Slaughterhouse-5: Notes

Here are a few not very important items in the text that students might find obscure. If there are any others, I would be grateful to hear about them, so that I can add to these notes. The page numbers are from the paperback Vintage edition.

2. Pall Malls. A brand of cigarette.

8. Eheu fugaces labuntur anni. Alas, the fleeting years slip by. Horace.

13. The Goethe quotation.

Von der Kuppel der Frauenkirche sah ich diese leidigen Trummer zwischen die schone stadtische Ordnung hineingesat; da ruhmte mir der Kuster die Kunst des Baumeisters,welcher Kirche und Kuppel auf einen so unerwunschten Fall schon eingerichtet und bombenfest erbaut hatte. Der gute Sakristan deutete mir alsdann auf Ruinen nach allen Seiten und sagte bedenklich lakonisch: Das hat der Feind gethan!

From the dome of the Church of our Lady I saw this loathsome rubble amongst the beautiful urban orderliness; whilst the verger boasted to me about the art of the master builder who built this church and the dome to withstand such an undesired event by making it bomb-proof. The good verger then pointed to all the ruins around us and said, reflectively and laconically [=briefly]: 'It was the enemy who did that!'.

41. Impeach Earl Warren. Earl Warren was a respected Attorney General. He was also a liberal. If you wanted to impeach him, it meant you were extremely right wing.

42. The John Birch Society. Again, extremely right wing.

43. Fourragere. Beats me. Fourrage is fodder, for animals.

63. Valley of the Dolls. Novel about Hollywood. The dolls are pills. Lots of sex in it, hence 'ups and downs'. Joke.

133. Reagan for President. At the time Ronald Reagan was the (extremely right-wing) governor of California, and widely detested by liberals. To want him to be President was to be very right wing and slightly mad. Reagan later became President. So it goes.