Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cat's Cradle
Book Review: Disappointing and Mostly Lifeless
Summary: 2 Stars
Slaughterhouse Five is one of my five favorite books ever. I keep trying to find something else from Vonnegut that exudes the same energy and necessity of that book. Cat's Cradle didn't do it for me. At the end of the day, the novel felt naked and didactic, like an excuse to shout a world-view. It felt self-indulgent to me.
There are a few areas in which a novel can excel in order to spark interest: plot, character, setting, and language/style. The Greatest Novel of All Time probably excels at all of those -- but I don't think that novel's been written yet. If a writer can nail two or three, it's probably worth reading. Heck, if you completely kill on one of those four, the novel will probably do well. For me, Cat's Cradle doesn't excel at any of the above.
The plot is thin -- and given that it's intended as comedy, that's to be expected. Still, there's no point at which the main character faces a Problem, battles with Complications, and then either succeeds or fails. Instead, the book's tension is based on withholding a mystery from the reader -- what's the deal with the ice and why does the author keep hinting at how important it is? It's not a very gripping source of tension and, from the standpoint of plot alone, there's no reason not to turn to the last ten pages of the book and see how it turns out. I don't feel like I would've missed out on key plot points by doing so.
Characters in this novel are thin and two-dimensional (if that). Again, this is meant to be a comedy, or a parable maybe, so stock characters may be called for. But by not having any actual depth or texture in the characters, character does not provide a reason to care about the novel. The characters come off as so subservient to the Message and are so devoid of reality, that their idiosyncrasies feel arbitrary and manipulative rather than interesting.
I'm guessing Cat's Cradle defenders would argue this point with me, but I found that the novel's setting was practically non-existent. At least, I didn't come away from the book feeling like I Was There. The eventual San Lorenzo is sparsely described and, as with the characters, seems entirely subservient to the Message. I don't feel like I get the sense of another actual place -- it felt like it was all happening on a sound stage. To a certain extent, the same could probably be said for Slaughterhouse Five -- except that with Slaughterhouse Five, well, first off there was, in fact, more attention to setting details, but also SH5 builds a landscape out of the minds of its author and protagonist. In Cat's Cradle, we get so little from the narrator in terms of his way of thinking, this doesn't happen. Maybe it should have.
Finally the writing and style of the novel -- well, it's the trademark Kurt Vonnegut style, except that he did it better elsewhere. There are no coy self-references like occurred in SH5, no cunning self-deprecation, no fierceness of joy in the absurdity of language and the novel format. It's just sort of jaunty and tossed-off and having read SH5 previously, the writing in CC felt like a weak and unremarkable shadow of what Vonnegut eventually accomplished.
As a result, I come away from Cat's Cradle feeling like I'd just read a thinly masked agenda story. And unless you already cling (heh) *religiously* to its message, there's not much fun to be had. In terms of communicative efficiency, it would've been more profound for Vonnegut to have simply written the sentence "People believe in and do stupid things, which is especially problematic when they have access to nuclear arsenals." I didn't find anything in the novel that conveyed any other idea of any significance. And frankly, that message itself seems pretty dull in the modern world, especially without a fresher lens through which to view it.
All that said, while I didn't enjoy the book overall, I appreciated its brevity (that's not meant entirely back-handedly -- short novels rarely overstay their welcomes). Also, it's a very easy read, and there's a lot to be said for a writing style that allows for that. Unfortunately, I didn't find enough else in this one to make me care.
(PS, I've read some of the negative reviews of the book that knock it for being cynical and pessimistic. Er -- it's *Kurt Vonnegut*, it's *supposed* to be cynical and pessimistic. Cynicism in a novel can be done very well and its presence doesn't degrade the work any more than optimism necessarily would.)
Book Review: Disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
I really wanted to like this book. I loved "Breakfast of Champions."
But in "Cradle," I didn't connect with any of the characters or the story, and though I usually enjoy parodies of religion and apocalyptic themes, I thought the whole Bokononism thing was dumb and unoriginal. Too many ideas and concepts were forced into this book, none having a meaningful impact.
I only got through the first 100 pages, and I'm the type who ALWAYS finishes books. No more. Life's too short.
Book Review: Nice, Nice, Very Nice
Summary: 5 Stars
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing."
Having just finished reading and loving Slaughterhouse-Five, I wanted to move on to other Vonnegut works. I picked up Cat's Cradle a couple days later, and couldn't put it down. I was hooked from the beginning. I didn't find this book nearly as witty as Slaughterhouse Five, but I wasn't expecting it to be. It's an engaging look at the ultimate futility of mankind to make the right choices at the right times. The story is also filled with themes and morals for the reader to discover (e.g. ice-nine was created to put an end to mud, and the Bokononist cosmogony says God created man from mud).
I'm not sure which I liked better, this or Slaughterhouse Five; the only thing that I know for sure is that I will be getting another Vonnegut book as soon as possible.
Book Review: Like a fine wine, this has aged quite nicely
Summary: 5 Stars
I read Cat's Cradle back in the mid-'80s when I was in high school, and I liked it. On a whim, I dug it out to see what I'd think of it now that I have a few decades of pessimism under my belt. The verdict: it held up quite well, and I remembered why I went on a Vonnegut spree 20 years ago.
This is not a book for everyone, especially those who prefer "feel good" fluff. This is a dark comedy, and such things are an acquired taste. Likewise, this is not a book that you read for the plot so much as for its character studies and (especially) its social commentary.
Some of the impact of this book will quite likely be lost on younger readers who are not hip to the social circumstances of when it was written. Much in the same way as new viewers of Citizen Kane or readers of On The Road often go "what's the big deal?", Cat's Cradle is best enjoyed if you take into account what was available (and "acceptable") by comparrison in its contemporary setting. Certainly, America has its share of sardonic authors blasting the complascency bubble (Twain and Bierce, for instance) but Vonnegut shrewdly skewered the copascetic bubble of the early '60s in a way that was either shocking or refreshing, depending on your mind-set. Such things have increasingly become the norm, but Vonnegut was at the vanguard, and I think many authors delving into dark comedy and social parody take their cues from him.
Vonnegut's prose is a pleasure to read, full of wit, wry descriptions, and a "voice" that just flows off the page. This is also a quick read that quite likely will lull you in and make you want to go just one more chapter before stopping for the night.
Highly recommended.
Book Review: No Damn Cat, No Damn Cradle
Summary: 2 Stars
Cat's Cradle falls way short of expectations. Vonnegut has been said by others to be a satirical genius, but all his humor is lost on me. The story chronicles a man named Jonah, who attempts to make a novel regarding August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped. He then decides to write to Newt Hoenikker, the midget son of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the creators of the atomic bomb, to ask him what happened in his house on the day that the atomic bomb dropped. Jonah then on his way to do another story passes through Illium, New York, the place where Dr. Felix Hoenikker conducted the majority of his research on the atomic bomb and ice-nine, a form of ice that has a melting point of one hundred fourteen point four degrees Fahrenheit. While in Illium, he interviews many who knew Dr. Felix Hoenikker, including his former boss, about what the man who created the atomic bomb was really like. Another story then takes Jonah to the Republic of San Lorenzo, where another one of the sons of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, Major General Franklin Hoenikker is prominent in government. When the president, Miguel "Papa" Monzano falls ill and dies the logical choice to succeed him is Major General Franklin Hoenikker. Major General Franklin Hoenikker then strikes a deal with Jonah for Jonah to become president in exchange for Jonah marrying Mona Aamons Monzano, the most beautiful woman in San Lorenzo. At San Lorenzo, Jonah also finds a new religion, Bokononism, which admits to containing only lies. Despite this all the poor inhabitants of this dreadful island are devout Bokononists. The vast majority of Vonnegut's characters are utterly implausible, ranging from Zinka, a Ukrainian midget, Newt falls in love with, to Philip Castle, the homosexual one time fianc? of Mona Aamons Monzano, to Bokonon, a man who created a religion consisting of only lies and turned himself into a saint and the President of San Lorenzo into a villain. While the entirety of Cat's Cradle is a parody against religion, technology, government and society in general it is not comical at all.