Chapter 1:
This chapter is just him talking about how he is going to write a book about the bombing of Dresden. It's mostly him having nonsensicle conversations with people he was in the war with. Lots of little rhymes. The punchline of the chapter is that it is nonsense because the bombing of Dresden was a massacre and massacres are nonsense and should not be celebrated. Also WW2 was fought by children. Any WW2 movie with anyone over 21 is BS.
Chapter 4:
Billy gets abducted by tralmafadorians on the night of his daughter s wedding. The tralmafadorians think it's stupid when Billy says why me. There's a fun deal before that where Billy gets unstuck in time and watches a war movie backwards and the bombers are sucking the destruction back up and flying back to England and the bombs are dismantled by women and the chemicals are put back in the ground where they can't hurt anyone.
Billy is back on the WW2 prisoners train. He kicks and screams when he sleeps so nobody wants to sleep near him. On page 100 the hobo and Roland Weary die. So it goes.
They get off the train at a prison. Billy is given a small awful coat. Everyone else has great coats of former military people. Their bodies are measured and Billy's is very bad. Edgar derby has one of the best. Paul Lazaro who has sworn yo kill Billy has the worst body. He is a bad person too.
Billy goes back in time to be a baby. That's neat. He is back with the tralmafadorians and they tell him that only Humans have any concept of free will. No other planet they have encountered has this concept.
Chapter 5:
There are English pows from the beginning of the war at the camp and they are living like kings. They get TONS of supplies from the red cross due to a clerical error.
O e tells Billy that the coat he has was given to him as an insult and the Germans are laughing at him and he can't let the Germans do that to him. They are putting on a play of Cinderella and Billy loses it and is taken to the hospital.
There's more stuff on the tralmafadorian zoo that 44 years old bulky is in. They ask him a question about what he likes on tralmafadore VS earth and he says the lack of war and they explain that they have tons of war and they choose not to look at that time.
There is a part where Billy is at the latrine in the pow camp and people are having problems at both ends because they have been in war and they were not prepared for the rich food the English gave them. The author says there was a guy who lost everything but his brains and then says there they go, meaning his brains and says that was him. So he definitely is not Billy.
Chapter 6:
Billy is back in the pow hospital. He is with the older English teacher from Indiana and Paul Lazaro who is the only human body worse than Billy's and swore to what's his face that he would get revenge on Billy for him.
Billy feels radiation coming from lumps in his coat and the. Lumps tell him not to investigate them but tells him they can work miracle if left alone.
Lazaro is a bad guy. He hurts dogs, he talks about all the bad things he is going to do when he gets home.
The English reinforce how important appearance is in a pow camp. If you stop caring about your appearance it's a slippery slope to death. You stop standing up straight, than you stop shaving, then you stop washing an dthen you stop getting out of bed and you stop talking and you die.
There are boots that were painted silver for the ci derella play and Billy takes them cause he has no shoes and they are a perfect fit. Good stuff.
They are taken on a Train to Dresden. They are assured by the English that they are safe as Dresden is of no strategic importance and will not be bombed.
Billy is now wearing a comical outfit with his woman's coat and silver boots. Some German is offended by this and says a bunch of stuff to him and Billy doesn't get it. He's just wearing the clothes he could get his hands on. The lump in the coat turns out to be a 2 carrot diamond.
Chapter 7
This one is short. Everyone in Dresden is cold and hungry. The city is full to bursting with refugees from German towns that have been bombed. We don't get to see the city building lights light up one by one at night cause they don't turn on lights cause of the threat of bombing. A nice old lady gives them soup and bread and notes that one of them is too young, one is too old and what the hell is Billy supposed to be? Just trying to stay warm, all the real soldiers are dead, so it goes. They work in a vitamin syrup factory. Everyone is breathing the law and taking spoons of the syrup.
Chapter 8
There's an American trying to convert other Americans into nazis. The old from Indiana calls him some unkind things. He calls Nazism a disease that needs to be erased from the face of the world. It would be cool if that was what had happened.
Billy is transported though time to the argument he had with his daughter and she says she could just kill that Kilgore Trout cause all this time travel nonsense was his fault. Now we go to when Billy meets Kilgore Trout for the first time. He works for the newspaper organizing the paper Boys. He is encouraging them to sell the Sunday paper. One of the paper boys is a girl. Billy talks to Kilgore about his books. Cut to Billy at an a adversary party and a barber shop quartet is singing and Billy gets all emotional and doesn't know why. Kilgore is there and asks Billy if it's cause ehes seen through a time. Portal. Bony says its not. But it kinda is cause the barber shop quartet reminds him of the four nazi guards that were there after the bombing was over in Dresden. All the pows came out of there meat locker alive while thousands of people were dead in their homes from the bombing. Those four nazi guards reminded him of a barber shop quartet. So now as an old man he gets emotional about barbershop quartets. They talk about how from a distance Dresden looked like the surface of the moon with all the craters. They look smooth from a distance but they aren't and they are treturous to walk through. Billy makes it with the guards and a hundred pows to a farm house. They sleep in the barn there.
Chapter 9
The way Billy's wife dies is that Billy was in a plane wreck. She was all upset and got in a car accident. She was dumb and drove away without the exhaust system. She died from carbon monoxide poisoning pulling into the hospital parking lot.
There's stuff about Bertram Rumfoord and his trophy wife but mostly that part is to educate us about the a bomb and v2 rockets and the British grand slam and other bombs. More people died in the bombing of Dresden than the abomb dropped on Hiroshima. So it goes.
Billy wakes up in the hospital in Vermont and sees his son Robert who has a rough teen period but now he is a Vietnam War hero. Billy has been in the hospital while his wife died and had a funeral and everything. He hasn't been able to talk or anything so rumsfoord thinks he should be put down.
Billy tells rumsfoord that he was at dresden during the bombing. Billy travels back to the end of WW2 and now he has a gun. It's a bad ww1 gun. Some Germans find him and the other pows. Those poor horses. Russians arrest everyone except the horses. Billy goes back to America on a slow ship.
Billy has a very tralmafadorian conversation about Dresden in the hospital.
Now Billy is in a porno shop in New York city and buys a Kilgore trout book. He sees a book about Montana w8ldhack, the lady the tralmafadorians had kidnapped for their zoo so Billy had a mate. This Is the night Billy goes on the radio and embarrassed his daughter.
Montana is on the ship with Billy. She doesn't have the same enthusiasm for Kilgore trout that Billy has. Am I a bad person for enjoying page 267 more than anything?
Chapter 10
The tralmafadorians love Charles Darwin. It's good to have nice moments to travel back to. Billy is old now and he visits Dresden with an old war buddy. If you're ever in Cody Wyoming ask for wild Bob. There are too many people.
Now Billy is in 1945 in Dresden. They are digging up bodies. So many bodies to be carried out of the holes. People died breathing in the diseased air of rotting bodies. So they just cremated the bodies on the spot instead of carrying them out of the holes.
Edgar Darby and his fine body were executed for stealing a teapot. The end.
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