Cat's Cradle: A Novel Paperback – September 8, 1998

Incredible prose - alive and thriving. Deep humanity and a recognition and love of the absurd. Always with Vonnegut the spectral universe in a grain of sand, a shard of ice-nine or the breath of the anguished living.You could tease apart the works this book influenced, but that would be a bit too Bokonon…

I don't want to spend too much time writing a review of what is, in essence, a classic novel. This is my first reading of Cat's Cradle, and my first time reading anything of substantial length by Kurt Vonnegut. The simple reason I don't want to spend too much time reviewing this book is that it has already been reviewed countless times, especially by people far more familiar with it than I am.SPOILER ALERT! This is a short book, and it's almost impossible to avoid spoiling even the ending while trying to discuss significant aspects of the work. Also, this book has been around a while, meaning it's highly unlikely you won't have heard at least a capsule summary of the plot. That said, the following two paragraphs reveal details near the end of the book.There were only two things I found disappointing in the story: First, there was no speculation nor explanation given as to why there would suddenly be purple-mouthed tornadoes all over the place. Perhaps that was just the author's speculation about the knock-on effects of all the Earth's water suddenly converting to ice-nine.Second, there was mention of a strange nimbus ("lavender corona") surrounding the "weird plug" of rock sitting on the back of Mt. McCabe, and it wasn't clear if this was some strange phenomenon or not; the narrator spoke of his desire to visit this formation, to climb it, but he never reports doing so. It's an unexplored detail, and in such a slender volume, such things make me wish for more.The writing was excellent: literate, trenchant and witty. This is my first foray into Vonnegut, so I have no other points of reference to go by.The Rosetta Books edition of this Kindle e-book seems to fall somewhere between the ultra-cheap e-books (free or $0.99) and the premium e-books (with list prices close to those of the print editions) sold by Amazon -- both in terms of price and in terms of general quality. This edition was mostly decent, but had some typesetting issues with punctuation (wrong type of quote or apostrophe used -- open quote instead of close quote, for instance). Further, there were several cases where it was obvious that the text was obtained using OCR of a print edition, and this manifested frequently as the wrong letter in a word, or a letter like "m" being replaced by "rn."I was never unable to determine what was truly meant in any passage, but the handful of flaws in this e-book could be easily corrected.

Cat's Cradle is arguably Vonneguts greatest work, although I haven't read them all. It's about the end of the world, and starts on the anniversary of the end of the world for the Japanese, the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.Our protagonist, Jonah, is writing a book about the end of the world. He ends up interviewing the offspring of the father of the atom bomb, Dr. Felix Hoenikker, an eccentric, seemingly uncaring father who, unbeknownst to most, also makes "Ice Nine" before he dies. Ice Nine causes everything to freeze. It precipates the end of the world.Before Ice Nine takes over, and freezes the world, Vonnegut takes us on a whirlwind tour of the hearts and minds of a slew of zany characters, from Newt the midget, son of The Father of The Atom Bomb, to a secretary who disdains anyone who "thinks too much," to a philanthropist who turns out to be the complete opposite, to a zillion others (almost too many) in between. We are taken to the island of San Lorenzo, a Carribean banana republic run by a paranoind, eccentric dictator that is totally at the beck and call of the USA, and that is where things really get weird.This book is divided into 127 very short chapters, which makes it not only easier to read and remember, but also made it easier, I'm sure, for Mr. Vonnegut to write.One of the main points of this story, if I understand correctly, is that religion, in this case "Bokonism," is pretty much a hodge-podge/hocus-pocus bed of spectacular lies. In the end, the founder of Bokonism, Bokonen, admits himself that it was all a complete joke, not to be taken sersiously (how can anyone take seriously a religion where people make love by rubbing their feet together?), but I won't spoil it by telling you what happens in between.Mad scientists and their nervous secretaries, midget kung-fu, foot sex, countless hungry, skinny, stupid natives, one beautiful, "healthy" native, fat businessmen here to save the world, steep jungles, waterfalls, underground bomb shelters, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire and brimstone (don't tell Vonnegut I said that), horse faced flute playing enfent terribles, and much, much more. Oh, and I almost forgot. Ice Nine. How could I forget Ice Nine?This book is a parable for the end of time.

This is the only book I’ve read that many times. Each time with new eyes I discover more and more relevancy. The themes of the absurdities of religion, science, government and people will always ring true, I guess.