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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3096 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 31, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Scott has published Unsong on Amazon. It's currently #2 humorous science-fiction book on Amazon, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. #6 book in the same category, according to Amazon, is Slaughterhouse-Five. I guess you really can't spell "slaughter" without "laughter".

Slaughterhouse-five is supposed to be in the category of dark humor/satire, but I honestly don't remember much about that book from when I read it in high school. Catch-22 is often mentioned as a similar absurdist fiction anti-war satiric book and it is the far superior of the two.

I've read both and found Catch-22 uproariously funny other than the places where it was darkly serious, but Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't funny at all, the effect was more of "I need to take a break from all the gruesome WWII shit I remember, here's some aliens as a palate cleanser".

I don't recall ever laughing to anything in Slaughterhouse-Five either, but Wikipedia indicates dark humor as one of its genres.

Is there anyone here who read Slaughterhouse-Five and found it funny?

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but I think it nails a certain "if I don't crack a smile about this, I'll burst into tears" tone that Jewish humour is known for.

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