F13 Book Club Week One-Two: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

[lamaros]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

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.

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

[lamaros]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

 

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.

[lamaros]

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.

[Bokonon]

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!

 

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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?

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.

[Margalis]

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:

It so happens I know where the string he was playing with came from. Maybe you can use it somewhere in your book. Father took the string from around the manuscript of a novel that a man in prison had sent him. The novel was about the end of the world in the year 2000, and the name of the book was 2000 A.D. It told about how mad scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole world. There was a big sex orgy when everybody knew that the world was going to end, and then Jesus Christ Himself appeared ten seconds before the bomb went off. The name of the author was Marvin Sharpe Holderness, and he told Father in a covering letter the he was in prison for killing his own brother. He sent the manuscript to Father because he couldn't figure out what kind of explosives to put in the bomb. He thought maybe Father could make suggestions.

"I don't mean to tell you I read the book when I was six. We had it around the house for years. My brother Frank made it his personal property, on account of the dirty parts. Frank kept it hidden in what he called his 'wall safe' in his bedroom. Actually, it wasn't a safe but just an old stove flue with a tin lid. Frank and I must have read the orgy part a thousand times when we were kids.

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.

[Lt.Dan]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[lamaros]

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

The revelation that he dies doesn't really adjust the novel substantially. 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.

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.)

[Margalis]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[MaceVanHoffen]

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.

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 

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.

[MaceVanHoffen]

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.

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.

[lamaros]

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.

[Rendakor]

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).

[Bokonon]

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)?

[Rendakor]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Bokonon]

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.

[Samwise]

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

   We love you too.

[Margalis]

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).

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.

[Bokonon]

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

   We love you too.

Dammit, an old BBS habit that dies hard.

[Phildo]

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?"

[Strazos]

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 - 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.

[cmlancas]

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.

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.

[lamaros]

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.

[Phildo]

tell us what you feeeel.

A warming of the cockles.

[cmlancas]

No it's not.

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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.)

Stawman much? Patronise much?

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.

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?

Ice-9 completely elaborates the fallibility of human progress.

Elaborate?

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

[stray]

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.

[lamaros]

Ok.

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.

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.

[lamaros]

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

[Phildo]

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

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.