گهواره گربه همه چیز هست؛ کمدی، درام، سیاست، دین و مذهب، علمی-تخیلی، تاریخی، پادآرمانشهری، آرمانشهری، تا خرخره انتقادی، فلسفی و حتی سس ماستی، دیوانه وار، سمّی، هیجان انگیز، پوچ، چرت و پرت و... گهواره گربه عین اسمشه؛ یه بازیه که از یه کلاف گوریده و پر از سرْ نخ تشکیل شده. ونه گوت عین یه مهندس و اهل علم واقعی، تک تک اجزای این رمان رو کنار هم گذاشته؛ به قدری سبک نوشتار و ساختار بندی کتاب هم ظریف و هم زمخته که حرف نداره و صد البته، کلی حرف توش داره!

من واقعا نمیدونم راجع به این رمان باید چطور و چی بنویسم. بسی لذت بردم. البته یه جاهاییش دچار اطناب و افت ریتم شد به نظرم اما، آرامشی بود برای یه طوفان سنگین. ونه گوت تو این رمان یکی از جالب ترین دین های داستانی رو خلق کرده که از هر نظر، حرفی برای گفتن به انسان مدرنم داره. جالب اینجاس که نویسنده گردن دین و مذهب رو تو این رمان میزنه اما بر سر جسدش گریه میکنه و با آیین خودش این جسد رو، برای تبدیل شدن به وسیله ای برای ادامه زندگی، احیا میکنه.

این رمان تشکیل شده از 100 و خرده ای خرده روایت بهم چسبیده که به صورت لایه لایه و عین یه پازل خفن، به هم چفت میشن و یه پایان معرکه رو رقم میزنن. گهواره گربه به طرز شگفت انگیزی پره از ارجاع به ادبیات، سیاست، تاریخ، افراد مهم، اصطلاحات علمی و...
ترجمه بهرامی واقعا خوبه و حذفیاتش واقعا و واقعا کمه. چند صفحه ای رو تطبیقی خوندم و لذت بردم از ترجمه. پانویسی های بهرامی هم خوبه اما، باز هم کلی ارجاع و... هست که برای یه خواننده حرفه ای میتونه خیلی جالب باشه که مترجم اونارو یا جا انداخته یا نتونسته پیدا کنه. گهواره گربه البته به زبان اصلی خودش یه صفای دیگه داره و برای کسی که اطلاعات عمومی بالاترب داره، جذاب ترم می‌تونه باشه. باید بگم که یک کاربر به نام manny rayner ریویو انگلیسی بسیار خوبی از این کتاب نوشته که اولین ریویو این صفحه هم هست. پیشنهاد میدم حتما بخونیدش.

راستش نمیدونم چه حسی به این کتاب دارم.
بنظرم قابل تحمل بود.چون خوندنش حوصلمو سر نبرد،اما بااین حال موضوع کتاب مورد علاقم نبود.
بااین وجود دوست دارم بقیه ی آثار این نویسنده رو بخونم:)

Daily Vonnegut – Day 1.

I figured it’s time for me to do a run through of all of Vonnegut’s novels (I don’t think I can be arsed to read the short stories quite yet) before I am out of my 20s and even more likely to encounter them with a touch of cynicism and a sigh. I read Slaughterhouse-Five some years back and remember enjoying it. Let’s do this. In doing so, I will also chip at William Rodney Allen’s Understanding Kurt Vonnegut, which I will quote and refer to throughout my reviews, if need be.

I think Cat’s Cradle is a decent enough book. It’s not really that funny, as many would have you believe. I think that has always turned me off of books, when they are advertised as being supremely funny, and I realize that I’m either a boring old fart who takes himself too seriously or that the hype is coming from youngsters (or that I have made a false dichotomy). When the satire is dripping off the pages, I usually have to take a lot of breaks while reading. This is despite the fact that the chapters in this book were as short as half a page each.

It is not difficult to make the connections between Felix Hoenikker, ice-nine, and their real world counterparts. It feels as though Vonnegut began with the goal of an allegory in mind and worked his way to the allegory, putting the pages of the book together with that allegory as the only guiding light. Because of that, I can see a reality in which I read this as a 15 year old and start to see, slowly, that this is…. An allegory! Whoah! Best book I have ever read. But alas, that was not the case now. It even has all of the topics that would start to shake the foundations of any teenager, questioning religion, life, death, love, and the meaning of it all, all while remaining safely behind the plexiglass of irony. So it would probably be a weapon in the hands of any precocious high schooler who has just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. The Bokononism bits are pretty awesome though.

Allen brings something to my attention which I almost completely missed, absorbed as I was in the jokes and goofs and gafs: the narrator draws a parallel between himself and Moby-Dick’s Ishmael, as he calls himself Jonah. Or John. So, as Allen puts it, “he is a spiritual Ishmael… who shadows forth the dire warning that we must change our ways if we are to avoid universal annihilation… Vonnegut implies that science has led us so far astray that the enormous cry of Old Testament prophecy is needed to correct the course of life.” Surface level reading on my end, but that’s nothing new.

Here are two sections that stood out to me:

“How do you think the people of San Lorenzo would take to industrialization?” I asked the Castles, father and son.
“The people of San Lorenzo,” the father told me, “are interested in only three things: fishing, fornication, and Bokononism.”
“Don’t you think they could be interested in progress?”
“They’ve seen some of it. There’s only one aspect of progress that really excites them.”
“What’s that?”
“The electric guitar.”

And

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”