Cats Cradle

Reread for fun.

I'm not sure what to say beyond wishing that more people would read Vonnegut. He's so good at pointing out the silliness and arbitrary and vainglorious nature of so many human endeavours. I suppose one might also point out that science and technology have often become the handmaidens of tragedy when they don't actively engage in ethical consideration of the implications of their research. I don't get the impression many of our technological innovators are doing that these days.

I have read Cat’s Cradle twice: once in high school, once in college. Yet I remember it vividly in both readings, and my responses were very different. It spoke to me each time, but in different ways. In high school, it somehow made me feel like I was a part of something. That seems arrogant now. In college, I could manage a similar sort of sense of belonging, but only as a mental exercise, the type that I used in my philosophy classes when doing my best to understand the point of view behind philosophies that were not my own. In high school, that sense of belonging never said anything like what I thought in college, which was, “This is clearly a product of the ‘60s.” (The pessimism reminds me of Logan’s Run and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.) Nonetheless, I enjoyed it in both readings, but for different reasons. I enjoyed the humor, but for different reasons. In high school, Bokononism felt like a big F-U to the world at large, while I appreciated the Nihilistic undercurrent to it in college. In the end, I’m left with the same conclusion that I have reached with other books that I have considered classics: each time I read them, I got something very different, based on where I was in my life. That certainly holds true here. I recommend that experience to anyone, particularly with one of the books that I consider one of the foundational books of science fiction!

3,5 stars /// one of the coolest ends-of-the-world I have ever read