Book # 26

Cat's Cradle

By Kurt Vonnegut

I think this was the strangest book I have ever read, and that includes some of the literature I read in AP English in High School. And it definitely wasn't what I was hoping for. It was a case of mistaken identity. I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury when I was a teenager, and really liked it, and when I saw a few used books by Kurt Vonnegut for sale at our library, I thought he was the author that had written F...451. Nope. Definitely not.

So the book is about a man named John, an author who is writing a book called "The Day the World Ended". He begins by researching the life of a Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the so-called fathers of the atomic bomb. His life becomes strangely twisted into the lives of Dr. Hoenikker's children and the destruction of the world through the invention of ice-nine. 

Although I found the book strangely absurd, there were a few parts that resonated with me. 

The first was when he told of sub-letting his apartment, while he was going to be away, to a nihilist, which word I had to look up. (These were the definitions: Nihilism is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Knowledge is not possible, or that contrary to popular belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such. The term nihilism is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws.) How positively delightful!

Upon returning, he found the fellow moved out and his apartment trashed...."he had run up three-hundred-dollars worth of long distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet....There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said 'Meow.' ....I have not seen Krebbs since...he served as...a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the (person's) own life, to an absurdity. I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaningless of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me. Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebb's mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done Mr. Krebbs, well done."

In relating that experience to myself, without going into a lot of detail, I will just say that there were some aspects of my life that were similar to my ex-husband's. And once I saw how ridiculous his behavior was, it made me feel strongly inclined to act differently. 

Well done ex-husband, well done!

The next part was so amusing to me. It is pretty long, otherwise I would copy it here. Long story short, John meets a woman on a flight to an island called San Lorenzo. She finds out that he is from Indiana and proceeds to go on and on and on about Hoosiers, famous Hoosiers and how they can be found in charge of things all over the world, and how they must stick together. Then she tells him that he must call her mom. 

"Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, "You call me Mom." 

"Uh Huh." he replies. 

"Let me hear you say it," she urged.

"Mom?"

She smiled and let go of my arm. 

(And this is the funniest part and I'm sure that you all know people with recordings like this!) 

"Some piece of clockwork had completed it's cycle. My calling Hazel "Mom" had shut it off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoozier to come along.

In telling this next part I find that I'm going to have to explain a bit more of the story, something that I really didn't want to do. San Lorenzo is an island that is a poor, worthless piece of rock in the middle of the ocean. One of the current leaders of the country is a "holy" man who founded their religion called Bokononism. He is writing a book called the "Books of Bokonon." John found a copy of the book, which actually has been banned, and the religion made illegal to practice. He shared the Fourteenth book of Bokonon, which was entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" "It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it:    'Nothing'."    Pretty depressing religion, eh?

Last one...

"Bokonon....had written a whole book about Utopias, The Seventh Book, which he had called Bokonon's Republic. In that book are these ghastly aphorisms: 

The hand that stocks the drug store rules the world. 

Let us start our republic with a chain of drug stores, 

a chain of grocery stores, 

a chain of gas chambers, 

and a national game. 

After that we can write our Constitution."

I almost want to read another of his books, just to see if they are all that strange and depressing. But I think I'll wait until I am bored out of my skull and have NOTHING else to do. lol....

Until Next Time ;o)