Books I am Currently Reading

I am currently in the process of reading two highly-acclaimed books from a few years back: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  In spite of their high marks from critics, though, both of these books, which describe the utter horrors of World War II, have been deemed by some as "obscene"...banned from libraries and schools alike at different times.  The reason for this censure is their explicit sexual content and/or profanity, not the graphic depiction of violence and unspeakable injustice done to the myriad victims of the most brutal, costly conflict in human history.  And I find that twisted standard of obscenity in itself a bit obscene...

With Slaughterhouse-Five, which I just started reading, I've seen the film version and therefore already know what happens...it is very rare for me to pick up a book after watching the movie.  As for Gravity's Rainbow, my difficulty with it is not so much the graphic sexual content...which can get very old in a hurry...as the disjoint manner in which Pynchon writes the narrative...he jumps around from character to character, scene to scene, and present reality to flashback to dream and back again...without ever giving any warning to the reader about what he's going to do next or where he just jumped off to.  I guess that's what they call "post-modernist" writing...I can't print what I call it.  But I am about 60% through and am determined to finish it.  And then I'll spill the beans about what I really think about this strange tale...

I am also plodding through an old James Blish science fiction novel titled Vor, one of the old paperbacks my sister Anita gave me to take back from Austin last month.  I'm struggling with this one as well, but at least the author seems to be writing with the reader in mind, and I've grown to appreciate that more lately...