I got a second taste this year of Kurt Vonnegut’s dark humor with Cat’s Cradle. The story is narrated by Jonah, a writer who is interested in the life of the now-deceased scientist Felix Hoenikker, who apparently gave the world the atom bomb and has also bequethed his 3 children Ice-Nine which can freeze all water that it touches. We learn that Felix was a recluse and unempathetic person and meet his 3 children: Angela, Newton and Frank. The narrator ends up taking a plane ride to the Carribean island nation of San Lorenzo, where Frank has become the 2nd in line to the island’s aging dictator General Papa Lorenzo. A series of crazy events on that dirt-poor island lead to Jonah becoming the next leader and ends up freezing the entire world over!
The entire book is written as small chapters of a page each, so reading it feels fast and easy. Most of the characters in this story are influenced by a religion named Bokononism and its crazy edicts and practices pervade and entertain. The plot is a dark sarcastic look at dictatorships, American neo-colonialism, capitalism, religions and cults, and the inhumaness of scientific progress. It is written in a style that is truly unique to Vonnegut and much like his Player Piano is very unpredictable and enjoyable.
Rating: 4/5
ISBN: 9780385333481
The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is this:
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.
Back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.
The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor left him was when he approached the question of what people were really supposed to do with their time on Earth. He believed firmly that they were meant to build bicycles for him.