For all intents and purposes, Animal Farm and 1984 are the same story. Orwell’s animals seem to be the stepping stone for his more polished, fleshed-out master stroke. Animal Farm is the lean morality play, stripped of language and subtlety. Both tales show the movement of supposed revolution toward supposed utopia. In Farm, we see the communist swath from start to finish, from noble idea to washed-out greed-fest. 1984 injects the human interest, the reaction to the story. Where 1984 muses on what it might be like to discover the authoritarian ruse and push against it, Animal Farm is the blunt punch in the face about how that authoritarian ruse comes to be. It is effective, but nothing more.

Orwell certainly held a creative touch for plotmaking and intricate detail. The momentum of the story from incident to incident is genius, but Orwell stops himself at that point. If you enjoy philosophical musings or wise ruminations, Animal Farm will leave you in a void. When viewed as a stepping stone toward 1984, however, the work’s existence is much more palatable.

When the final pages were turned, I found my experience with this book to be somewhere in the middle of my expectations. It was not the kid story I often conjured internally, nor was it on a level with the transcendence of 1984. In future, potential canons, seemingly Animal Farm will always take a back seat to its more muscular, sophisticated cousin, even if it came first.

mith rating: 7.6/10

Animal Farm was rated #31 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I read it as part of the Top Project.

At the core of Slaughterhouse-Five is the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Or so the narrator tells us. Viewed from a distance, Dresden becomes a passer-by, a fleeting addition. In fact, war itself is absent more than present. On a conceptual level, this fact fits. The narrator opens the book describing the aborted attempts at writing the great World War II novel. He struggles with memory; he struggles with what parts of his experience matter; he struggles with making the pieces interlock. The crux of his dilemma comes from describing the ultimately indescribable. He wants to portray the damage he witnessed and experienced, but short of raw numbers, dates, or facts, he really cannot describe what he means at all. Hence the only way he can write his book is to construct a plot for the character outside of the war. He weaves a character withered by war, a character who talks about war, yet the story is not about war. Dresden occupies strikingly little of the narrative. In fact, most of the damage done to Billy Pilgrim’s psyche happens in war before the narrative. When we meet him, he seems nearly broken. The point to take here is the omnipresence of war, despite its absence. The effects are there, but the war really is not. This skirting of the issue paradoxically allows Vonnegut to address the issue.

Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens. He travels through time. He lives in a mental institution. He survives a plane crash. Along the way Vonnegut introduces the themes that pepper the book: fate, free will, meaning, time, human logic. One easily imagines Vonnegut pondered these themes during World War II or because of World War II. In the book, though, he can only overtly discuss them through these non-war constructs. The notions are, of course, in action during the war sections, but they must be implied by the reader. In terms of Vonnegut work, the plot constructs seem scattered and infrequent. The first third of the novel I found less intriguing than I did reading the book the first time. As the page numbers elevated, however, I started to sense the pattern and the reason for this scattered, infrequent characteristics. Slaughterhouse-Five could not exist in the same way as other Vonnegut works. It has to be the scattered book; it would work no other way. In fact, by the end of the book, the fact that it is scattered and the normal Vonnegutisms are infrequent was no longer something that distracted me or made me like the book less. Sure, I yearned for the biting humor, but that scenario would be alien here.

From a schematic view, Vonnegut subtly married the fractured elements of Billy Pilgrim’s life across time with the fractured elements of the narrator’s attempt and memory of World War II. Interestingly, the muted language is highly appropriate for the ineffable experience Vonnegut wants to describe. As always, the sporadic, tangential bits of life-insight that Vonnegut inserts heighten the reading experience. S-5 is not my favorite Vonnegut book, but I certainly understand its place in the canon.

mith rating: 9.0/10

Slaughterhouse-Five was rated #18 on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I read it as part of the Top Project.

I could easily temper this article by calling it a list of my favorites. But subjectivity is an easy way to shy away from criticism. So I’ll just ahead and claim these are the greatest rap songs ever created. The ten are a fairly nice mix of big hits and underground gems. Disagree, critique, agree, or post your own list.

Let us start with some honorable mentions. These tracks just missed the cut:

Note: the lists will be maintained on The Top Project page.