Kurt Vonnegut is one of those authors I have been avoiding forever because, well, he just sounds weird. I had never heard of Cat's Cradle actually--only works like Slaughter House Five, Breakfast of Champions, and a friend gave me a copy of Mother Night which I fully intend to read. Someday. Anyway, one of the reasons I've been avoiding his books is because I was under the impression they had something to do with science fiction and I'm not a fan. I would call elements of the plot "science fiction like" but this isn't anything to do with spaceships or aliens. A central part of the plot involves something called "ice nine" that has the capacity to freeze water and anything that water is in contact with so if you put some in one little stream all the oceans in the world would freeze almost instantaneously since they are all ultimately linked together.
Here's what the book jacket says about it: satirical commentary on modern man...apocalyptic tale...vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny....left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers...Well, you get the idea. Hilariously funny? Not so much. Slightly amusing? I would call that a stretch.
It is not a long book or a very difficult one to read. It is almost 300 pages with 127 chapters. The chapters have titles like "Vice-President in charge of Volcanoes" and "A Self-Supporting Squirrel Cage". Apparently, I'm just not on the same wavelength as Vonnegut. I didn't hate it but I didn't find anything particularly funny or well written or thought provoking about the whole book. Part of the plot is a theology called Bokonism that I'm sure is supposed to be some "hilariously funny" or satiric take on religion. It is peopled with "quirky" characters-- a midget, a calypso singer, a mad scientist, etc. The main character is a journalist who is attempting to write a story on people's recollections of the day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He gets way off course.
Vonnegut does have one or two things to say about society and people that I could appreciate --"'People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.'" And on a patriotic holiday honoring the war dead of the fictional San Lorenzo where some of the novel is set a big military exercise is planned. The American Ambassador sent to the island to lay a ceremonial wreath is clearly not acting his part when he observes "'Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns."
But mostly I didn't get a whole lot out of this book and don't know why it is on a list of great books. It left me pretty lukewarm on trying any more Vonnegut. And as Newt so astutely observes "No damn cat, and no damn cradle."
Next week: Ernie and Sandra both read Look Homeward, Angel
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