In this review for The Washington Post, Elliot Ackerman assesses Tom Roston's "The Writer's Crusade," which investigates whether Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" offers evidence of undiagnosed PTSD stemming from Vonnegut's capture during the Battle of the Bulge and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden.
A Book About Being Unstuck in Time
Ackerman describes Roston's book as less a straightforward literary biography than a meditation on time itself, tracing how Vonnegut's own experience of becoming "unstuck in time" produced the fractured structure of "Slaughterhouse-Five."
Was Vonnegut "Thoughtful," or Traumatized?
Ackerman pushes back gently on Roston's search for a clinical PTSD diagnosis, noting that Vonnegut himself described his wartime experience as leaving him merely "thoughtful," and asks whether that word might be a more honest reckoning with trauma than a modern diagnostic label.
Leaving the Question Open
Ackerman credits Roston for ultimately leaving Vonnegut's diagnosis unresolved, arguing that the ambiguity lets "Slaughterhouse-Five" remain a book less about one man's war than about a society, and a species, that has never quite come unstuck from time.
Read the Original Article
This review originally appeared in The Washington Post.