Via Early Days of A Better Nation, notice of an excellent couple of essays by Ellis Sharp from his blog, Barbaric Documents, on the politics of the novels Slaughterhouse Five and Ian McEwan's latest novel Saturday, the latter of which has been the subject of much debate in the blogging chamber because of McEwan's decision to set the novel in and around the day of February 15th 2003.
On the matter of Vonnegut's classic, and as McLeod himself notes, Sharp looks afresh at Slaughterhous-Five in light of Frederick Taylor’s Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945, a revisionist account of the bombing by Allied Planes of Dresden published last year, and which takes issue with David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden: a book published in the early sixties and which Vonnegut drew upon whilst interweaving his own personal experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden on the night of the 13th February, when writing his classic.
Sharp on his other blog, The Sharp Side, recounts a recent interview of Vonnegut where no mention of Taylor's book is given, so there is no indication as to whether or not Vonnegut has himself revised in his own mind passages and sentiments from his novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment