First things first, Vonnegut cracks me up. I don't know about you guys but there is something about his style of humour that makes me legit just laugh out loud to the point where my parents come into my room to see what's so funny about my mat- I mean english homework.
From his similes to his purposely redundant phrases, Vonnegut could do stand-up. Imagine an older, maybe-shell-shocked, white version of Russell Peters cracking jokes about death and plunger-like mutants. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that image itself is worth more than a Milky Way bar to Valencia.
My favorite example of one of Vonnegut's creative similes is: "The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty." (p. 34) Who would ever compare a loud gunshot to God's fly? Rhetorical question. The point is that his humour is so weird it's brilliant. No average brain would be able to formulate such comparisons. And that makes Vonnegut, Vonnegut.
And I can't forget about the most well-known phrase so far in Slaughterhouse-Five: "so it goes." I bet all of you are depicting these 3 words as a bromidic expression now since it comes up every couple paragraphs. It seems like I'm seeing this phrase everywhere as well: in the book, on all your blogs, and even on facebook statuses. Vonnegut is overusing this saying on purpose not to annoy the heck out of us but just because it's his style. To me, "so it goes" is like one of those jokes that never seem to get old no matter how many times you say it.
Kind of like the joke:
Q- Why did Tigger stick his head in the toilet?
A- He was looking for Pooh!
or the classic Chuck Norris jokes like:
"Chuck Norris doesn't breathe, he holds air hostage."
Vonnegut is funny, in his own way. His humour is his trademark, he is what he is. Feel free to disagree, but I'm very dogmatic. (Look it up).
