So let me preface this by saying yes, I really am writing a review of Cat's Cradle. I don't really care how many eyes have poured over this book, how many high schoolers or graduates have read it, or whatever. I just want to give my opinion on it. I think that's one of the beautiful things about reading, is that the naive voices of the future (like me) are always going to have their chance to give their say on how things really are, what this book really means to me in today's world. Sometimes these phrases get so repeated that I get tired to hear them, and even even this sentiment is tiring, and remarking on it is tiring, and writing reviews is tiring, and that's the whole life. Well, maybe it's not really like that either and I'm just not feeling great. Somehow I feel like this rambling on is resonant with Vonnegut's style and worldview.
If it's not already clear, I'm pretty cynical about this book. I like the premise, and I agree with the message. Somehow we all know war is bad, that we don't need atomic bombs and that questioning the value of institutions in our lives is something you do. It could be that there are people out there who still don't feel that way, but I haven't encountered them since I was young. Everyone is cynical and ironic these days, to the point that the editors of The Papermaker have begun to feel like maybe it's not such a good thing. Specifically we reference some of the comments made by David Foster Wallace about sarcasm and irony in our frequent discussions about the topic.
I think that Cat's Cradle must've held a lot of weight in the year it was written, 1963. I say that because it seems to me like the war effort and the overall cultural atmosphere of that made many people feel like intense and unquestioning adherence to Americanism was the sole salvation. I know what that feels like. I've been awash in my own life for quite some time now, and getting hit with wave after wave of the world's problems makes me want to hold onto something solid too. I grew up in the age of relativism, however, and the urban sensibilities which for better or worse inform my worldview are loud and clear: "there is no nothing to hold on to".
All this about Bokononsim and lies being useful and all of that is nothing new to us today. It seems to me important now to ask a new question: "is there really nothing to hold on to?".
I know a philosopher who tries to convince me that there really is something to hold on to. That there is more than ice-nine and made up religions in this world. I would like to believe that. I am worn down of hearing the meaninglessness of it all repeated over and over. Nobody really acts as though nothing is important except about the most important things. For instance, nobody stops getting angry in traffic because "nothing means anything", or fails to treat their spouse poorly over minor infractions because "nothing means anything". It's only about controlling yourself that people say this. I know young alcoholics who will explode at the smallest slight to their honor, yet refuse to stop abusing drugs because "life is meaningless". I know people who died using heroin with that attitude who were total assholes in real life.
I'm not trying to put words into Vonnegut's mouth, and maybe I'm an idiot who shouldn't comment on literature, but I just don't agree with the idea that it's all so up in the air. The scene at the end of the book with Mona's laughter at the ice-nine suicides lining a crater and her own ambivalence towards living seems more rhetorical flourish than "honesty" to me. I agree that things are impossible to know for sure about our place in the world, and that most of the time this life is nasty. But if it's really all that meaningless, why write a book about how terrible humans are to each other? Why care? Although Mona is built up to be an almost Athenian, wise, unattached, unblemished soul in this world, is she really any so different in her attitude toward death from some heathen war monger? Is looking at the lives and deaths of the San Lorenzonians as nothing more than a circumstance in the world a realistic portrayal of Vonnegut's supposedly loving humanism? Or is it just edgy?
Before I get accused of having a "bad take" on this novel, please understand that I'm just trying to stab at the real, underlying feelings and worldviews which drove the production of this novel. I think that reading Cat's Cradle gives a pretty clear anti-establishment, anti-violence, pro-love, pro-humanity message, and yet those values seems fundamentally opposed to the indifference towards life and death that these messages are conveyed through. Maybe I'm being reductive: maybe Vonnegut's message is more nuanced than this argument supposes it to be. Maybe the real message is that life is complicated and that nothing is clear cut.
I'm just not convinced that's true. So shoot me. "So it goes".