|
|
Cat’s Cradle (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
| Category:
Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Written in an outlandish style of satire and suspense, Cat's Cradle offers a pessimistic outlook and reveals our absurdities in politics, religion, and science. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
Detail |
Author |
Description |
Excerpt |
Reviews |
|
|
|
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Pub. in: September, 1998
ISBN: 038533348X
Pages: 304
Measurements: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00457
Other information:
|
|
Rate this product:
|
|
- MSL Picks -
Cat's Cradle is basically a unique and creative look at the end of the world. To me, Vonnegut is arguing that the dizzying progress of science and technology in the last century has made the total destruction of life on earth a frightening possibility, and it's not just the "bad guys" that threaten humanity with annihilation: an equal threat comes from the well-intentioned but short-sighted, from the lonely or downtrodden, from the greatest superpower to the tiniest and poorest island nation.
In other words, truly destructive technologies, once they exist, become a danger to the entire world regardless of the "good" or "bad" reasons for which they were created, and regardless of whether they fall into the hands of the "good guys" or the "bad guys." Vonnegut seems to be saying that scientific advancements cannot exist in a moral vacuum, that scientists should take responsibility for what it is they are creating. The need for extreme care in creating such destructive technologies is made all the more pressing because, according to Vonnegut, we as human beings are addicted to classifying ourselves into nations and religions and political parties, and then killing and dying for these classifications.
Perhaps this is the importance of Vonnegut's invention of Bokononism, the religion of the island nation of San Lorenzo: if Bokonoism offers one real truth to its followers, it's that the entire religion is made up, a "shameless lie." The result is that, instead of striving to live Bokononism as the only possible truth, Bokononists are easy going; they realize from the start that Bokononism itself is just another example of the uniquely Bokononist notion of "foma," i.e., "harmless untruths that make you brave and happy and kind." If that's the case, there's no reason to kill others who disagree with you; instead you can focus on what really matters, which for Vonnegut seems to mean creating satisfying connections with other people.
Cat's Cradle, then, is not only Vonnegut's plea for responsibility in the development of technology, but, perhaps even more fundamentally, it's the story of how we ought to simply learn to get along with each other better. Luckily, it also happens to be a wildly funny, perfectly crafted piece of creative fiction. Great book.
(From quoting Jesse van Sant, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
|
|
- Better with -
Better with
Breakfast of Champions
:
|
|
Customers who bought this product also bought:
 |
Fahrenheit 451 (Paperback)
by Ray Bradbury
A spooky and yet uplifting book that describes a future world dreadfully lacking emotion, human connection, and intellectual depth. |
 |
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by Joseph Heller
Brilliantly written and fiirst published in 1961, Catch-22 is a timeless classic satire on the murderous insanity of war. |
 |
Breakfast of Champions (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
Hilarious and comedically chaotic, Breakfast is the pinnacle of Kurt Vonnegut, who knows how to dish up satire like none other. |
 |
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by J. D. Salinger
|
|
|
Kurt Vonnegut is a master of contemporary American literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as "a true artist" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He is, as Graham Greene has declared, "one of the best living American writers".
|
|
From the Publisher:
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers. Cat's Cradle is one of this century's most important works... and Vonnegut at his very best.
|
1
The Day the
World Ended
Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
Jonah – John - if I had been a Sam, I would have been Jonah still - not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.
Listen:
When I was a younger man - two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago…
When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.
The book was to be factual.
The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then.
I am a Bokononist now.
I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic of San Lorenzo.
We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that bought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.
2
Nice, Nice, Very Nice
"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass."
At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, "Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.
It is as free-form as an amoeba.
In his "Fifty-third Calypso," Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:
Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen -
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice very nice -
So many different people
In the same device.
3
Folly
Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person's trying to discover the limits of his karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes that such investigations are bound to be incomplete.
In the autobiographical section of The Books of Bokonon he writes a parable on the folly of pretending to discover, to understand:
I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be.
And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things."
"Give it to your husband or your ministers to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand."
She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed.
She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].
4
A Tentative Tangling
Of Tendrils
Be that as it may, I intend in this book to include as many members of my karass as possible, and I mean to examine all strong hints as to what on Earth we, collectively, have been up to.
I do not intend that this book be a tract on behalf of Bokononism. I should like to offer a Bokononist warning about it, however. The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is this:
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
My Bokononist warning in this:
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
So be it.
…
About my karass, then.
It surely includes the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the so-called "Fathers" of the first atomic bomb. Dr. Hoenikker himself was no doubt a member of my karass, though he was dead before my sinookas, the tendrils of my life, began to tangle with those of his children.
The first of his heirs to be touched by my sinookas was Newton Hoenikker, the youngest of his three children, the younger of his two sons. I learned from the publication of my fraternity, The Delta Upsilon Quarterly, that Newton Hoenikker, son of the Noel Prize physicist, Felix Hoenikker, had been pledged by my chapter, the Cornell Chapter.
So I wrote this letter to Newt:
"Dear Mr. Hoenikker:
"Or should I say, Dear Brother Hoenikker?
"I am a Cornell DU now making my living as a free-lance writer. I am gathering material for a book relating to the first atomic bomb. Its contents will be limited to events that took place on August 6, 1945, the day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
"Since your late father is generally recognized as having been one of the chief creators of the bomb, I would very much appreciate any anecdotes you might care to give me of life in your father's house on the day the bomb was dropped.
"I am sorry to say that I don't know as much about your illustrious family as I should, and so don't know whether you have brothers and sisters. If you do have brothers and sisters, I should like very much to have their addresses so that I can send similar requests to them.
"I realize that you were very young when the bomb was dropped, which is all to the good, My book is going to emphasize the human rather than the technical side of the bomb, so recollections of the day through the eyes of a 'baby, if you'll pardon the expression, would fit in perfectly.
"You don't have to worry about style and form. Leave all that to me. Just give me the bare bones of your story.
"I will, of course, submit the final version to you for your approval prior to publication.
"Fraternally yours - "
5
Letter from
a pre med
To which Newt replied:
"I am sorry to be so long about answering your letter. That sounds like a very interesting book you are doing. I was so young when the bomb was dropped that I don't think I'm going to be much help. You should really ask my brother and sister, who are both older than I am. My sister is Mrs. Harrison C. Conners, 4918 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana. That is my home address, too, now. I think she will be glad to help you. Nobody knows where my brother Frank is. He disappeared right after Father's funeral two years ago, and nobody has heard from him since. For all we know, he may be dead now.
"I was only six years old when they dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, so anything I remember about that day other people have helped me to remember.
"I remember I was playing on the living-room carpet outside my father's study door in Ilium, New York. The door was open, and I could see my father. He was wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. He was smoking a cigar. He was playing with a loop of string. Father was staying home from the laboratory in his pajamas all day that day. He stayed home whenever he wanted to.
"Father, as you probably know, spent practically his whole professional life working for the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium. When the Manhattan Project came along, the bomb project, Father wouldn't leave Ilium to work on it. He said he wouldn't work on it at all unless they let him work where he wanted to work. A lot of the time that meant at home. The only place he liked to go, outside of Ilium, was our cottage on Cape Cod. Cape Cod was where he died. He died on a Christmas Eve. You probably know that, too.
"Anyway, I was playing on the carpet outside his study on the day of the bomb. My sister Angela tells me I used to play with little toy trucks for hours, making motor sounds, going 'burton, burton, burton' all the time. So I guess I was going 'burton, burton, burton' on the day of the bomb; and Father was in his study, playing with a loop of string.
"It so happens I know where the string he was playing with came from. Maybe you can use it somewhere in your book. Father took the string from around the manuscript of a novel that a man in prison had sent him. The novel was about the end of the world in the year 2000, and the name of the book was 2000 A.D. It told about how mad scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole world. There was a big sex orgy when everybody knew that the world was going to end, and then Jesus Christ Himself appeared ten seconds before the bomb went off. The name of the author was Marvin Sharpe Holderness, and he told Father in a covering letter the he was in prison for killing his own brother. He sent the manuscript to Father because he couldn't figure out what kind of explosives to put in the bomb. He thought maybe Father could make suggestions.
"I don't mean to tell you I read the book when I was six. We had it around the house for years. My brother Frank made it his personal property, on account of the dirty parts. Frank kept it hidden in what he called his 'wall safe' in his bedroom. Actually, it wasn't a safe but just an old stove flue with a tin lid. Frank and I must have read the orgy part a thousand times when we were kids.
|
|
| View all 14 comments |
The New York Time (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A free-wheeling vehicle... An unforgettable ride! |
Books And Bookman (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
Vonnegut's most accomplished novel. |
Barron Laycock (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
I once heard Kurt Vonnegut speak at a commencement ceremony at a Bennington College in Vermont in 1970, when his daughter was graduating with a bachelor's degree. He spoke quite eloquently about what graduates should do with their lives, and I remember parts of that wonderful speech as if it were yesterday. Indeed, Kurt Vonnegut is a writer of prodigious talents, a visionary seer disguised as an ordinary man, a contemporary wise man who speaks to us in amusing yet frightening allegories about the nature of contemporary man and the absurd technological culture he lives in today. This book, Cat's Cradle, is among his finest novels, like most of his others, a work combining a wry sensibility with an amusing ability to confect sweet sounding yet bitter- tasting tales of mayhem and woe.
The plot of Cat’s Cradle is pure science fiction, and revolves around work to create a way to help American tanks more mobile in rain soaked and muddy circumstances, when such an ability to transverse the impossible terrain would give our guys in their tanks an overwhelming advantage over their evil foes. Our protagonist is a scientist working on isotope of water (called Ice-Nine) that has the ability to crystallize water into a unique form of ice that does not need freezing temperatures to crystallize. With such a capability, the Army could solidify the water in the mud, making it firm and allowing our tanks to roll over it with impunity. The problem is that once introduced into the ground, the compound has untoward effects no one had considered. And the basis for the cautionary tale is spun.
All of this is just the premise that allows Vonnegut to explore the far reaches of human behavior and the insane ways in which our culture is operating. It is a brilliant work, one that delves into the deep recesses of what we are, why we are that way, and where we seem to be going. It is at once a satire, a running commentary on the nature of our institutions, and the way in which we lie, cheat, and pretend to be people we are not, and as in his wild and wacky novel Mother Night, shows why you should be afraid of who it is you are pretending to be, for it may come back to haunt you. This book literally explodes with a plethora of stinging insights into contemporary society, and constitutes a brilliant, albeit ironic, diagnosis of what a contradiction it is to be a human being trying to live a sane life in an insane world. This really is magical mystery tour, and one that will take your breath away. Enjoy!
|
Alex Frantz (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
This early classic was one of the books that made Vonnegut famous, and probably the first book where he really found successfully his particular style of black comedy. (He aimed for something similar in Sirens of Titan, but that book, with some fine moments, is uneven and significantly less successful.)
The first persom narrator is known only as Jonah, although his first sentence is the allusive, "Call me Ishmael." He is writing a book about the atomic bomb that leads him to research on the late Dr Felix Hoenneker, a brilliant scientist who viewed science with pure curiosity. Never caring about the practical implications of his work, Hoenneker made no dis- tinction between working on the atom bomb and investigating how turtles retract their heads.
Seeking to learn more about Hoenneker from his surviving children, Jonah follows them to the impoverished island nation of San Lorenzo, loosely based on Haiti. There he is introduced to Bokononism, the dominant religion of the island which, among its many unusual features, openly proclaims that it is a fraud. A good part of this rather short novel is a detailed discussion of Bokononism, which is one of Vonnegut's most memorable creations.
While on the island, Jonah also learns more about ice 9, the final project that Hoenneker worked on. Ice 9 is ice with an entirely different crystalline structure from regular ice, which has the trait of freezing at normal temperatures. Thus, if you mixed ice 9 with any body of water, it would promptly freeze. Jonah soon finds reasons to doubt his assumption that ice 9 could not really exist.
Jonah's adventures come to a grim if strangely appropriate finale - I don't think Vonnegut has ever written a novel with a happy ending. The moral of the story is, it seems, that life is entirely without meaning or purpose. And yet, the humor and vitality of the novel give it an energy and even joy strangely at contrast with its depressing message.
|
View all 14 comments |
|
|
|
|
