Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut

A dark, satirical, humourous middle finger extended to everyone in Capitalist Christian and Science Loving America for about 250 rapid-fire pages that takes us through the post-war United States and the defilement of social structure which we felt necessary to sacrifice for peace, and ends up in a completely dystopian, end-of-world, doomsday moment of Zen on a deserted island. What could be more fun?

I read this book in order to become more familiar with the works of Mr. Vonnegut. I'm not too huge a fan of his work, if you can believe it. The only book I had read prior to this that he has written was Slaughterhouse V. And even though it makes nearly everyone's list of American books from the last century that are must reads, I just was not too impressed by it. It was simple, and whilst trying to come of as sad, almost seemed to come of as pathetic. To make matters worse, I just really did not understand why it has such a religious following. Honestly, if I never met a guy with a tattoo of a quote from that book on his arm, I may have been able to enjoy it more.

I think another part of the problem was that I felt I was missing something. Like there was a truly epic experience that the book offered that I just missed out on, probably due to the fact that I skipped out on reading Slaughterhouses I through IV. "This tends to happen when you pick up Book V and start there," I thought. "Surely someone did the same with 'Heretics of Dune' or 'Harry Potter and the Fifth Book of the Franchise.'"

Anyway, you don't need a fanatic loyalty pledged to Kurt Vonnegut to be able to enjoy this book. It just is, on its own, very enjoyable, fast, and darkly funny. Its statement on religion, philosophy, and science is tremendous and, if you are quite the cynic, accurate. Celebrating a genius like Albert Einstein for giving us the power of atomic energy, probably not the best idea. Let alone thinking about that power and knowledge in the wrong hands. Really made me want to go jam to O.M.D’s popular 80’s hit, and one of the best songs of 80’s electronica bar none, Enola Gay. 

This book has indeed inspired me to go for more in terms of Vonnegut literature, even though I maintain I am not a devout follower, nor even yet a fellow traveller. Which reminds me, you can claim loyalty not to him but to fun phrases and terms he makes up: like Bokononism, wampeters, granfalloons (people pretending to be a part of a made-up cause), so it goes (death), and, thanks to the next Vonnegut book I've started:  chrono-synclastic infundibulum.

Brave, New World.

What I liked about reading this was how quickly it came after reading 1984. A little over a month, for me. My favourite part of Brave New World is that no matter where you dig through Aldous Huxley's collection of analysis and review and "Revisited" literature, he never refers to this world as a Dystopia. Rather, it is a satirical take on a Utopian society in which nobody need worry about anything that makes us human today. Our way of life, as progressive as we may think it be, is savage to them.

I read it with a comparison of 1984 in mind, and though I thought myself clever at the time there exists many takes on comparing/contrasting the two, mainly these websites: 

http://www.egodialogues.com/words-language/huxley-orwell.php
&
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rrxW1.png

They both carry basically the same message to readers, written from authors with similar goals writing in the same time period, and both works remain equally timeless, regardless of the warnings that the future holds no room for reading. And the message is that our society is trending in a very scary direction, we should all be concerned and we should all keep an intellectual assertiveness to keep this from happening to us.

But how this comes about is totally different in Brave New World. The ruling bodies and powers that be have no need for censorship, and rely on the fundamental truths that if society is given enough freedom to engage in fun yet ultimately unrewarding behaviour, that their need to continue to have fun and be worry free will outweigh their desire to learn, be independent and seek greater knowledge. I compared it a lot more to Fahrenheit 451 (review out soon, hopefully) because people, for the most part, have better things to do than to think and learn and philosophise and expand their minds. They have girls to play with, erotic games to engage in, orgies to attend and soma to take if they ever feel stressed. It reminded me much of the crowds of frat guys in college who think the last thing in the world they want to do with their free time is read a book or study history or visit a culture that lacks our technologies which is firmly rooted in traditions we may find savage.

Just thinking about things, who we are, what others did and what could be or thinking up scenarios for how people react and what makes us human, what is an acceptable reaction to any stimuli, is a fairly basic concept of philosophy. And of Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 I love how the authors make these ideas, these thought processes obsolete so that society can sleep peacefully at night and not deal with the horrors and brain cramps that deep thinking brings about. But nobody did it quite like Huxley.

He makes a satirical Utopia so easy to relate, even for us, 80 years later. There's no need for any intellectual tools anymore because there's pleasurable stimuli all around you, plus the social norms and peer pressure prevent many from wanting to seek knowledge and the tools that will expand their mind. It's very comparable, in my view, to those that put off fulfilling activities to watch ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX weekly and nightly programming or Hollywood blockbuster movies with their shitty writing, shitty plots and great special effects and excessuive use of PG-13 tits and ass (Transformers, anyone? What a pile of shit).

But rather than instill fear and scare you, Huxley makes fun of it all. And for that, I think he's done something no one else can match, and few even attempt to.