“Cat’s Cradle” was my first Vonnegut, and I will fully admit that I… read… it… wrong. I had no idea who Vonnegut was at the time, what his style was about, that this was supposed to be satirical: so it just seemed fucking weird and disjointed and it left me scratching my head and wondering what the big deal was with Vonnegut. Luckily, I persisted, read some of his other work and figured it out. It seemed to me like it was time to revisit this classic, with a better understanding of what I was getting myself into.

This time around, I did find it funny, but funny in that very specific Vonnegut way, which makes me laugh and want to smack my head against a wall simultaneously. Maybe it’s the context in which I am reading it this time: I couldn’t help but wonder what good old Kurt would say if he could see the complete fucking mess that’s been made out of the pandemic, the climate crisis or even Facebook. We don’t have little chips of Ice 9 hanging around, but we are still self-destructing pretty efficiently…

A man who goes by the name of Jonah wants to write a book about the day the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, and seeks the perspective of the children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker – one of the scientists who created the bomb. His research will lead him to a small island in the Caribbean, where he will meet the very off Hoenikker children, but also other (typically Vonnegut-esque) quirky characters, an openly false religion (let that sink in) and a bio-weapon even more dangerous than the atomic bomb.

This is not my favorite Vonnegut, even after this second read, but it is one of his great books. I am always amazed by how fresh they feel, even of they were written more than 50 years ago: the world changes much more slowly than we like to think! Humanity’s ability to destroy itself out of pettiness and/or incompetence is nothing new, it just feels more and more like current events.

Já tudo terá sido dito sobre o autor de "Cama de Gato": hilariante, sábio, satírico inimitável. Como uma recém-chegada à sua escrita, posso acrescentar mais uns quantos epítetos: acutilante e deliciosamente desarmante.
Quando muitos escritores penam para escrever um livro, consigo imaginar Kurt Vonnegut a divertir-se tremendamente com a escrita desta obra. Não seria uma diversão tonta, claro, menos ainda utópica. De resto, a ilha de San Lorenzo, palco de grande parte da ação, é mesmo a antítese da ilha imaginada por More: a miséria grassa, a virtude escasseia, toda a gente finge não ter uma religião que segue deveras.
O título não podia ser mais revelador:
"É uma cama de gato. É um dos jogos mais antigos. Até os esquimós o conhecem. Há uns cem mil anos que os adultos entrelaçam fios de corda à frente da cara dos filhos. Não admira que os miúdos cresçam malucos. A cama de gato não passa de um monte de xis entre as mãos de alguém e as crianças olham, olham, olham e veem aqueles xis todos... E não há raio de gato nenhum, nem raio de cama nenhuma."
É isso. Chamem-lhe o que quiserem, mas é muito bom!

Old Kurt’s depressive gravitas really racheted up our national paranoia quotient with this, when it stormed onto the world stage like gloomy gangbusters.

As for myself, it just darkened my dark brown study into Mood Indigo.

That was because I was already Ice-Nined on the bitter effects of First Gen Mood Stabilizers in a brutally forgotten general office, so flatlined I didn’t know if I was punched, bored or reamed.

Another of the hard knocks that made me embrace a Christian Identity.

But Vonnegut was a member of the Greatest Generation, having become an exhausted infantryman by the end of WWII.

So his world-weariness combined with a zany imaginative paranoia to demand his own kinda practical & healthy outlet for his depression.

Wish I'd written stories in the 1970's...

Books like this, though, helped back then. They persuaded me that the struggle is real.

Guys, I still think on the average very few scientific geniuses are out to deep-freeze us, like in this book with the character of a poor misbegotten mastermind - so relax.

Vonnegut, the old soldier, was simply letting off steam.

And even in this novel there is humour!

Or at least dear old Kurt's Mother-Night brand of humour (ready for it?)...

For, in trying to ease the PTSD of his army experiences, Vonnegut has a tired old General say:

"Why can't anyone do something about all this MUD ( that my troops gotta deal with)!?"

Necessity is the mother of invention.

And so Ice-Nine is born.

So it goes...

And so, also, it is the beginning of the End.

And that at least, Meredith, was Vonnegut's final answer to your million dollar question: "what's the World COMING TO?"

Bad part is that we doped up hippies believed him.

This is one hell of a weird book! It started off quite interesting and really captured my attention but at about the halfway mark, it all started to go downhill and unravel. Up until then I was really loving it and I wish it had continued on that way because there really was potential for this to be a great book. But it just got so weird and convoluted that I completely lost interest and had to force myself to finish it.

Strange, at the start of this re-read of 5 early novels by the Man, based on my memory of my first read as a 20-something I'd have thunk that this would be one of my favourites, but no. Vonnegut always has about a baker's dozen balls in the air, of course, and though he almost always has them under control, with this one I found there to be centripetal forces at work, such that my metaphor now requires me to say something like he was throwing those (snow)balls (of ice-nine) at this reader and missing—or something.

Maybe the bleakest of his early books too, though that's not my reason for the relatively low rating...it being Vonnegut though, it was always diverting, entertaining and thought-provokingly surprising, just not in a way that felt like its dizzying array of elements cohered around its central concerns as well as I thought they should have.

Onward, then, to my absolute favourite of KV's (and final book for the 2022 segment of the re-read), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater!

Progress: scientific revolution, revolution number nine, ice-nine… Science is neutral and it may serve evil as readily as good…

After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said, ‘What is sin?’

Some invent powerful explosives and some invent new religions and it is hard to say which invention is more dangerous.

Well, when it became evident that no governmental or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.

There is a little ugly dystopia hidden within every big beautiful utopia…

Most people have read Cat's Cradle, so I won't bother to try and hide spoilers. Did you say you hadn't read it? Well, what are you waiting for? This isn't Ulysses, you know, it's short and funny! So, now that it's just us people who know the book, I want to say why I disagree with the criticism you often see, that it's too fragmentary. On the contrary, I think it's very focused, and makes its point with near-perfect economy and wit. There are two obvious themes. One is how the irresponsible use of science to construct ever more deadly weapons is probably going to end up destroying the whole world. The other is a wonderfully crazy take on religion. Each of these themes is satisfying in its own right; what's less clear is that they have anything to do with each other.

Let's look at the first theme. Vonnegut's scarily plausible thesis is that it won't be a question of some madman destroying the world on purpose. I love General Jack T. Ripper in Doctor Strangelove, the obvious movie parallel to this book, but I find him somehow less convincing than the series of deranged, helplessly incompetent people in Cat's Cradle. Felix Hoenikker, an obvious Asperger's type, invents Ice-9 in response to a casual question from the US military. His three damaged children get hold of the secret, and exploit it for their own petty ends. Plain, charmless Angela sells it to the Americans in exchange for a playboy husband; Newt, the midget, gives it to the Soviets for a dirty weekend on Cape Cod with a tiny Russian dancer; and, fatally, humorless Franklin sells it to "Papa" Monzano, who makes him a Major General in the largely imaginary army of San Lorenzo, a bankrupt state, I believe, loosely based on Haiti and the Dominican Republic. After that, things just proceed by themselves; nothing works in San Lorenzo, so why would you be able to successfully guard a doomsday device? And, sure enough, it gets used completely by accident.

The second theme is presented through Bokononism, a kind of Caribbean version of Christianity, and surely the best fictional religion ever devised. Is there any person here who's never tried boku maru? (Unfortunately, in real life it doesn't have the effect described in the book. Pity). Bokononism is the one thing that makes life worthwhile for Papa's miserable subjects. Officially, the religion is outlawed; in practice, everyone is a Bokononist, which makes their lives rich and meaningful. Everything about the religion turns out to be a lie, and there is even a technical term, foma, for the lies that make up its substance. None the less, Vonnegut succeeds admirably in showing what a good religion it is. The scene where Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald reads the Bokonist last rites to the dying Papa Monzano is funny, but also moving. I love the line "Nice going, God!", which expresses that particular sentiment with unusual clarity and feeling; it's extremely respectful, while pretending to be the exact opposite.

So, what is the connection between the two themes? I think in fact that Vonnegut tells you straight out, but since he does it at the beginning (a favorite ruse of crime writers), you don't quite notice it. He introduces Bokononism, and recounts its creation myth, which is absurd even by the standards of this magic realist genre. Then he cheerfully tells you that Bokonon himself admits that it's all lies. Finally, he comments, in one of his better-known quotes: "Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either". As already noted, Bokonon's wise lies in fact make an excellent religion.

Here's what I think he means by this. The potential destruction of all life on Earth isn't a very amusing subject. It's so horrifying that you can hardly think about it at all. But Vonnegut manages to present most of the book as a comedy, so that you are able to think about it, which we desperately need to do before it's all too late. By making it funny, he is formally lying to us, but these lies are more useful to us than the truth; we're in pretty much the same situation as the San Lorenzans, who couldn't survive without their mendacious religion.

People during the Cold War were, with good reason, scared shitless that the world was going to end soon in a nuclear holocaust. We came terrifyingly close during the Cuba Missile Crisis. (As Christopher Hitchens says, do you remember where you were the day JFK nearly killed all of us?) There were many books and movies intended to help people relate to what was going on. Some of them just presented the threat straight up, in as realistic a way as they could manage: the version I like most is Shute's On the Beach. But I would say that the mirror-reversed ones, like Cat's Cradle and Doctor Strangelove, were better. It's amazing how powerful a weapon humor is; I feel they did more to help persuade us not to blow ourselves up.

We need these people badly if we're going to stay sane. Can someone point me to a new Vonnegut, who knows how to make us laugh at global warming and the financial meltdown? I'd rather like to read him.

Description: Told with deadpan humour & bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon &, worse still, surviving it ...
Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...



When a turtle puts his head back into the shell, does its spine buckle or contract? I knew within ten minutes of listening that this was going to be waay too short.

The St Lorenzo National Anthem to Home, Home on the Range sent wine onto the screen.

n  
n    No damn cat
no damn cradlen  
n

Science is magic that works.

There were no smells. There was no movement. Every step I took made a gravelly squeak in blue-white frost. And every squeak was echoed loudly.

5* Mother Night
Cat's Cradle
3* Galápagos
3* Slaughterhouse-Five(wish to re-read)
3* God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
4* God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

Apocalyptic sci fi/utopia revolving around ice-nine (side effect of developing nuclear bombs), with lots of religious philosophy (Bokonism), i.e. that people need the reassurance of beliefs regardless of whether they are true or not - which they aren't.

Note to self: Before rereading, read Manny's review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Dictionary of Bokonism: http://bernd.wechner.info/Bokononism/...
Including:

boko-maru: The mingling of awareness. A Bokononist ritual during which two people press the soles of their bare feet together. Bokononists believe it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving that person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.
busy, busy, busy: What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

dynamic tension: Theory that good societies can be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times. Derived from a theory of Charles Atlas, that muscles can be built without bar bells or spring exercisers, by simply pitting one set of muscles against another.

karass: A team which unknowingly executes God's Will. Bokononists believe that all humanity is divided into such teams.

pool-pah: Shit storm. Wrath of God.

sinookas: The tendrils of one's life.

zah-mah-ki-bo: Fate, inevitable destiny.

“Într-o lume murdară, măcar eram în stare să ne curăţăm colţişorul nostru.”

O carte “ciudată”, care mi-a plăcut tare mult. Nu știu ce e atât de special la modul de scriere a lui K.V., dar nu poți să lași cartea din mână.
Cred că tema principală a acestui roman e puterea, de orice fel, lăsată în mâinile cui nu trebuie. Aceasta ar putea fi folosită ca armă, în cazul nostru există două mari forțe - știință și religia. Ambele ar putea deveni propriul “dușman” al prohovăduitorului lor.

“Problema cea mai mare a omenirii este că oamenii sunt superstiţioşi, în loc să aibă o gândire ştiinţifică. A spus că, dacă fiecare dintre noi ar studia mai temeinic ştiinţa, nu ar mai exista atâtea probleme.”

“Zicea că orice ar inventa un om de ştiinţă avea să ajungă până la urmă o armă. Spunea că nu vrea să-i ajute pe politicieni în războaiele lor de rrrahat.”

“orice om de ştiinţă care nu e în stare să-i explice unui copil de opt ani cu ce se ocupă este un şarlatan.”

“Cu cât dispunem de mai mult adevăr, cu atât devenim mai bogaţi.”

“Omul este rău. El nu face niciodată ceva care să merite făcut, şi nici nu ştie nimic care să merite ştiut.”

“Când a devenit limpede că nici o reformă administrativă sau economică nu poate schimba starea mizeră a populaţiei, religia a devenit singurul instrument al speranţei. Fiind atât de îngrozitor, adevărul era duşmanul oamenilor,”

“Toţi erau neîncetat actorii unei piese pe care o înţelegeau, pe care orice fiinţă omenească o putea înţelege şi aplauda.”

“Îi învaţă pe oameni numai minciuni. Omoară-l şi spune-le oamenilor adevărul.”

“Ştiinţa este magia care dă rezultate.”

“Sunt un om de ştiinţă deplorabil. Nu m-aş da înapoi de la nici un lucru, fie el şi neştiinţific, dacă pot uşura astfel suferinţa unui om. Nici un om de ştiinţă demn de acest nume nu ar putea spune asta.”

“Nu fi fraier! Închide cartea aceasta imediat! E plină de minciuni!”

One of my cat's favourite places to sleep around the family home in winter (since hot air rises).


Her name is Chabo. 12 years old as of October 4th.


3.5 stars.

„Като бокононист бих се съгласил с радост с всяко предложение да се отиде някъде. Както казва Боконон: „Странните предложения за пътешествия са уроци по танц от бога.“


За пореден път съм във възторг, предизвикан от отличното чувство за хумор на Кърт Вонегът! В своята „Котешка люлка“, той по изключително остроумен начин е разказал на пръв поглед комична история, чрез която всъщност подхвърля на читателите важни теми за размисъл. Авторът страшно иронично е представил зараждането на религия, управлението на „бананова република“, заплахата от апокалипсис, а и като цяло сложните човешки взаимоотношения, описвайки странното пътешествие на Йона до Сан Лоренсо и последвалите там чудновати и опасни събития...





„ - A кoe беше главното? - запитax.
- Доктор Брийд все ми повтаря, че главното в живота на доктop Хоуникър е била истината.
- Май не сте съгласна?
- Не знам дали съм съгласна, или не. Аз просто не мога да разбера кaк истината единствена може да бъде достатъчна, за да запълни човешкия живот.“


„Не ръстът прави човека мижитурка, а начинът, по който мисли.“


„- Но Боконон тaкa и не е бил заловен? - пoпитax aз.
- Maккeйб не беше чак толкова побъркан. Той никога не започна сериозно да търси Боконон. Иначе би било лесно.
-И защо не го е заловил?
- Maккeйб все още имаше акъл в главата cи, за да разбере, че без светеца, срещу когото водеше война, самият той няма нищо да струва.“


„— Зрелостта, така както аз я разбирам — каза той, — е да съзнаваш докъде се простират възможностите ти.
Не беше далеч от бокононисткото определение на зрелостта. „Зрелостта, учи ни Боконон, е горчиво разочарование, за което не съществува лек, освен ако не се сметне, че смехът лекува всичко.“


„История! — пише Боконон — Чети и плачи.“