Book Talk: Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

Short explanation: we have been on a reading kick lately, sharing books and what not. So we have decided to post some reviews, really short essays, on what we gathered from the books. Really, there is no point in a review: it only tells you what one person liked or did not like. What is important, though, is what has been successfully communicated from author to reader, and what the reader has learned or discovered.

Vonnegut, for me, is a sharp pen.

And a prophet.

When reading Vonnegut, I think it important to understand a quote found in Cat's Cradle by the religious figure, Bokonon. This radically misunderstood clairvoyant writes in his seminal text, The Books of Bokonon, "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies." Vonnegut, as can be said of most great art, uses lies to reveal truth. Many of the places and ideas that Vonnegut uses, he strings together from his own personal life, making a distorted collage with genius prose. Cat's Cradle, being his first major release, is no different.

The book bases itself upon a writer, known only in the book as "John", who narrates his own journey through the process of writing a book on the life of Felix Hoenniker, one of the "Fathers of the Atom Bomb," as Vonnegut writes. The journey takes John through an encounters with Hoenikker's children (as Hoenikker at this point is dead), his relatives, other scientists he worked with, and most importantly, the island of San Lorenzo, where the many plot lines tie together. I have always been impressed with the way Vonnegut uses his plots to comment on the idea of determinism. Much of the world's progression and digression can be explained through his point of view as right place right time, or the opposite.

Of course I am not going to reveal the ending, because especially this early in his career, Vonnegut has a uniquely peculiar and enlightening way of ending his books: it's almost like a period dressed as a question mark.

However, I do think some of the ideas proposed are worth discussing. First is the idea of determinism, as mentioned above. Determinism, in one of its understandings, is the idea that while the infinite tangle of choice and chance in this world can only work out to one conclusion, that conclusion is constantly influenced by the power of human will to change it. While each human has the will to change their future, that change will incur a new set of unavoidable decisions and diversions.

In Cat's Cradle, this idea is manifest both in the way the plot comes together and the way the San Lorenzo group approach John about Bokononism. Many of them seem convinced at certain points, well before John even had picked up one of the rare copies of The Books of Bokonon, or knew much about Bokononism for that matter, that he would be a devout Bokononist very soon. As well, it seems as if every character in the book has some sort of important influence on the eventual outcome of the novel. The way in which Vonnegut places the characters in the plot always seems to have a "he just happened to do this, which just so happened to do this, which just so happened to make him be the leader of the country." Some would take this as Vonnegut stretching to try and create a fluid plot. In my opinion, its a deep understanding of the way consequence works. This is the very reason why images of the future from even 30 years ago seem so childish and science fiction. The future we meet is much more a collage of broken fragments and random offshoots than it is a definitive projection from the past. Vonnegut uses this idea in many of his books, over-foreshadowing to show that it doesn't matter that the future is strange and unfamiliar; it's the details between that create the pearl.

In an interview with Jon Stewart, Vonnegut has a few quotes that I wanted to share:

"My training is scientific, but I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. This engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why and where evolution is headed. That's why we have giraffes and hippopotami and the clap." Hilarious.

But more pertinently:

"I think we are terrible animals. I think our planet's immune system is trying to get rid of us and it should."

Another commentary held within Cat's Cradle is one in which Vonnegut shows what a danger we are to ourselves. In a given ant colony, for example, the ants do not plot against one another, form territories, and destroy each other for land or religious equality, they have no brain to understand these things. They simply work together and create vast ecosystems of production and consumption based intelligence less than that of a newborn baby. We, however, can't seem to get our heads around something so dumb and obvious as racism; so much so that we will actually kill and harm another from our own species because of it. In Cat's Cradle for instance, John is interested in the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and what Hoenikker was doing. He had created something that took the lives of around 66,000 people instantly. What a shame it is that we create situations where such a thing is necessary. Of course, the complexity of that situation and the people within it are part of a much larger debate.

I think the important thing is that our education systems give a greater and more encompassing view of human history. If one can see the jagged path we have come so far, one can tell that though we many problems with the state of the human species today, many forces are working in the favor of progress, whether it is the work of our smartest people on fixing our energy problems, or people sitting down and prioritizing the way we deal with global issues. I believe the information age has created a larger community of people who want to be aware and alert to what is going on in the world, and hopefully, if we elect the correct leaders and train the best thinkers, we will be able to solve the problems cleanly.

I think that is enough for now, but in conclusion, fantastic book. I would suggest reading it. The story behind it is great, too.