f13.net

RULES FOR THIS THREAD:

Do NOT post spoilers without making them supersmall. C'mon people, don't ruin the fun for everyone else.
Also, book discussions (or at least some I've sat down for) can get pretty heated. Politics is over thataway, so try to keep it civil; we don't need a book club troll.

They didn't have the book in the sci-fi area, I had to go to literature, alphabetical by author.  Lah-dee-fucking-dah!  The book's cover is pink, I don't want people on the subway thinking that I'm reading a girl's book so I will spend the rest of my work day painstakingly covering the pink with a thick black sharpie marker.

Accidentally read the first sentence.
You bastard.

Stickied.  By when are we all expected to have read the book?

01/23 01/17. Perhaps I should've been more specific.


Edit: 01/17 for spoiler-free discussion/reading deadline. 01/23 for discussion deadline.

So we read for two weeks, discuss for a week, then pick a new book?  I'm a book club virgin.

You're more than welcome to start discussion as soon as you finish. I'm already done.  :grin:

I was just hoping not to start on Noir until 01/23.

Except it has to be spoiler-free discussion until we think everyone's done, right?  Which means I'm going to just keep my mouth shut until the read-by deadline.

I think I see your point now. Perhaps it should be a week to read and a week to discuss. Originally I posted to only describe spoilers in supersmall text, but it doesn't seem feasible to do that for two weeks. Therefore, I propose we only run this spoiler free until 01/17.


This is a better idea.

Gonna run out and get this tonite, will start reading tomorrow.

You should put the deadline in the thread title and/or first post, methinks.

Local borders didn't have it :uhrr: Ordered from amazon though, should be here Mon.

Local Library does'nt have it, but uni does. I have to return a book there anyway (it's holidays till march!) so it's not that annoying... I have tried to read Vonnegut before and felt  :uhrr: though.

Good. You're halfway to complete understanding.  :drill:

For people too lazy to read you can watch "The Recruit" instead.  :awesome_for_real:

Edit: I have this sitting on a shelf at my mom's house. Hmm...probably also have it in one of my 20 or so unopened boxes of books. Bleah, guess I'll get a third copy.

So, you guys plan on plowing through these things in a week?

Am I the only person still posting on this game site that also still plays games?  :oh_i_see:


Pre-Post edit: 304 pages? Oh, not as bad as I would have thought.

I don't see why you have to close the discussion on the 23rd. You can keep discussing this book while reading the next one. It's only once you start discussing the next book (one week after you start reading it, IE the 30th) that you want to close this discussion up.

That also gives people a longer time to read the book if they're busy.

It's fairly large type and they were generous with the margins too.  I think the publisher wanted it to be over 300 pages and did whatever was necessary to make it happen.  There is also a lot of whitespace because there are so many chapters.

I think the two week deadline means you should be done by now and all spoilers are fair game not when discussion ends.


I hope someone is making an elaborate diagram of the character relations that I can cheat off of.

I just hope you guys are not gonna choose some longer behemoths. During the week, I wouldn't be home and ready to read anything until at least 7pm, if I am also not working a Gamestop evening as well.

Sure, I can read fast enough. I did it very well in college, but it's always preferable to take a more relaxed pace and really enjoy the work.

I meant that we'll be starting another book on the 23rd. Sorry if it was confusing. You can keep talking about this book for a year if you want, I don't care.  :uhrr:

Oh it was confusing allright!

I bought a copy today too.  Quite looking forward to this.

Normally I just read for the story.  For all you arty types, do you have any hints on reading a book in order to have a cogent discussion about it?

I think it is all about the raised eyebrows and pinky action. Tweed jackets and bent pipes and all like that.

I could be wrong though.

Vonnegut strictly smoked cigarettes. Marlboro Reds, I think.  :drill:

This is the first Vonnegut book I ever read. Good choice. Will probably make fans out of those new to him.

Unless you're stupid.

Screw Amazon.de

2 to 5 weeks delivering time.

I'll pick this up today.

I was surprised to see I didn't have it.

Sigil, I have to do the same.  :awesome_for_real: Apparently I lent it out to someone who never returned it. Motherfucker.

They probably burnt it, with your best interests at heart.  :-)

I went through this in a few hours, my copy's only got about 180 pages in it. I'll keep off returning it to the library until we actually start discussing it though.

I think book club people should get a "Granfalloon Member" title.

Got it. Looks like a short book (big text, heaps of white space and only 260 pages) especially compared to another I picked up at the same time (700 pages, bigger book, smaller text, little white space) but well... I'm 30 pages in to it and I just don't care. I hope it gets better.

Well, it's didn't get any better, but it sure was easy to finish. You've got some explaining to do cmlancas. I will refrain from commenting for the moment as I'd probably slip in some accidental spoilers in my ranting, and will hang on to the book for the discussion later.

Anyone who thinks the book is funny...  :ye_gods:

I thought it was pretty good.  Most of the funny is dark humour, one liners and such, plus the whole Bokononism.  I did some searching and I don't understand how he used this book as his thesis for an M.A. though...

The dark humor is not original, it's just that boring ugh stuff. I think I chuckeled about three times and didn't laugh out loud once. Maybe it's because I've read other books that do it better, or maybe it's just because I found the characters so lifeless that I didn't get engaged enough to see the funny of the situations, but it didn't work for me. The whole Bokononism was a trial.  Bad poetry and silly theology/philosophy are only funny if done really well and in moderation. A whole book of it? Not so great.

I believe for a M.A. in English you can possibly do it in 'Creative Writing'. So he'd have the novel and an exegisis, I expect.

I haven't read enough modern literature to know if something is original or not.  The book's pretty old, while I agree it's not original in the present day for all I know this might be the guy who first started putting humor into a doomsday novel.  Maybe people like Douglas Adams got their inspiration from this and built on it.

Sort of like how if someone were to read an Agatha Christie book now and at the end say "that was unoriginal and terribly clichéd".  The problem with that line of thinking is that she actually invented those clichés and back in the day it was new and fresh.

But as I said I have no idea if that is the case for Vonnegut.

Edit: A quick wiki (if that can be trusted) of Adams lists Vonnegut as one of his influences.
Edit2: I apologize for using the term "back in the day", I re-watched a couple seasons of The Wire over the weekend and it is apparently affecting my speech patterns :awesome_for_real:.

Thing is, many of Christie's books are good despite the fact (I have read many of them). :) You can do something first and do it well. Anyway I don't want to be negative, I'd rather be critical, so my comaplints will wait for the time I can provide more explination.

On the M.A. thing I read a little from http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2007/04/13/alumnus-vonnegut-dead-at-84/ (the link given at wikipedia):


So that explains that.

That's pretty much my impression, though I'm only halfway through.  I like what he's trying to do.  There's just other authors that do it better.

Reading some more of his biography it says he was a prisoner of war in Dresden when it was fire bombed.  My grandfather was one of the bomber pilots on that attack, he got shot down and became a POW after the raid.  I thought that was kind of interesting since the book is about the web of connections and such.  I'd say the link is more of a granfalloon than karass though :-).

Is this the book club or the whiny bitch club?

Jesus Christ I could maybe take it if lamaros wasn't simulataneously talking up Agatha Christie of all people.

I can't wait until lamaros gets to pick a book - Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler - so many wonderful choices!

Never been in a book club before?  :-) It's going to be a whiny bitch club and/or a knitting circle. (And I did say I'd hold off the whinge for now as it's unsubstantiated without including spoilers.)

Also, how does whingy book pretensions translate in championing the drek of Clancy and Brown (I'll admit to liking some earlier Cussler--as pulp)? If I'm going to have a go at something for being vapid yet pretentious it makes no sense that I'd suggest something that is merely vapid (Cussler), more vapid and pretentious (Brown), or shit (Clancy) in its place.

I will accept your criticism of Agatha generally on snob grounds (but it seems that this book club isn't going to be reading Joyce, Lowry, or the like), but to imply she wasn't entertaining at what she did or that some--note, we're not typically including the Marple or Poirot books here--of her books were genuinely good, is just silly.

Lamaros, here's an analogy for you: Joyce::Modernism as Vonnegut::Sci Fi. Secondly, 20th century modernism lost the vote. I didn't even get a chance to assign Joyce.

Sorry if you didn't like the book. Maybe we should have assigned Finnegan's Wake as a first reading for the book club; I'm sure that'd have been successful!

I rather like Vonnegut's black humor.

WARNING! SEMI-SPOILER AHEAD: Anyway, I think the feeling of   :uhrr: or  :ye_gods: is what you should get. The character should be vapid, sometimes clueless entities. That is the point. Vonnegut is challenging your concept of the general person and exposing the harsh possibilities of humankind's shortcomings. I'd argue that's a theme. Now, if you don't like the writing style, fair enough. However, I believe it is disingenuous to an author to bash a text because it doesn't fit your stylistic tastes. Rather, I think you should say, "Well, I see what he did there, but I didn't like how he did it."

Hey, I think it's a good book for discussion. If we were just going to pick books we think everyone would like then I doubt we'd be able to pick anything. It's certainly got elements that people will respond to in different ways, regardless of the fact that some might find those elements poorly executed (which is my main contention). That's why I didn't go in to much detail with my dislikes of the book, because it's something that is better brought out over a specific discussion of the novel rather than as general point. So, I'm going to hold off replying to your provocation a couple of days still.  :nda:

Re: Finnegan's Wake. So first I get accused by Margalis as someone who loves trash and now I'm a snob?  :heartbreak: You can't win! (People might be willing to read Portrait maybe, or at the very least Dubliners.)

(Also, I think I was wrong when I said I'd tried reading Vonnegut before, I was thinking of J.G Ballard. Now I'm having trouble trying to work out which of the two I prefer)

Re: Style. I think that in certain cases the deficienfy of style can really ruin the theme, can also cover up for a deficiency of theme, or.. etc, etc. Afterall, the style communicates too.

The husband was actually still alive, although he looked totally different following surgery, and dropped a brick on her head from the roof as she looked out the window.  :awesome_for_real:

I think I'm just amazed because this is the first time I've ever met someone who liked Christie and wasn't a middle-aged woman.

Seriously though, if you like Christie you should try John Dickson Carr AKA Carter Dickson, the "master of the locked room." Unlike Christie his plot resolutions make sense instead of coming from left-field from a minor character who was only mentioned in one paragraph.

When you read the plot resolution you think to yourself "hmm, I totally should have figured this out!" instead of "the fuck? Fuck you Agatha!"

This digression is excused by the fact we're spoiler free for a few days, yes? :-)

I've read a few different authors of crime and mystery novels--not sure if Dickson Carr was one of them, I'll have to check--but in pretty much all of them the resolutions are contrived in one way or the other. Some by relying on things that are possible but highly improbable, some by not providing the clues to the reader but only to the characters, some by deliberately confusing the reader with other clues and only incidental mentioning the real ones, etc etc... or just by being so bloody obvious that there is no surprise at the end at all (which more than anything else undermines the genre). I don't remember reading many that are genuinely solvable before the author reveals the murderer and yet still surprising. As such I appreciate the way they're written as being as important as how clever they may be.

Many of Christie's resolutions tend to be of the unexpected reveal at the end, where you are just hit with something out of nowhere, but she favors the deliberate misleading of the reader also. I read one the other week (on holiday, can't remember the title offhand) where she parades a whole group of likely candidates in front of you for the whole book before pulling a minor trick at the end to confuse you, then produces the real villain. The solution is believable, being not in the detail she explicitly describes (this is why the narrators of such books are rarely the ones who solve the puzzles themselves--this is the role of Poirot's man and Dr. Watson) but in the detail more flippantly or generally presented. Looking back you can identify the clues, had you stopped to think about it and didn't buy in to the false trails, that make the solution reasonable.

And while it's a little annoying to be tricked, the fun thing (for me) about Christie is that she writes with enough humor, wit and pleasure that you get engaged in the novel and race through it without stopping to try and work it out like a problem. Because, as I said, when all you have is a problem then I generally find it boringly simple, or frustratingly implausible.

That said, some of Agatha's books are more of the "Fuck you!" type. These are the by-the-numbers jobs she trots out (she did write a lot of books afterall) where the actual story and characters are not intersting enough to decorate the flaws. There ones  tend to rely more on the "something out of nowhere" trick than the "answer is believable, but not presented in a way the reader can solve before it's stated" type. But despite the fact that many of her books are like this, many are good fun easy reads, and that's why I like them!

The great thing about Carr is that his mysteries are very solvable, but not totally obvious. (Although I suppose that can vary) He even gives the reader little diagrams with accurate timelines and such. It isn't at all contrived. You get all the facts and the resolution makes sense. Maybe you are good at figuring them out but I wasn't. (I read them a long time ago, perhaps I would be better now)

Did you recognize what book I spoiled in my previous post? I think I got all the details right. That was the book that made me put down Christie forever.

No I can't say I have had the misfortune. It does sound like a rather bad one.

I don't actually think I've read Carr. I'm pretty sure I've read some essays about him though (well, it was about locked room mysteries, of which he seems a prominent exponent).

Edit: Egads, the errors.

If you're sick and tired of reading bad crime novels with ridiculously prescient investigators try G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades. Effectively I read the whole thing as a "Look I can write ridiculous mysteries that revolve around a detective able to solve crimes in a way no real human could even possibly approach to!" with a main character that solves cases by intuition. Of course if he wrote them in anything like a serious manner then they qualify as the single worst collection of mysteries I have ever read.

Someone else handed me Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy which is postmodern detective stories and didn't make much sense. Interesting if you want to see someone who's clearly just playing around with the conventions of the genre and somehow manages to write 3 detective stories that may or may not be detective stories.

I'm curious whether Vonnegut was influenced by Stranger in a Strange Land at all.  Bokononism struck me as a cross between the Church of Mike (or whatever it was) and Zen.

Both books were published within the same two years. I'll hit up MLA international bibliography to see if there are any articles juxtaposing the two.  :awesome_for_real:

If you like crime drama or noir, read Chandler. Enough said.  :grin:

Yeah. One should make a bit of a distinction between crime/noir and detective/mystery. Agatha certainly isn't the former.

Just finished this; liked it more than SH5, the only other Vonnegut I've read. The beginning was slow, but once the setting moved to the island, I started to enjoy it. Will hold off on further comments due to :nda: which ends tomorrow, amirite?

I'm a bit partial to this book, obviously, and personally think it should be the general public's first introduction to Vonnegut, as opposed to SH5. I think so, because this book still largely written as a conventional novel, more or less. I think it's better to take each chapter as a constructed joke. I think Vonnegut was definitely starting to play around with novel structure, and this book plays to his existing strengths (Slapsticky dark humor), as opposed to later books that has him poking at all sorts of conventions. I think the novel is a bit prescient, in that it predicts the sort of friction between science and religion that we see increasingly in our politics (here in the US at least). Of course it is interesting that he doesn't let either side off the hook.

 In this way it's very much against the grain of the Positivist/Modernist themes/ideology that ran through much of the science-fiction of the 50s and 60s

It's the 17th, so I think we're now free to comment at will.

I agree with what Boko said above about the book going against the usual sci-fi grain.  The question of whether there are some things science just shouldn't mess with is an old one, but works that play with that theme usually have SOME redeeming aspect to whatever horror science has unleashed.  Even Frankenstein's monster had a few positive qualities.  Ice-9, on the other hand, is pretty much unarguably a bad idea that should never have been implemented and should have been destroyed by the kids as soon as they realized what their insane father had done.  It's the most stark example I've seen of someone being too clever for their own good.

The aspect of the book I found more interesting was the extended joke(?) of finding out how the narrator acquired his enlightened Bokononist outlook and why he's writing this book.  The punchline being that the whole book has been a suicide note that nobody will be left to read.  I find this funny in a horribly bleak sort of way  -- from the way the narrator talks about Bokononism throughout the entire book it sounds like it's made him a happier person and I kept waiting to find out why, and it turns out that all it's done is inspire him to commit suicide.  It's like one of those long 4chan copypastas that ends with the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme.  Or something.

Good! The extended joke (or any extended metaphor/theme/line) through a book is usually called a motif. I agree. I especially enjoy his black humor and I figured most on this board would as well.

 :awesome_for_real:

I did quite enjoy the religion/science comparison. The fact that despite the protestations of the research director it was clear that people were treating science in precisely the same mysterious way they revered religions was a nice touch. The ultimate failure of religion to provide any comfort after the destruction wrought by science was also dark but amusing, everyone gathered around looking to Bokonon for salvation and simply being told to kill themselves. Everything just falls apart as a genuine way of helping people.

The attitude to truth in the novel was also very Nietzschean, the whole theme of Bokononism that lies can be genuinely good things for people. I can't quite figure out if that part was a critique of religion in general or some sort of statement about human nature.

Let's look to some critical articles for help:

Here's one illuminating the religious irony of Harry Hoenikker:

Judaism:
http://www.filedump.net/dumped/vonnegut11200602631.pdf (http://www.filedump.net/dumped/vonnegut11200602631.pdf)
Bibliographical Information: Doloff, Steven; Explicator, 2004 Fall; 63 (1): 56-57. (For those of you new to literary criticism, The Explicator is a big deal as far as publications go.)

Confucianism:
Bibliographical Information: Byun, Jong-min; The Journal of English Language and Literature, 1991 Winter; 37 (4): 973-81 (I can't find it on the web for ya'll, look it up yourself in a library if you care to.)

Christianity:
http://www.filedump.net/dumped/vonnegut21200602950.pdf (http://www.filedump.net/dumped/vonnegut21200602950.pdf)
Bibliographical Information: Doxey, William S.; Explicator, 1979 Summer; 37 (4): 6.

So, in response to your question, Yes.

Edit: Also, I think the statement about human nature is something you might need to come up with on your own. That'd be a good topic for a paper if you were looking to write one -- the extension of Bokononism from religion to natural status of humanity. (If it is defensible).

On a separate note, I find the best conceived chapter/joke in the book is the one with John and the Illium Works Director on the commute to the plant (talking about the gallows that used to be on the site of the plant). It's also a classic case of foreshadowing as well. It's a bit cliche by today's standards, but was the chapter that first had me going, "I see what you did there."

Seeing how I am at work (and rather tired) I'm going to hold off from my inevitably long and pretensiously critical response to the book for now, but I will address a couple of points other people have said so far (the paring down of quotes is to signify the comments I am addressing, not Brucing):

While I'm not entirely sure about what Boko said, my memory of 50/60s SF being a bit hazy, I find it very hard to agree with the suggestion that CC (I'm not going to type out Cat's Cradle every time I want to reference it) gains anything from going against the grain. After all, it's 2008 now and we're unable to judge it from that context. Instead I think it's better to look at what the book itself presents, and in this sense I think it's a bit cliche.


Religion/Science is not really an old one in terms of literature. I would argue that it's a pretty recent one, and, that beign the case CC is taking part in a recent discussion. However it never seems to address that discussion, being for the most part self referential. The reference to science and religion are there, yes, but not the references to other discussions of science and religion. Or maybe I'm just missing them (I hope cmlancas will help me out if I am).

Instead the references to literature I picked up on were to things such as Moby Dick (obviously) and Catcher In The Rye. (There are, I'm sure, many others I missed in my quick reading.) But what point did these references serve? I havn't read Moby Dick yet so I'm struggling with that one, but the CitR reference seemed even more pontless. Is all this is just there for the sake of itself? The comedy derived from such was limited at best.

As for the bleak outlook the book might present, I felt ambivalent. The themes were too far stretched (science/religion, cold war, love, literature, etc) for such a short and sparely presented novel to gain any depth of feeling or expression. All the observations seemed surface level--like so much foma designed only to generate a cult audience; a granfalloon that imagines itself a karass that goes around repeating the words like they are in a secret club of enlightenment--and, spare the silliness, glib. I felt no pressing need to listen to Vonnegut.


Ah, but if you just read it as a farce (and how can you read it otherwise) you get the emphasis on the fiction, not the science, so the concept of Ice-9 wasn't (for me, obviously) so much a substance but an idea and only an idea. It was outside the realm of reality. Being such, how are we meant to relate it's story with some kind of significance? The comparison to the atom bom is flawed, and if not a comment on that then what is it a comment on?


It thought it was neat, but a little bit too convenient. I think it better when tricks such as this not only amuse and surprise you but also make you readdress the greater part of what you have just read. In this cast I felt that aspect to be minor, the revelation that he dies doesn't really adjust the novel substantialy. Nor does it confer a bleakness. He is not the last man on earth, nor woman, and his suicide doesn't wipe out the human race. If anything this just serves to underline how everything else he's written is so insipid. He's just another daft cultist.

Good point -- I was speaking more in terms of sci-fi.  Also, not so much religion/science as the question of whether it's ever appropriate to put boundaries on pure research/discovery/thought.

Ice-9 is obviously only an idea; I don't think it's meant to represent the atom bomb (the a-bomb itself is discussed in the first few chapters of the book, so why bother with a metaphor for it?), but to represent a possible outcome of the line of thinking that science doesn't necessarily need to concern itself with the applications of its work.  What I read him as saying is: all right, these guys who made the A-bomb pretty much did it without thinking too hard about what it is they were doing, but it turned out to be more or less a good thing.  Fine and dandy, but what if the next thing they make is a hell of a lot more dangerous?  Hence the character of Dr. Whatsis blathering about the beauty of "pure research" while strenuously denying that such a thing as ice-nine could ever exist.

Yeah, it's obviously not a direct metaphor, but nonetheless I think it is meant to represent the atom bomb. The idea that you invent something without being considerate of it's implications is the biggest grudge CC hold's up to science, a grudge that a couple of characters explicitly express in relation to the atom bomb (wassisname's son, etc). And this is the essence of Hoenikker (never mind the Jewish references, I think his name implies he is an expansionist pimp), to live in the moment of investigation only.

I don't think this is a fair comparison to make, though. No things can truly judge the consequences of their actions, but that doesn't imply they are necessarily inconsiderate of them. To rail against science as being indifferent or uncaring is absurd. Science is practced by people, and Hoenikker is not representitive of that.

It's like V dliberatly distinguishes between science, humanity and religion in order to castigate and reconcile them, but the distinguishing he attacks he is responsible for presenting. It's a silly slight of hand that misrepresents something in order to attack it, and I think that is what is being done here in many ways.

First, saying that something is cliche because it helped establish certain trends and themes is absurd. By that logic Beowulf, Tolkein, Homer and anyone else is cliche. Canterbury Tales is cliche because Hyperion is another take on it? You say that we can't evaluate writings in their original context but that is not true. We can. Or at least I and and others can - maybe you can't. But that's your failing.


Sometimes I go on Amazon and look at reviews of religious fiction. What I've discovered is that many religious people view all fiction as plain allegory. They assume that the good characters are all ciphers for the author and that the author endorses all their actions and beliefs. That's why they rate up horrible poorly-written books as long as they have a good Christian protagonist, and why Harry Potter books are evil. They view all fiction as plain endorsement.

You seem to be guilty of the same. It's far too simple to say that Cat's Cradle and Vonnegut "rail against science." All your comments indicate a very literal reading where you want to distill the "meaning" of the book into a couple of sentences. For example:


It sounds like you are asking for very simplistic meaning to be handed to you.


And here it sounds like you want it to wrapped up in a Hollywood-style ending. You view the revelation as some sort of Sixth Sense style twist. You complain of cliche yet you ask for one.

Cat's Cradle is not a direct commentary on the atomic bomb. It takes some of the thought behind the atomic bomb and carries it to one possible conclusion. Scientists working just to work without thought to greater implications, subtly guided by people who *are* very much thinking about the greater implications. Claiming that it is supposed to be a direct comparison or extension to the bomb is silly, especially given Vonnegut's history as a POW.

The book is not really anti-science or anti-religion, more so anti-humanity. It seems like a contradiction given that Vonnegut was a humanist, but he recognizing the good in people doesn't preclude one from recognizing the bad. Vonnegut does not put much faith in science or religion, but that's not because he is anti-technology or anti-religious, some sort of atheist neo-luddite. Religion and science are both tools used by humans -- often to ill-effect.

I think it was Vonnegut himself who said that he wrote about the worst in people so that humanity would be motivated to do better.

Flannery O’Connor on the Meaning of a Story:

It discourages me when I see people who think that an entire novel can and should be summarized in a sentence or two. It makes me wonder why people bother reading at all.

I'm not saying it is wrong to talk about themes and meanings. But the desire for extreme oversimplification is a very bad thing, not only when talking about a book but when reading it. Rather than concern yourself with what simple message the author is trying to get across just read the book. Good authors are not *trying* to get across simple messages, that is what transparent hack writers do. Plainly allegorical fiction is the worst sort. Good fiction comes from the author letting the plot and characters unfold in unplanned ways, revealing complex and contradictory themes.

Edit: Even trying to summarize the book's message on religion is difficult. On one hand you could take away "religion is based on lies" or on the other "religion gives people hope and meaning." To me one of the broad themes of the book is that people layer artifice over reality into an attempt to create meaning where none exists. Religion is just one example of that.

This is a freakin' long post. I'm sorry. However, it's necessary because we covered a long range of topics in lamaros's post.

Maybe. Some people would argue this. They're called new historicists.


Read the critical articles. Academia disagrees with you very intensely. I think you'd have a hard time arguing with them; their cases are very strong.


Really? It's okay if you didn't like it, but I really think that the theme of futility reflected in the writing/symbols/motifs is genius. Perhaps I'm wrong. However, "sparely presented" is tough to argue. It slaps you in the face -- I think that's why there's a little hesitancy on your part. Also, a "cult audience"? How could Vonnegut have known that he was writing for a cult audience? :o


Uh, the theme is that humans didn't know the ends of the supposed progress they were making. Ice-9 on a surface level in the book is a substance. Metaphorically speaking, it is supposed to be an idea. (Here you're right) It is a comment; that humans don't know what the fuck they could be doing through science. (Something much more poignant today would be global warming. What if a study came out tomorrow that thoroughly trashed GW and showed it was an elaborate hoax?)



Sometimes a book might not please your tastes, but it is better (in my mind) to think "I see what he did there, just not in my style" than to refer to a classic work of literature as "insipid." There are reasons why people read this text on the collegiate level.  Oh, and it does offer a bleakness. A very, very bleak future for humankind and the sciences. I'm sorry if it went over your head.

in ur post fixin ur quote tags - Samwise

Love this post. Margalis, are you teaching this book currently or something?  :drill:

Oh dear.

It is 2008, not 1963. We cannot judge this book as one would have in 1963. Moreover it is silly to try and judge it by pretending it's 1963. I did not say this book was original, so to assume there is some inconsistency in saying it was at once original and yet a cliche is stupid misrepresentation. I said that despite the fact that this book may have been going agains SF trends of the 50's and early 60's that that limited context was not itself a virtue. That if the book has virtues they are better look at in a wider context, or on the merit of the book itself. I don't think that running against the stream in a very limited timeframe and genre is enough in itself.

Something is cliche when it takes from other trends and themes and adds nothing too them. This is what it means and this is how I was using the word. I made no reference to Tolkien, Homer, Caucher, etc. But please, feel free to make shit up to sound like you have a point.


Thank you for the permission to talk about themes and meanings. Thank you also for the permission to respond to the comments of others when they talk about said themes and meanings. But please follow you own advice next time and concern yourself with what I am saying and not what you want me to say.

It's not too simple to say that CC rails against science. It does. It also rails against religion and humanity. It does more than that, or at least it wants to, but that doesn't change the fact that on simple terms those things are present.

My comments indicate a very literal intrepretation for a few reasons:

1. I was responing to what Samwise said.
2. I don't have my book to hand and I'm not going to go into textual detail without refering to the text.
3. I think the book is very serface level in its observations. I feel that for all the deep meanings you can plie on it if you wish, the points are communicated simple and somewhat ineptly.

The comparison to the atom bomb and science are flawed and, being flawed, lose the significance they might otherwise hold. That does not mean that Ice-9 has no other points of interest or that CC doesn't talk about science in other respects. It just means that it's flawed, as the primary way in which these relationships develop is through the atom bomb. The atom bomb is what Hoenikker worked on and it's the book the narrator is initialy trying to writing. The relationship with the atom bomb is central to CC and if this relationship is flawed or fanciful then the book loses much of it's meaning.

In response to your brucing this is what I actually said:


I am not asking for a cliche. Surely describing something as 'convenient' makes reference to the fact that it offered little variation, not challenged expectations. Perhaps it didn't. That is what was meant.

Samwise refered to the bleakness of the end. I replied that I didn't find it so. What might be read as bleak, this series of suicides and the ending of the world, takes place against a backdrop of other survivors. There is no indication that it actually is the end of the world, nor is the final death a tragic. A man on the mountain immortalise while thumbing his nose to the heavans is a comic image for me, not a bleak one.


You accuse me of a literal reading, yet when I refer to these scientests as simple drawings removed from reality, flawed ones insofar as reality is, you make a contention. Are we to assume that between your blind acceptance of V's scientists and my contention I'm the one being literal?

Please explain how you think V's history as a POW pertains to this discussion. Your reference is obtuse.



What you said was just a stupidly long way of saying what I said. But without the criticism of V's method of doing so.

You are blatantly ignoring a HUGE PART OF LITERARY CRITICISM DURING THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.

STOP NOW!

Thanks. And yes you can. Go look up the definition of the new historicist theory of literary criticism.

Edit: Don't confuse "for" and "during", dumbass!  :drill:

Trimming out my quotes to cut this down to size.


Link to what this terms means? I'm not down.


Read them before I replied. What I mean is that it refers to religion, and refers to science. But makes no reference to other works that have talked about the relationship between religion and science. Clearer?


By sparse I mean he introduces one topic or point and then jumps quickly to the next. It's a constant series of introductions, without much explicit examination. Which is not inherently bad, I just feel that the whole doesn't play out to crate this 'examination space' in the holes that are left. To me they just remain holes.

All cult things have their buzzwords and such, in jokes, etc. I think CC goes out of its way to present them. It's like 1984 without the plot. :-)


But humans never know. Not just with science but with nearly anything. I think he's taken a universal concept and pushed it in to a very literal and silly box which only contrains discussion and understanding of it. So we don't know the end of our actions. Of course not, we never do. All we do is act and guess. If you want to talk about this aspect of life then I feel you have to do more than just point it out. Tell us something about it, how it's beautiful or absurd or funny or frighting. But simply pointing it out and running it to a farcical SF conclusion does nothing for me.


I refered to the narrator as insipid, not V.

I read Harry Potter at a College Level. You can read anything at a College level. That doesn't mean you can't criticise it.

RE: Bleakness. No, I don't think it's bleak at all. See what I put to Margalis above on that topic. It's funny and humanistic (is that a word!), not bleak.

EDIT: Fixed a bad typo that confused the meaning. Left the others.

It boggles me how much you think it matters that you have to agree with other critics. It's ok to have your own opinion.

Re: "Don't confuse "for" and "during", dumbass!  :drill:" What bit are you refering to here? I'm not doing much proofreading as I'm at work.

Oh, the dumbass part was to myself.

However, no, in the realm of literary criticism, not really. You can choose not to use that approach, but you can't deny that it is a valid tool of interpreting literature people have used for decades.

This is in response to "we're unable to judge it from [V's zeitgeist]."

Well I've yet to read about it, but...

I think it is inherent in our discussion that we discuss it at people living in 2008. For all that we will want to discuss it as people living in 1963 it's going to be impossible. People living in 2008 but pretending their in 1963 might get very close to a 1963 perspective, but there is still that little difference.

Sure, we can talk about it's attributes in a historical context, but in terms of evaluating it I think we should bring consideration that time has granted us. This distinction between evaluation and discussion is what I'm trying to stress here. I'm not going to dispute that there are some things I miss for being in 2008 and not 1963, but in this thread, at least, I'm concerned with writing how I feel about this book today, not about the book generally.

Also, I apologise for all the spelling errors and typos in my responses. I feel ashamed.

I can't even respond to lamaros. His approach is so reductionist and ultra-literal. He demonstrates exactly that mindset I mentioned, where characters are assumed to be transparent proxies that speak for the author to get his point across. That fiction is basically opinion essay with slightly more flavor. He is obsessing over what Vonnegut is telling him and what his points are.

Why does he keep harping on the fact that the comparison between Ice-9 and the bomb is flawed? It's not supposed to *be* a direct comparison. Ice-9 is similar in some ways and different in others. Isn't that allowed? Why does it have to be so damn literal?

cmlancas, Vonnegut's worldview is similar to my own. I read this book for the first time probably 15-18 years ago and it has always stuck with me. I can't say that for many books.

The idea that it adds nothing new to fiction as a whole is pretty absurd. Few works are wholly original. I'd be curious to hear what books lamaros thinks did add something new to the world of fiction. I am someone with a strong appreciation for history and historical context, and I've read plenty of other books from that time period. I listen to albums from the 70s and I read books from the 50s. I find lamaros' lack of historical appreciation a sort of know-nothing perspective.

Edit: About his POW status:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#World_War_II_and_the_firebombing_of_Dresden

It's probably hard to overstate how much that sort of experience would effect later fiction. His comments on technology are often centered on war and torture. Living through a firebombing then watching people use flamethrowers on the resultant bodies would probably warp one's views of technological advancement a bit.


Please save the trolling for politics. Really let's not go here.

The comparison that is flawed is between science and the bomb and ice-9 and science (among many things). It's the presentation of science that is flawed. And then V's points out it's flaws as (part) of the point of the novel. Yet he's the one that created them by giving such a limited representation.

Hmm. see this is what I hate about discussion on this level. The suggestion that I think CC adds nothing new to fiction is not one I intend to make. Undoubtedly it does in some what, to what extent I don't know. It would be better for those historywassmathingos cmlanacs is talking about to answer that one.

What I was saying is that I dont think the discussion of science and religion was new in CC, and that CC doesn't reference other discussions of science and religion. I think the discussion that takes pace in CC on these topics is cliche. The presentation might be a bit new, the words different, the comedy more individual. But I think there is not real contribution to the themes themselves taking place in CC.

(My favourite novel is Under The Volcano and I'm currently reading a biography of Malcolm Lowry's life. Having just read his letters recently.) I have nothing against context and history. I just don't think CC is that good a book, and I don't think that its history matters all that much if I think the book is rubbish. Not aesthetically, anyway.

As for the POW stuff. Sure he was a POW. No doubt it had some effect. But I don't understand what explicit effect you are referring to in relation to CC. What part of CC is offering us something of that POW experience, how is it being filtered and what is it saying about it? I don't know, I didn't pick up on anything and I'm asking you to give me some pointers.

This is late and I am still catching up with the thread, but the extended joke, or motif, can also be viewed as was aforementioned as each chapter as a joke, or each chapter being a leitmotif, which I realize is used mostly in discussing music, but I have been studying Wagner and the Ring Cycle lately and found the analogy in my mind.

Not sure if anyone is going to respond to the point or not, so I'll mention it again.

For those who obviously have more experience with this novel than me (margalis, cmlancas) what is the point of the Moby Dick reference? I was thinking it's just a joke (not the best one in the book...) but perhaps you have some more high flown interpretations.

RE: Moby Dick--- it is a joke, and it is also an absurdly early foreshadow. Moby Dick is about a guy that tries to hunt down a big white whale; the story is almost quixotic (in fact, what makes it a tragedy is that the target is real, but the protagonist is still crazy). Cat's Cradle is alternatively about a guy looking to write about the makers of the A-Bomb; one guys search for meaning (Bokonon/the research director too I suppose); another guy's search for a cheap place to make bikes; his wife's search for Hooooosiers; children's search for a father (actually, that applies to more than just the Hoennikker children); and lastly (but not exhaustively) about a petty dictator looking to achieve a certain level of respect, of validity. EDIT: I forgot to add, and they all fail.

So yeah, you can make connections to Moby Dick. And the stupid joke of it in CC could be seen as a brilliant deflection from this, so that you aren't identifying these things as your reading. YES! YES!

 :awesome_for_real:

More than his time as a POW (that's whole different book of his) this book ends the obvious influence of his time as a PR flack for GE. He writes elsewhere (in the context of showing that his portrayal of science embodied in Hoennikker is no longer valid, when talking to a young scientist/engineer in the 70s) that this was how the "scientific elite" did their thing. Now he obviously had limited exposure (just those scientists hired by GE in midstate NY in the 50s), but this is how he saw it. He wrote about it more clumsily (essentially repurposing Brave New World) in an earlier book, "Player Piano", but here he posits it against the first answer, even today, when people want to criticize science's "excesses".

I think lamaros is wrong in the superficiality argument, but I can see it. The book is sparse, and in today's more cynical world (which Vonnegut would likely appreciate, ironically enough) it can beg a sort of "Where's the beef?", or if you prefer the older form, the "emperor has no clothes" critique. I think Vonnegut begs this question in this book. Think about the few scenes where the book's namesake is discussed. It's described in a mystical, "Hey Presto!"(**) sort of way. He had to have been thinking about it, or why title the novel CC, when the title has no explicit effect on the plot?

EDIT: Personally, a more intriguing choice of Vonnegut book would have been God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, a book that I think is in some ways better written, and has been less laden with general critique (and has an allusion [actually it's a tad more direct than allusion] that I love).

**-- Yes, I know, a reference to another of his books.

I think the Moby Dick points are a little laboured (what can't be compared to Moby Dick in that general way!?) but I won't make an issue of it; I guess I just like a little oomph in my opening lines.


Oh it's all there in the ether. But I just felt I like you draw more out of yourself than the novel itself when you think about it. Which is not a failing per se, but it is something that gives me a bit of a "what's the point" feeling. You could communicate that querying energy other ways I feel, and ones that have more.

It comes from not finding the book that funny nor finding the language or style that interesting (the sheer pleasure of words is not there for me ). Certainly themes and issues are there, but when they are not penetrated or presented with excellent obsfucation, wit or style then it leave that spare empty feeling. The book is not objectionable because it never goes so far to stamp a point of view down your throat, but neither does it make me wince or laugh (I chuckled, is all) or to just have to stop and digest, while reading it.

Yes, there's something there that grows outside the book. Do we want to read it like that; that the book is the empty space and we're trying to imagine the hands that pull the invisible strings? Me, I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. If I'm going to create something I'd rather create my own instead of trying to co-ordinate some tepid prose.

I would also add the the first couple lines do a good job of disabusing the reader of the notion that they are going to be reading literary fiction in the vein of Moby Dick. The first line is purposely similar to Moby Dick but by the second line he has already diverged somewhat absurdly. It seems very tongue-in-cheek and in line with his sensibilities.

Take for example this:


This is an example of that same sense of humor. On the day of the bomb drop the father is playing with the string from the manuscript about a bomb-dropping. But Vonnegut doesn't take himself so seriously that he sets it up as a real parallel or some sort of statement on anything, it quickly becomes silly and sort of a play on typical literary formulations -- while also serving as an anti-foreshadowing to the end of the book.

Then the speaker reveals that all he got out of it was the orgy scene and any greater meaning was lost on both he and his father.

It takes the initial concept, that there is some eerie parallel between real life and the manuscript and maybe some sort of lesson to be learned or allegory, and strips away layer after layer of meaning until nothing is left. None of it matters.

In the hands of another author the manuscript might serve to compare and contrast to real life events, but in the hands of Vonnegut nobody bothered to even read it. The fact that they didn't care about the content at all (and the father didn't read any of it) becomes the point.

I'm still half-way through but as I'm reading I'm thinking the narrator is insane.  No, seriously.  Bokononisms are either total truisms or interpretations of daily life as religious canon.  The other characters the narrator meets along the way seem to be carictatures - almost as if the normal parts of their personality are glossed over.

Could insanity tie-in with religion and science themes?  There is a certain overlap with blind devotion in either shown in Bokononism or in science purely for knowledge.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The passage in question is certainly playful; but the irony is not nihilistic. You have a book, about a guy writing a book about a kid watching his dad--a guy who invented a bomb in a state of inventive ignorance--playing with a piece of string from another book (which if I remember correctly he hasn't read), one about a hypothetical bomb (written by a guy ignorant of bombs), while the real bomb itself is being used, of which everyone is ignorant.. etc etc. You could go to town on this passage and still be here in the morning.

They layers go on and on (creation, ignorance, books, bombs, ugh!) and they are ironic fun and games. But there is no nothing left here. The layers of meaning are being added, nor shorn, every time.

But the characters themselves didn't even both to read the manuscript, or read it and got nothing out of it.

I'm not saying the passage itself is meaningless. What I mean is that to the characters it is meaningless. There is no takeaway, no lesson learned, nothing to be gleaned from it. All the characters are idiots, including the guy who wrote the manuscript. There is no revelation to be had and all the character motivations are base. One guy just wants to play with string, one guy wants to read it just for the sex, and the writer just wants help in building the bomb. Everything else is lost on them, there is no bigger point in any of it. But at the same time the content of the manuscript itself is silly, even if the father had read it it wouldn't have meant anything to him.

And again I think Vonnegut is not taking himself or his writing very seriously either, if you look at the content of the manuscript and the way he phrases the passage in general. In the hands of another author the manuscript itself might have had real relevance to the characters, and they would have either read it and learned some valuable lesson or not read it and in so doing been damned by ignorance. We've seen that story a thousand times -- "To Serve Man is a cookbook!" But there isn't a heavy-handed lesson here either way.

Ah, now we're coming to find the language:


What you just said is of similar feeling to what to said then. That we are to read this book as nonsense written by some daft cultist. An absurd farce.

But I don't agree with the notion that V is not taking it seriously. I think the jokes are heartfelt. This is a celebration of human ignorance and waywardness as the same time that it condemns. There is this constant serious-silly dichotomy (ugh, what a word) at play here, but V's lampooning is earnest in its way. "The book is nothing but lies to make you feel good" (paraphrase) is how CC describes itself and all the other books (and there are a couple!) of the novel. Yet this is the same view offered of religion and the state. Everything is absurd. But the book isn't just a comedy or a bible, at least for people such as cmlancas, Bokonon (f13 user) and yourself, and so the irony ascends to another level. If the narrator and Bokonon (character) are laughing and mocking the world and we are laughing and mocking them, surely the ultimate purpose transends laughter and mockers. There are statements being made in absence.

(Time for some respite: I'm finished work for the day. I look forward to some good discussion not involving me another day.)

No, still not agreeing. "Farce" means something very different, it reads very little like a legitimate farce. I thnk you are using the wrong terminology here.

The narrator is not an "daft cultist", he is a person faced with the realization that the world has basically ended for no good reason and that life, the universe and everything are a cosmic joke. Nor is it nonsense -- what the narrator describes presumably did happen, without much embellishment.

When I say that V did not take it seriously I don't mean he wrote a comedy. I mean he was aware of his own writing style and of literary conventions and had some fun with them. He isn't a deadly serious author. That doesn't mean he's not invested in what he writes or doesn't believe in it.


I think the key point is that the narrator and Bokonon, to the extent that they are laughing at and mocking the world, are doing so because the world did the same to them first. The narrator in particular is the (or a) victim of what is really a great meaningless tragedy. I certainly don't get the feeling that I should be laughing at and mocking the narrator.

Edit: I just turned around and realized I have 4 other Vonnegut books sitting on the shelf right behind me. I really need to organize my fucking books.

I think the idea is that Bokononists prefer to believe a set of lies that make them happy, and that this happiness is simply preferable to the harsh truths of the real world.  That isn't something specific to religion.  I get the feeling that Vonnegut is driving at something deeper, more fundamentally human.  We all tend to deceive ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly, in ways that keep our psyche or whatever on an even keel.

Or perhaps, I'm reading too much into it.  Maybe Vonnegut is just satirizing religion.  I could just be prefering the lie of a deeper meaning because I like it  :awesome_for_real:

I started off not caring for this book, but after finishing I have to say I enjoyed it.  It made me think.  So, I'm diving into it again so I can read the first half with a more positive frame of mind.

You're assuming (asserting?) that people from 1963 and from 2008 have a different perspective.  Most aspects of the human condition are timeless.  Vonnegut's examination of both human ignorance and its impact on larger society and the tension between science and belief have been part of us since there was an us.

This point was in relation to something Samwise said. I don't disagree.

Chiming in away from the current discussion, I think the whole initial setup of San Lorenzo by McDade and Bokonon was, on the surface, a mockery of the origins of religion; however, V seems to be saying that while religion is bullshit, it may be helpful bullshit. The entire setting is very Orwellian (is that a word?) but inverted; it's still social control, but the symbol of hope is used as a positive (to improve the morale of the destitute populace) instead of a negative (Its a trap! /ackbar).

Also a question, brought up by myself. I know I talked about Cat's Cradle, but one thing I've never really grokked was the use of it in the title, or in the various scenes in the book. Why Cat's Cradle? Was there specific resonance for the audience of the day that is missing now? Or is it something about cat's cradles themselves (I admit not having ever made one in my childhood)?

Can't speak about the 60s, but when I was young (late 80s, early 90s), Cat's Cradle and similar string "games" were fairly popular among girls. The use in the book was how it was an obvious fabrication-since it looked nothing like a cradle-but still made people happy, which fits in with the Bokononism theme well.

That was definitely its meaning to Newt ("see the cat?  See the cradle?").  Another possible meaning I got from it was the way that all the parts of a cat's cradle connect with and cross over each other, like the members of a karass.

I get all that, but somehow it doesn't jibe well with me. Especially as it pertains as it's use as the book's title.

 :awesome_for_real:  We love you too.

I think it is genuinely hard to pin down what his opinion on religion was, to the point where I suspect he was conflicted himself.

Dammit, an old BBS habit that dies hard.

I know I'm backtracking, but I definitely noticed some parallels to the religion in Stranger in a Strange Land as well.


Also, in regards to Vonnegut's not being overly serious:

When I was a senior in High School (2000) he came to speak to a group of about 30 of us.  I'd never read anything of his at that point so most of it was lost on me, but what I do remember is this: when the Q&A session was over the moderator asked him if he had any final words for us and his response was "Um, go to Hell?"

I haven't been able to read the book at all; it just came in yesterday. BUT, I have taken notice of a certain debate going through this thread, and...

There seems to be a question of if you can really criticize this book, while keeping in the context of the time in which it was written. I would have to side with those criticizing it from a 2008 viewpoint. I'm not in 1963. Hell, I wouldn't even be born for another 20 years. So, that being said, while it is interesting to try to place the book within the greater environment in which is was originally written, if I am going to criticize a book, I'm going to do it from the here and now.

There are certain parallels in this argument to Historiography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography) - In short, the study of the ways in which history is written. History is not written in a vacuum. Neither is literature, or the subsequent criticism. So, I actually think it's ok to not only criticize the book from the viewpoint of someone living in 2008 (or whenever you are reading the work), but that, to certain extent, previous criticism is irrelevant.

Just as the study of history changes over time, I would believe that literary crit does as well.

Perfectly acceptable. It's called formalism. The issue I had with lamaros's statement was that he said we "can't" interpret it as it was in 1963. The previous statement is completely false.

No it's not.

Anyway, we can leave our wanking arguments for some other time. Write more about the book itself.

That means you too cmlancas. Posting a few links and rebutting point of literary theory doesn't count, tell us what you feeeel.

A warming of the cockles.

Are you geldon? Quit spitting in the wind here, mate. You're just wrong. Any way you look at it, you are wrong. You may CHOOSE not to utilize new historicist criticism techniques, but you CANNOT deny that they were and continue to be a valuable part of literary criticism.

Are you one of those people that think Faulkner's stories are racist works because they contain the n word? Stupid fucks like you make my eyes bleed. (For those of you who don't read Faulkner, Faulkner traditionally sets up his black characters as moral centers -- See: Dilsey in S&F and the book with Faulkner's university lectures for more info.)

What do I feel about Cat's Cradle? I think that Vonnegut revolutionized a style of writing unbeknownst (perhaps with the exception of Philip K. Dick and maybe Heinlein (very arguable here)) to the general public. I think his black humor illuminates his themes brilliantly: simultaneously, Vonnegut upholds an ideal through his plot and deflates it through his style. As Baudelaire reminds us, "True genius is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously without losing your mind," and Vonnegut's prose completely embodies this statement. Within the actual themes themselves, I very much so believe that humanity has a difficult time truly "knowing." Academia calls it ontological uncertainty, or, to put it plainly, how do we know what we know? Global warming, quantum physics, string theory....perhaps tomorrow they are nothing more than foolish notions. Generally, science, literature, history, and most great branches of knowledge save mathematics undergo transitionary periods when splendid new theories quash old ones. Recall only two hundred years ago Europeans were bleeding each other to make themselves better. They called that medicine.

Ice-9 completely elaborates the fallibility of human progress.

Don't be a dick. I'm pretty sure what we're talking about comes down to a misunderstanding, one I can't be fucked going through seeing this thread is meant to be about a book and not the two of us wanking off and annoying everyone else. If you want to talk about it and not just try and score cheap meaningless points then PM me about it, there is no point going on with it here.


Stawman much? Patronise much?


I'm unsure what you mean by this here. Do you mean what I said earlier, in that CC has a  "serious-silly dichotomy", that it is an 'earnest lampooning'. Or do you mean something else?


Elaborate?

(Edited out the mean bits and was a bit more productive)

I don't think it's annoying at all. Go right ahead. This is what book discussions should be about!

My 2 cents at least.

Ok.


New Historicism says we place the book in it's historical context. (As opposed to taking it as a sealed world to itself). It does not require that we put ourselves back in time.

There is a difference between taking context into account and pretending you're in a time machine.

Please to not be responding with more aphorisms and undiscussed quotes.

I was waiting for someone to bring up time machines or, more specifically, The Time Machine.  You know, anything post-apocalyptic really.  How many books from that era showed us the near-end of the world, and yet the protagonist survives it all and learns some sort of lesson?  Humanity almost always survives its own destruction.  Even when Douglas Adams decided to kill us all off much, much later on, there was still plenty of life left in the Universe.  And here comes Vonnegut deciding that no one is going to survive the freezepocalypse (popciclypse?)  I like that he doesn't back down from it, as much as the idea sucks to think about.

Technically, we still do.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2001/12/13/leech011213.html

Actually on topic though...

I wasn't blown away by CC. It's very well crafted, it touches on many human issues, but its coverage was too topical to really spark any thought for me. It seemed like a bunch of very general statements on what is to be human and the follies of our species. Woo. The dark humor was more like light gray humor. There wasn't enough meat to be interesting to think about, and the characters were made to be thin, so there was no empathy to carry the book. I'm still glad to have read it, but I won't weep when it goes to the used book store.

If you're tempted to give up on V because of this I'd maybe hold the thought. I've been informed by a few people that many of his other books are more interesting and rewarding. Specifically Mother Night. My feeling about the book was similar to you and the recommendation comes from people who have similar taste to me.

Mother Night was my first Vonnegut.  I remember it being more of a straight-forward story without all the lofty ideals, etc.  But a great story.

Cool. I'll have to take that for a spin sometime.

Hiphopapotamus?

Oh, and lamaros, your posts have come a long way from "we can't analyze it like we're in 1963." "Putting a book in its historical context" is, in my opinion, about the same as the previous statement.
When I say, "Vonnegut upholds an ideal through his plot and deflates it through his style," that equates to your serious-silly dichotomy. I don't see the confusion. The last sentence I made was a summation of what I said before. I don't need to elaborate, you need to engage your brain, sir. My post is pretty well written, I think. I actually put some effort into it.  :awesome_for_real:

Oh, and for those of you who are looking for another Vonnegut, perhaps try Breakfast of Champions or, if you haven't yet read it, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Well, if you want to play the "lets be complete bitches" game. No it hasn't. I'm just explaining it to you that given the context in which it was made (Samwise's point about it being counter to SF of the time) it means the same thing. You wanted to blow your misunderstanding out in to some self righteous ego and good for you, but that doesn't change what I actually meant.


Just confirming that you meant the same thing. But hey, I should have assumed you meant something else and used it as a platform to be a dickhead instead, eh?

You just said that Ice-9 does all these things. But you didn't say how you think Ice-9 actually does them. You set it some pretty high goals:


Besides the fact that the last statement is questionable at best (and a flippant and isolated example that is completely incapable of bearing the weight of the previous assertions at worst) it requires a bit more on behalf of your "well written" self to link Ice-9 to this notion than just saying it demonstrates it. For someone studying these things you have a worrying propensity not to directly reference the text in any detail. Margalis' criticism (of me) from earlier applies:


The argument that Ice-9 "completely elaborates the fallibility of human progress" is yet to be sustained. If that last line were a summation then the previous points would be the argument. There is no argument however. Yet you make no reference to the role Ice-9 plays in the book, nor any reference to how the 'idea' of Ice-9 relates to this view of human progress. You imply an argument, sure, but so does V himself. If we are to talk about CC it helps that we talk about the text, and not just pull out general ideas and assert them as fact.

The question How does Ice-9 demonstrate "the fallibility of human progress"? Does not have the answer: "Ice-9 completely elaborates the fallibility of human progress by showing us that most great branches of knowledge (save mathematics) undergo transitionary periods when splendid new theories quash old ones."

More pedantic points: Baudelaire does not "remind us", Baudelaire merely 'said'. Don't give yourself an authority you don't have. As I reminded you, "true genius comes from being able to defend your argument clearly and coherently, not just setting up a field of straw men to run around yelling whatever 'truth' you want at"

I'm not sure where all the hate is coming from.

Some bullet points:

Ice-9 is another development of the sciences. The global/quantum/string bit was a comparison to Ice-9 as a great achievement of science. Vonnegut elevates the work of his protagonist, Ice-9, and deflates it by ending the world (plus suicide). Is that clear enough?

I don't think the statement was flippant. I think it made the point rather well. I could create a long list of things people believed that turned out not to be true. Whether it was called science, history, or religion depends on the example.

It sounds like you want me to write you a paper juxtaposing Ice-9 and human fallibility. If I have time, maybe I'll write you three pages or so.


And the "authority I don't have"? I don't know how to answer that without sounding like an arrogant fuck. Let's just say that I've impressed some pretty major scholars as an undergraduate. I don't want to make this a let's have cmlancas boast about how great he is, but let's just not go there. Unless you're a published M.A. or Ph.D, you might just want to quiet yourself.  :awesome_for_real:

I'll just put it this way: I'll send you a copy of my paper when it gets published. Then maybe I'll have some f13 Book Club cred.  :roll:

I apologize to everyone else in the thread for all the dick waving. I'd like to get back to the discussion. :D

I'll all ears and ready to be impressed, I like to see the arguments that impress rather than just the conclusions, is all. Maybe (also being an English major?) I'm expecting the discussion to go a little deeper than it probably is, but I assure you if you write 3 pages or send me your paper I'll give it an honest read.

I thought the thread could use a bit of dick-waving, seeing how the conversation seemed a little stalled. Get opiniated everyone! If no one else starts saying stuff I'll probably come and bore the pants/annoy more of you by pointing out my individual dislikes of V's prose style. You have been warned.

On topic:

Bokonon himself: One lazy fuck, eh?

EDIT: I write 'just' too much. Fixed.

Interesting opinions make for a good book club, not fucking morons who think that the posting style of the Politics forum is also the proper style for discussing books. Jesus people get a grip. Save the 'tardery for the correct forum.

I could be completely wrong here, but it seems pretty simple to me:

"Marine general wants to keeps marines from wallowing in mud --> Scientist creates way of solidifying mud for this purpose --> Scientist fails to think about the consequences of his action --> Ice-9 has absolutely NO practical use that doesn't end up destroying the world --> Ice-9 accidentally destroy the world."

Something that should never have made it past the conceptual phase is designed by a man without any thought concerning the consequences.  Simply because, as his boss put it, he was into "true science."

I don't agree with cmlancas that Ice-9 is in the same category as things we think are true that turn out false. Ice-9 worked, it wasn't incorrect science. It just had no upside.

So it does demonstrate fallibility, but not in the "some science turns out to be junk" way. Ice-9 is worse than that. It's creation wasn't an error, just immensely stupid.

It's creation was meant to be a massive repudiation to any ideal of 'pure research' in science, the idea the director embodied that somehow only scientists working on their own projects that were the result of their interests are real scientists. All the others conducting research into solving real world problems or improving lives are simply engineers, tinkerers too caught up in the practical sphere to do anything truly worthy. It's an attitude in lots of fields of study, that study and research for its own sake is somehow more worthy than research carried out in smaller areas for specific problems, or research into the application of more ground breaking research. In this case it's a doubly cruel joke because the genius scientist's motives for study are based on whatever happens to randomly catch his interest (the turtles at one point) and it turns out not bothering with any practical applications means he really does just do whatever the hell he feels like without considering the practical implications.

That's certainly how I read it at any rate, I suppose you could expand it to an attack on any system of thought that sidelines the every day at the expense of high blown ideals that don't necessarily relate. If you took that line then Bokononism would seem to be the ideological opposite, it becomes an everyday concern with no greater overarching ideal, in totally ridding us of wider goals it ends up becoming meaningless itself.

Conversely it also presents a system of though (Bokononism) that presents high blown ideas divorced from reality that are deliberately entertained despite everyone recognising this fact. Contradiction?

I don't think so. I personally feel that, intended or otherwise, the book doesn't really present a 'position' per se. It is more a collection of criticisms, thoughts, and confusions that ultimately celebrate humanity despite itself. (How's that for a poorly argued conclusion!).

Getting back to some productive disucssion.


I'm nto sure if he does. Only the Bokononists kill themseves (which is a suicide pact of sorts, not destruction). The couple of other people who survive don't, nor perhaps, does Bokonon himself. Likewise it doesn't follow that everyone on earth was killed or will commit suicide. I think it quite plausable that you could have a follow up SF story about the people who chose to live on and adapt to the changed world.

I like your reading. I think the line, "'All true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies,'" totally supports your argument.

It's interesting that you can call something like Bokononism as being concerned with both "everyday concerns" and "high ideals". For while it does talk about literal life it goes about it in an abstract way. This same point extends to Religion: "Love thy neighbour" is both an ideal and a literal command.

I don't think this is a contradiction nor results in meaningless. It's more of an aspirational edict. If you play that against Ice-9 what you are shown is the distinct lack of direction in that particular scientific aspiration. It is not aspiring to a goal, just aspiring to creation.

But then, if Bokonon himself wants to celebrate thumbing our noses at 'God', what better way to do it than to desire to create?

Maybe I'm being overly doom-and-gloom, but I'm nearly positive that an Ice-9 holocaust isn't survivable.  The fact that one stray snowflake will contaminate or kill anything it touches means that anything which isn't living in a hermetically sealed environment is pretty much fucked.  As soon as that corpse hit the water, it was officially game over for life on Earth.  At best, some of the survivors might last for a generation or so on canned food and whatever power reserves are available (need to have some way to thaw ice-9 for drinking if nothing else), and that's assuming no stupid accidents, which is a big assumption.  Even if humanity manages to hang on by its fingernails for a while, the ecosystem is shot to hell and back and won't recover, which means that either the oxygen or food supplies will eventually run out completely.

Well, there will be no evaportiation, so no precipitation, so no snow. But otherwise you're probably right. I think it would take a while for humanity to die out though, and that is assuming they cannot adjust is some fanciful SF way like people do to such things (building a sealed underground town with uncontaminated etc etc). Literally I don't think it survivable, but then it's not a literal story, so I think you can take the fact that people are alive at the end of it as the destruction not being assured.

Afterall, you just need some other mad scientist to invent a substance that melts all Ice-9 back to water and much of the trouble is recoverable.

Weren't there weird weather patterns and strong winds and stuff toward the end there?  Seems like that'd get you your snow even without precipitation (a strong wind picks up a few ice-9 crystals, one happens to hit your eye or get up your nose or you open your mouth at the wrong time = no more you).

Of course, you're right that one could always do a story where a miracle cure was invented, but from what was in the book itself up to the end I very much had the feeling it was the end of the road.  It was the only thing about the book I really didn't like, actually.   :|  Bleak endings like that depress me.

My default response to miracle disasters is to imagine miracle cures :-)

But seriously, I never actually felt the ending was bleak, I just kind of thought of that then. I guess I found the book to be so capital f Fiction, the chapter titles and brevity, silly characters, etc contributed to this, that I didn't respond to it on a literal level.

As for the ice wind; always walk with your head down, sunglasses on, and never leave explosed sores to the elements!

And then you wear your clothes, covered in Ice-9, back to your home where you casually toss them onto the floor, which transfers the crystals, etc, etc, until your home is caked in the stuff on a microscopic level and you get a tiny but fatal piece on you.  The only way to survive is, as was mentioned, a hermetically sealed environment.  And that would suck.

No, the world is doomed completely within a generation, tops.  And I found it to be horribly, depressingly bleak.  But I'm easy to freak out =)

Yeah pretty much everyone is fucked. Even with plenty of advance warning it would be difficult to survive.

Basically all the plant and animal life on the planet will dies out within weeks. Hard to come back from that.

Ice nine doesn't melt, how is it going to stick to your clothes? (to carry this absurdity on longer)

Doesn't have to melt to flake off.

Hm? What I mean is that it won't becoem stuck to your clothes to behin with, it will just hit you and then fall off. I'm not an expert on ice (to say nothing of Ice-9!), but how will the ice stick to clothes if you dont have some melting?

Big blocks of ice are heavy and slippery, but small crystals of it (e.g. snow) are light and prickly enough to stick to each other and the fibers in your clothing without too much trouble.

Just imagine going out on a snowy day and then trying to get back inside without bringing ANY snow with you, not even a flake.  Imagine also that the snow is deadly poison.  And it doesn't melt at room temperature.

Has lamaros never seen snow?

Hmm, how to phrase this? How does this snow stick to you if not because it's .. stuck to you? Unless you're suggesting that snow 'catches' on you like a burr in your socks. Of course they wont happen as much as it does with snow, because it wont snow, we're talking about stuff caught in wind. Different angle, velocity, frequency. Etc. I think you could deal with that if you were careful about your clothes.

When you pick up a piece of ice in your hand the ice stick to you, because of stuff that is not ice. If you get two bits of ice they dont stick together unless you get some sort of friction going to melt some of that ice, which then gets cold and hardens attaching the two.

But as Ice-9 does not melt without serious effort it's not going to 'stick' to things in the same way that snow does.


We're talking about Ice-9, not snow. (Or were you just trying to demonstrate you don't like me agian? You can stop, I get it.)

Like I said, that's the difference between a big block of ice and little tiny bits of it.  Two ice cubes will behave in the way that you describe, but a handful of smaller crystals (snow) will very readily form a snowball at below-freezing temperatures.

Based on the description of Ice-9, small pieces of it (e.g. the frost on the ground and the particles of it that get kicked up by the wind) behave just like snow.

(http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/8990/drevazanqc5.jpg)

"I don't like you either!"


:nda:

j/k

I was seriously asking.

Snow doesn't have to melt to stick. It gets stuck in your hat, in your pockets, in your zipper, collects on your shoulders, etc, even at temperatures where it isn't melting at all.

Its like walking through a sandstorm and expecting not to have sand on you.

I guess, to use the sand example:

If you go to the beach and don't go in the water you can get the sand off you pretty easily, where it becomes trouble is in your hair, stuck to your skin (sweat, etc) and in pockets and the like. But if you're not wet, weat a hat and dont have poeckets then you can probably get away with hardly any sand at all. Snow is the same, you can get it catch to you in many places, but if it's not close to melting at all you can get away with a lot less.

And in the hypothetical world with Ice-9 the amount of stuff flying through the air is going to be a lot less than in a snowstorm or sandstorm, so if you are looking out for it and trying to get rid of it then the chances are only a small amount will get caught on you.

Which you might be able to deal with if you planned properly. It would be a lot harder to deal with snow as we know it in the same way.

It's just an exercise though, the possibility wouldn't really come up. I expect everyone who wasn't incredibly well prepared before the event to die from Ice-9 in days were such a substance to exist. But, given the fantasy of it existing I thought I'd entertain a fantasy of trying to deal with it.

Sand is made up of smooth particles. Snow is not.

You're going to have to explain the relevance of that comment. (if people are really so bored as to continue this discussion?)

All these totally retarded conversations appear to have a common factor.

Edit: I'm reformed.  :heart:

The jaggies on snow catch on to things and let go a lot more reluctantly than sand does.  Anyway, it's silly to consider going out in anything less than a hazardous environment suit.  If the wind changes and the tiniest bit gets inside your hood then you're dead, so you'd better bundle up, yes?

But sand can be so fine is sneaks inside those tiny gaps! It's probably safest to go about inside a bubble, and more fun too; just roll everywhere.

Hamster Wheel... of the FUTURE!  :drill:

I think the meaningless I saw between Bokononism is that even though it talks about God and creation and the way we relate to each other in His grand plan, it all boils down to that plan being unknowable and any attempt to explain it being doomed to being little better than lies. It makes high ideals and systems of thought meaningless because they will always be wrong, it puts forward its own but at the same time explicitly states that even if you want to follow it, it's wrong. Bokononists like the narrator just smirk at everyone else for thinking they can understand the world while putting forward their own interpretation that they happily admit is just lies itself. I suppose there's a comparison with Buddhist doctrines that teachings need not be true in order to be useful in helping one achieve Nirvana. The difference being in Bokononism there's no end goal, it's just living your everyday life, whatever helps you through for now. Thus Bokonon hasn't got a problem telling everyone to kill themselves because he's got nothing else helpful to tell them, they're screwed.

You're right though that Ice-9 shows a total lack of direction in the science, which I guess was part of what I meant when saying it didn't have anything to do with the practical world. The director revelled in the fact that pure science didn't have direction, that it was aimed at coming up with new things that noone else could have imagined previously but purposely avoids the issue of what the consequences of this could be.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Yeah, I'm a slacker. I just finished this; I read this one after Canticle. It was my first exposure to Vonnegut; I wasn't sure what I was in for, but I sure didn't expect this.

I did enjoy it; It's definitely black humor... of a sort. I think the deconstruction has been handled pretty effectively, so I don't have anything to say about that.

Arguing about retarded make-believe science and imaginary creations? OH HELL YEAH. Maybe some of you know that I'm a sucker for disaster theories and doomsday scenarios and try and work out the science behind them. This one's a goodie.

Look; Ice-9 should have been instantly fatal when it was created. Depending on contamination properties, it would have transformed all moisture in the air into a particulate cloud of Ice-9 (moisture in the air is simply small particles of liquid water, and normal moisture ). I don't think I need to spell out what this would mean. Pretty much instant death, everywhere. Propogation rates are at the rate of convection for air, and probably somewhere around the speed of sound for water. This means that within a few hours, it would have made a full lap around the planet.

If for some reason there was a smallest possible size at which ice-9 could spread, a quanta that was larger than the water droplets suspended in air, we're all dead anyway. It's in all the world's oceans, there would be huge climate changes as accurately described in the book; massive dust storms, clouds of the stuff would be everywhere. I'd imagine the relative humidity would drop sharply. You breathe in the dust, you die. There is plenty of water in the throat and lungs. You touch it with your bare skin, you die. Sweat. Remember that we are "bags of mostly water".