Slaughterhouse-Five
►https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut widmet seinen 1969 erschienenen Roman dem Dresdner Taxifahrer Gerhard Müller. Sie teilen eine Kriegserfahrung.
Plot
The story is told in a non-linear order by an unreliable narrator (he begins the novel by telling the reader, “All of this happened, more or less”). Events become clear through flashbacks and descriptions of his time travel experiences.
Zitat:
I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare, and we made friends with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn’t much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O’Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said:
“I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope that we’ll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will.”
I like that very much: “If the accident will.”