dive in to PTSD, signs of it and other authors and their opinions. It was interesting but maybe not what I was hoping it would be.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Tom Roston in this book seeks to know if Kurt Vonnegut had PTSD or if the character Billy Pilgrim from Slaughter house-five was a character who also dealt with it in his own ways,
I really sought this to be an investigative assignment undertaken by the author with some extensive biographical research into the life of Vonnegut, whose brevity for life as it was for his is most inspirational thing about him for me. personally, however this lacked the clinical psychological understanding and research of the subject matter to make the prescribed argument.
It only tried this by comparing the his struggle and story with other war veterans turned writes, piecing together an exploration in living and dealing with trauma in life.
This book with aspiration to be something significant in making despite the author just being a fan and not a psychologist who would have been a perfect fit to undertake a sensitive project as this.
It was simply underwhelming read overall.

An excellent read for Vonnegut fans, classic lit scholars, and contemporary lit analysis lovers alike. I probably would have preferred this on audio, as that's how I typically take in memoir or bios, but that's on me, not the book!

This book is a lot of things and I think it suffered for it. As the title says, the book is about Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five and as the blurb goes on to say it is using Slaughterhouse in both its final form and its many drafts as a comparison to Vonnegut's real life in order to determine if Vonnegut had PTSD. It does all of that, but it also goes into kind of the history of war literature and how Slaughterhouse has impacted veterans and allowed them to recognize their own PTSD in the novel.

I guess I should preface by saying Slaughterhouse-Five is one of my favorite novels and Vonnegut in general is one of my favorite authors so I loved the in depth analysis of the book and seeing how aspects of Vonnegut's real life made it into the novel. I also enjoyed the parts about how Slaughterhouse became a touchstone for veterans of three different wars at the time it was published and remains one to this day for veterans of modern wars; however, I think the way those two aspects of the story were integrated felt a little choppy to me.

I think as a whole, I would have liked this book more if I went in knowing that it would be more of a wider look at war trauma rather than an in depth look at how the drafts of Slaughterhouse became the iconic novel that we know today. For example the last paragraph of the blurb asks, "Did Vonnegut suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Did Billy Pilgrim?" which I thought would be the basis of the book but was instead reduced to one chapter.

Although Kurt Vonnegut and his novel Slaughterhouse-Five are at the heart of this book, it ranges far and wide beyond its core subject and it’s a pity that isn’t made clear on the cover and in the blurb, as it may well restrict its appeal. Personally I found the exploration of PTSD and war writing in general even more interesting than the examination of the famous novel. The book opens dramatically with a (true? apocryphal?) story of Vonnegut killing one of the guards who had held him captive in Germany as a POW, and Roston goes on to explore the trauma of war and how it affected Vonnegut. Vonnegut came from an era when PTSD was hardly acknowledged, let alone widely discussed, and in fact the author suggests it is now too widely accepted as an excuse for certain behaviours. Roston explores the evolution of PTSD over the decades and how if it has always been acknowledged that soldiers have suffered from war trauma of one sort or another it has only recently been included as a psychiatric diagnosis. Roston discusses to what extent Vonnegut suffered – if indeed he did –from PTSD and how much this informed his writing. He himself always denied it but his children and many friends disagree, and certainly if Vonnegut himself didn’t then his protagonist Billy Pilgrim does. Roston writes with insight and empathy and avoids armchair psychology and easy conclusions. I found the book a compelling and thoughtful read, which will surely appeal to a wide readership.

Tom Roston delivers a compelling case for reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" as both a narrative of and metaphor for PTSD induced by the experiences of war. He then uses this analysis to center "Slaughterhouse Five" as a key influence on a new generation of veterans and how they write about their experiences of war. One does not have to have read the novel recently, or at all, to understand and appreciate the insights that Roston brings to light. As a fan of Vonnegut's other books, this presented a fuller picture of the author for me, and allowed me to better understand what many people consider, and what may well be, his masterpiece.

The entire packaging of this book is misleading and can be very confusing as the deeper in the book one goes, the more finds a journal of post-traumatic stress disorder, aka 'PTSD', and a general analysis of the theory. THAT should be a part of the cover, back cover, advertising, etc., etc.

Vonnegut's life is examined, but nearly in the backseat as the author drones on and on and on about 'PTSD'. That would be fine, IF that is why I was intrigued to read the book. I am familiar with the psychological theory and, though interesting, not something I wanted to read about.

I have extensively studied Vonnegut. Even had a college course all about Vonnegut. I'm pretty knowledgeable of Vonnegut and wanted to read another view. That is missing as the author desperately tries to tie Vonnegut to 'PTSD'. Considering all I've studied, I disagree that 'PTSD' is a worthy set of letters for Vonnegut. I didn't find the author altering my view.

The author was too hung up with the theory and works through the book to make that plug into Vonnegut and have a light come on. The energy wasn't there, I found.

There are some worthy pieces in the first half of the book, but the rest is for those interested in the 'PTSD' subject.

Bottom line: i don't recommend this book. 4 out of ten points.

Note: i got to read an advanced copy via NetGalley.com.

Chapter 11 of The Writer's Crusade is titled "Diagnosing Mr. Vonnegut" with the intention of concluding, as the first line of the chapter declares, "He had PTSD." But fully half of its 22 pages are about someone named Lance Miccio. Yes, half a chapter about Kurt Vonnegut in a book about Kurt Vonnegut is about someone you nor I have ever heard of. Only seven pages are devoted to Vonnegut, with mixed results on his diagnosis, including his own lifelong denials that he had PTSD.

Halfway through the chapter, author Tim Roston presents the opposing point of view, one page worth: Billy Pilgrim having come unstuck in time in Vonnegut's seminal anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five and having been transported to Tralfamadore are primarily designed as artistic devices to frame Vonnegut's postmodern metafictional story structure rather than symptoms of PTSD.

If you're interested in PTSD in general and how it relates to Vonnegut in particular as well as other traumatized war veterans, then this book is for you. After spending the first half of the book writing a pretty good biography of Vonnegut through the lens of his long struggle to write the book that became Slaughterhouse-Five, the rest of the book is about PTSD, and not necessarily about PTSD as it relates to Vonnegut and his book, as the Chapter 11 page count epitomizes.

If you wish that Roston had analyzed the many early drafts of the story and discussed at greater length its evolution into the quintessential anti-war treatise that applied the horrors of WWII to what was then going on in Vietnam and by extension what has been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan the past 30 years, sorry, you're out of luck. Somehow Billy Pilgrim's status as quirky Everyman dealing with these horrors has morphed into Billy Pilgrim as Vonnegut's alter ego dealing with his personal trauma.

This book's description only hints that this is what it's about. It gives more of an impression that it's about the many facets of a complex classic. I was suckered in and, being among the dissenting group Roston discusses minimally in Chapter 11 who view this as a work of art not as a work of psychology or social work, I am seriously disappointed. Add to that the unabashed confirmation bias in which every little clue in favor of the PTSD analysis is spun into evidence while anything contrary, including Vonnegut's own protestations, is dismissed, and it gets downright infuriating.

Although this was a one star read for me, I'm going to rate it three stars because the first half is OK and other readers with a genuine interest in the PTSD angle may appreciate it more than I did. Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Sorry to have been this honest in my review.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Abrams Books for an advanced copy of this literary study.

Tom Roston in The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five has written a biography of an author, his book, and his main character, with a meditation on war and atrocity and its after effects on the human psyche. There is a lot going on and Mr.Roston does a very good job of keeping it together, though there are some pacing issues that slow the book down.

Kurt Vonnegut was a very complicated man, or maybe he was being human. Funny, prone to blow ups, maudlin near the end of his life, he probably drank to much and for sure saw too much during his service in World War II. Mr. Vonnegut's life and experiences led him to write Slaughterhouse-Five over a 23 year period, probably his best and most important work. This and the afterlife of becoming a writer of note, some of his later works and his death by dogwalking are also covered.

Billy Pilgrim, the lead character of the work is also given the biography treatment. Pilgrim's experiences are compared to real characters, his life, his end his actions all change as Vonnegut wrote and rewrote trying to find his story in all that had happened. This part I found most interesting. How the book started, stopped, lurched one way than another, Key inspirations are given to other characters, scenes moved, fates changed. Not by the whim of the writer, but all in service of what Vonnegut needed to tell. The research for this has some funny stories from Mr. Roston, as he talks about the many difficulties he had in just getting to look at Mr. Vonnegut's papers in the library.

There is also a section on PTSD and its effects on both Billy and Mr. Vonnegut. This section was a bit awkward, but still very worth a read. Mr. Roston gives a history of the effects of war and battle on men, how the military tried to address it, and the difficulties many veterans have today. The section includes many interviews with authors who write or wrote of their experiences at war and while interesting, seemed to slow the book down. There is a very good book to be made of modern war and writers.

I first read Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, and the book has stayed with me since. This is a very good book on Vonnegut and his creation, one that fans will enjoy. This book would also be perfect for those who like to read about how art is created, or for those who want to read about how people deal with the monstrous things that happen in life, and continue on.

I was too young when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five. I was a sophomore in college, in a 400 level Modern Lit class on Black Humor. I loved the books and continued to read all the authors we studied. But I was so young and inexperienced and sheltered, how could I have understood a book that war veterans finds reflect their own experience? My response would not have been visceral, but intellectual.

It took Kurt Vonnegut twenty-three years of experimenting with his material before he came up with Slaughterhouse-Five. Nearly a quarter of a century to process his war experience and transform it into a story that adequately said what he wanted to say. “I tried, he added,” but I just couldn’t get it right, I kept writing crap.”

Vonnegut had experienced the Battle of the Bulge, had been a prisoner of war during WWII, surviving the firebombing of Dresden because he was locked in a metal meat locker. He was one of the prisoners tasked with picking up the bodies of the citizens who died during the bombing. He had starved and been beaten and seen his fellow soldiers die, one executed by the Nazis for stealing food from the Dresden ruins.

Tom Roston writes about The Writer’s Crusade that “This book is about how an author was able to write about the trauma of war. And what we can carry from that. I looked at it from a psychological and literary perspective.”

His research took him into the many drafts of the book. He interviewed veterans who write about war, including Tim O’Brien (The Things We Carried) and Phil Klay (Redeployment, Missionaries). He talked to Vonnegut’s children. He studied PTSD.

Roston wanted to know if Slaughterhouse-Five could “be used as evidence of its author’s undiagnosed PTSD.” Considering the manifestations of PTSD, Roston could rate Slaughterhouse-Five’s protagonist Billy Pilgrim as having three out of the five symptoms, such as numbness and detachment. How could Vonnegut have written Pilgrim and not have experienced first hand the legacy of trauma?

Mark Vonnegut said of his father, “He wasn’t bitter. He wasn’t cynical. he was heartbroken by how humans treated each other. Maybe he had PTSD from just being alive. He saw too much, And he felt too much.”

If, as Vonnegut once said, all great literature is about “what a bummer it is to be a human being,” it is also its role to aid humans to deal with life’s trauma. And Slaughterhouse-Five, Roston proves, has been a bridge for countless veterans.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I wasn't entirely sure what this book was meant to be as I was reading it. Was it a biography of Kurt Vonnegut? Or was it a biography of Slaughterhouse Five? Was it a study of PTSD and the possibility of it existing both in Vonnegut and his works? Albeit interesting, there were a lot of moments where I felt that the book either took a random detour, other times where it veered off into a somewhat relevant tangent, and others where I had no real idea what we were talking about. All in all, an interesting look at one of the most legendary authors of modern times, but I would have liked for this book to be a bit clearer on its purpose. It just felt meandering and I found myself wondering about its purpose too many to fully appreciate it.

This book is many things. A biography of Kurt Vonnegut and how he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five. The author also tries to decide whether Vonnegut was suffering from PTSD from his WWII experiences especially in Dresden and following from this whether Billy Pilgrim has PTSD also. So there’s also a history of war trauma and the diagnosis of PTSD, and interviews with other soldiers who’ve become writers, with a look at war writing in general. I found it an interesting read.

A more accurate rating would be 3.5 stars. An interesting exploration of Kurt Vonnegut and the writing and impact of Slaughterhouse-Five. The middle PTSD parts did occasionally drag. It may have been worthwhile to add more on the book in those sections instead of it seeming like a related detour for a while. One of the most interesting parts was how well the symptoms of Billy Pilgrim in the book match up with a modern understanding of PTSD. I wish there had been a bit more on the outside reaction to the book to show how very unique it was for the time period. Overall recommended for Vonnegut fans and those looking at PTSD and the military in literature.

It was a solid read but I didn’t really connect with the book. Some chapters were very long and the pace wasn’t the best for my taste, but if you’re a fan of Kurt Vonnegut’s work you should give it a try. In the end I learned about PTSD and a part of this great author’s life.

An interesting exploration of PTSD and how it influenced the most acclaimed work of Vonnegut's career. There is discussion of successes and failures, along with a wild theory or two. The book gives some nice context to the decades long endeavor that resulted in Slaughterhouse-Five. Fans of Vonnegut, or at least Slaughterhouse-Five will find some value in reading this book.

Broadly, this is about Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five"|. It covers his planning to write it, writing it, its impact and legacy. There is much around Vonnegut's life relevant to the work, particularly his personal WW II experiences. There is much to learn there, including that Vonnegut (who witnessed the bombing of Dresden from the basement of a slaughterhouse as a prisoner of war) used "The Destruction of Dresden" as a source for the novel where he wrote that he emerged from the slaughterhouse to discover that "135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men". The British author and Holocaust denier David Irving had inflated or at the least not verified the numbers. That's trivial in the big picture. That big picture is one of PTSD and how it affected Vonnegut personally and how his opus fits in a canon of reactions to this part of the human condition.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I had hoped. I thought the title, sub-title, and book jacket blurbs were rather misleading, because there is no mention at all of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which features prominently inside the book from beginning to end. A more accurate title might have been: Is Slaughterhouse-Five a novel about PTSD? The author thinks so. He talked to people who agreed with this opinion, and people who disagreed. The book is also a casual, non-scholarly (meaning, no eye-straining footnotes) biography of Vonnegut.

The author himself agreed that looking at Slaughterhouse-Five through the lens of PTSD could make the book seem less profound than it is, and I agree that it does.

Perhaps for people who have PTSD themselves, or people who have a loved one with PTSD, or people who are interested in PTSD as a topic, this book might hold greater interest.

I received a free electronic galley copy of this book in advance of publication from Abrams Books via Netgalley.

In 1967 Kurt Vonnegut gave us "Slaughterhouse-Five", the horrors of the World War II Dresden firebombing as witnessed by Billy Pilgrim. This masterpiece is a mix of autobiography, satire, and science fiction. It took Vonnegut over twenty years to figure exactly how to present this saga on paper.

In his new book, "The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five", Tom Roston asks if Vonnegut suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder or if he only wrote Billy Pilgrim as a character who found his own ways to deal with it, in effect anticipating the diagnosis. Vonnegut denied suffering from PTSD and Roston does extensive biographical research on this. He also details Vonnegut's struggles with early drafts to make the story a catharsis to save his own life. According to Roston many other lives were saved by the Slaughterhouse-Five journey, an opinion Kurt's daughter Nanette voiced.

I remember reading Slaughterhouse-Five in high school and savoring the humor and creativity of time tripping and alien interaction, never connecting these as ways the character had of dealing with his trauma. Roston's book makes its case here, although I did find myself rushing through some of the PTSD data when Kurt was out of the picture. If you love Slaughterhouse-Five and you love Kurt Vonnegut there will be a lot for you in this book.

"The Writer's Crusade" will be published by Abrams on October 12, 2021. Thank you to Abrams and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy in exchange for review. #TheWritersCrusade #NetGalley

---
layout: post
title: Tom Roston - 'The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five'
description: Youthfully sprawled but too free: a somewhat interesting portrait of Vonnegut's masterpiece.
date: 2021-04-19 15:00:00 +0300
image: '/images/2021-04-19-tomroston.jpg'
tags: [non-fiction, kurt-vonnegut]
---
When Kurt Vonnegut set out to write 'Slaughterhouse-Five', he had survived many bombings of Dresden during World War II. He survived a prisoner's camp afterwards, and he survived post-traumatic stress disorder.

> The author’s two-decade struggle to write a book that depicts the trauma of war truthfully, without cheapening it, anticipated the PTSD diagnosis. “Slaughterhouse-Five is the ultimate PTSD novel,” says Duke University professor and psychiatrist Harold Kudler, who was the chief consultant for mental health for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from 2014 to 2018. “It is a fully rendered metaphorical exploration of what it means to be ripped out of your own person, relationships, place and time written by a man who had actually experienced this.”

Vonnegut's life was, at more points in time than one, in shambles. He struggled to make ends meet for his family and was nearly forced to stop writing. If not for the all-too-common combination of luck and the good will of others *Slaughterhouse-Five* might not have seen the light of day.

> Vonnegut would often call himself a “hack,” a writer who’d do anything for money. He would work in the mornings for several hours and then go for walks with his dog. He was churning out stories, which Jane would send out to editors. And then she would compile an ever-expanding file of rejection slips.

The funniest thing about this book is its beginning: It's like skipping a stone across a pond, just as you release it and realise the stone is either just a pebble and will not even bounce twice, or that it's far too big and round, just ruffles the surface, then sinks.

One example of this is a strange anecdote that takes up far too much space in the book, simply because it's not verifiable: after the war, did Vonnegut seek out and murder a former Nazi?
One can argue that Vonnegut could have perhaps himself have laughed at that theory because of how weird it was, but to myself, it appears out of place: it's hearsay, even though it makes for an interesting tale.

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This book wouldn't make any real mark if it weren't for the rest of it. Roston's force as a writer comes into play when he turns into chronological biographer, delving through Vonnegut's life, which was interesting. For example, Vonnegut was mourning his father when both his sister and brother-in-law died:

> And then, just a year after his father’s death, his sister, Alice, began to succumb to cancer herself. On September 15, 1958, she was on her deathbed at the hospital when her husband, Jim Adams, took a New Jersey commuter train from their home to a business meeting. But the train’s engineer had a heart attack causing the train to derail into a river, killing forty-nine people, including Adams. Alice died thirty-six hours later. The shock and tragedy of his sister’s and brother-in-law’s deaths had a profound effect on Vonnegut, far more than the war according to the author, who was so close to Alice that he considered her his first muse, the audience of one that he wrote all of his books for.

His family adopted his sister's three children.

It took Vonnegut nearly twenty-three years to turn in his final draft of *Slaughterhouse-Five*. In-between the end of World War II and that, he wrote a few different books that were received fairly well. Most of his waking time was spent hunched over his typewriter.

> Vonnegut’s discipline as a writer could be heard and smelled in the house. There was the constant sound of his Smith-Corona clanking away. And the strong bouquet of coffee and Pall Malls permeated his quarters. With so many kids running around, he seemed to be in a world removed. “Working his ass off, sitting still,” Nanette says.

Roston goes deep into two trails: tracking down known and potential inspirations for characters and scenes in *Slaughterhouse-Five* and trying to explain how PTSD relates to the book. To myself, both trails lead on for too long, especially regarding PTSD: it's too isolated to related to Vonnegut and too superficial to be of clinical interest. If you want to read about PTSD, there are far more interesting books out there.

## Conclusion

This book is an interesting ride, albeit not nearly as good as Suzanne McConnell and Kurt Vonnegut's *[Pity The Reader](https://niklasblog.com/?p=23391)* that was published not long ago. Still, they're two different animals.

If you carry deep interest in *Slaughterhouse-Five*, PTSD, and a brief history of Vonnegut's life, this is a book for you. Would I recommend it for people who want to look into the complexities of life and how Vonnegut turned out the way he did? No, I wouldn't; Then, this book is not for you.

I can't help but think of Barry Miles's *[Call Me Burroughs: A Life](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/09/call-me-burroughs-a-life-barry-miles-review)*, a very deep dive into all of Burroughs's life. I wish this book had carried just as many lives.

***

*The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five* is published on 2021-10-12 by Abrams Press.

Only a few miles from my home, there is a 38-foot tall mural of Kurt Vonnegut that adorns a downtown Indianapolis that serves as a constant reminder of Vonnegut's importance to his and my hometown.

Despite all his quirks and flaws (and there were many), Vonnegut remains one of Indy's most celebrated natives and certainly is near the top of Indy's lengthy history of celebrated writers.

"The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse- Five" explores the author's most critically acclaimed and popular novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," a novel born in the destruction of Dresden in World War II and written during the Vietnam War period.

“He was writing to save his own life,” his daughter Nanette has said, “and in doing it I think he has saved a lot of lives.”

It is well known that Vonnegut survived the horrors of Dresden as a POW during World War II. Author Tom Roston digs deeper in exploring the impact of Vonnegut's wartime experiences on his life and on his writing while also spending a fair amount of "The Writer's Crusade" on the developing recognition of the profound impact of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" on soldiers past and present.

While a relatively new diagnosis in the annals of psychiatry, the presence of what is known as PTSD has been a long existing reality for soldiers yet a reality without words to name it.

"The Writer's Crusade" is as much a book about how books save lives as it is a book about Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut certainly exists within the book's bones, yet there are entire chapters of "The Writer's Crusade" that barely mention the author who serves as its foundation. "Slaughterhouse-Five" was Vonnegut's sixth book. It's likely his greatest moment as an author, though nearly all of his novels are on some level celebrated. This book has somehow become embraced by both anti-war movements and the veterans who have experienced war because, it would seem, that Vonnegut is simultaneously giving us one of the most incredibly authentic experiences of war while arming anti-war activists with all the ammunition they need to be able to say that "war is hell."

Indeed, Vonnegut's life post-Dresden is proof that war is hell and that somehow Vonnegut made it through hell largely because of his writing.

"The Writer's Crusade" is built upon research into Vonnegut's life and interviews with Vonnegut's family, researchers, writers, and psychologists. This is not a perfect book and I didn't always agree with Roston's assumptions and interpretations, but for fans of Vonnegut "The Writer's Crusade" is a worthy book to absorb and to assist in the interpretation of and appreciation for Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" and his writings before and after.

Much like "Slaughterhouse-Five," I'd dare say that "The Writer's Crusade" will be embraced by antiwar activists and military vets alike along with those of us who simply consider ourselves to be Vonnegut devotees.

"The Writer's Crusade" is due for release by ABRAMS in October 2021.