[This post marks the beginning of a new series on this blog, as part of which I will publish book reviews -- more like vomit my whimsical and circumstantial thoughts along with some biased opinions full of stereotypes, all intermingled with absolutely irrelevant stuff. I will most likely not be able to review books that I've read long back, since I hardly remember the details. Sadness.]
Feels good to get back to writing prose, yo! I am pretty sure I am hella rusty right now. But here's hoping this post will act as sandpaper. And if you have ever actually tried to use sandpaper to remove rust, you will know that it is a time consuming process, takes a lot of effort, and may not even remove the rust satisfactorily; I remember my childhood attempts at cleaning the wick-containing sides of our air-cooler -- the evaporative kind we get in India -- resulted mostly in painting the redness of the rust all over my hands and clothes, noticing which I had spent the rest of the afternoon silently observing my uncle finish the job. Basically, it is going to take a few posts before I get into the zone.
Oh shit! That's right! The book! So, yeah, as part of the book club at UC Davis (which, by the way, is named Beyond The Book Club; imagine naming your restaurant Delicious Foods Restaurant -- it is at best confusing and mostly annoying) we read short stories and/or novels and... well, discuss them. It's an excuse for me to read literature that I would not have read on my own, expand my literary sense in general, and meet people who like to read. And this finally brings us to Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
Now, old Kurtie is popular, apparently, for his anti-war sentiments, particularly as expressed in Slaughterhouse-Five. Cat's Cradle also talks about war, or more precisely the mass scale destruction that science-and-technology-powered warfare can bestow upon human beings, nay, living entities. But that is just one of the themes occurring in the book -- it also talks about religion and philosophy and government and people.
Thankfully, though, Cat's Cradle is full of humor -- pretty decent humor actually -- which makes all these otherwise serious and kind-of boring topics palatable, even relishable. It even has some suspense and science-fiction elements, but all of those are in the background trying to enhance the central, more serious theme.
I cannot talk of Cat's Cradle without talking of Bokononism. Bokononism is a religion artificially created by (surprise!) Bokonon in order to organize and control the people of San Lorenzo (a remote almost-tribal country in which most of the plot unveils) and to make them productive. Bokonon hopes that his religion, which he openly claims is 'based on lies' (more like harmless untruths), will thereby help the people live a 'prosperous and meaningful' life. And it does. Until the day the world ends.
Read the book to know how the world ends and all that jazz. It's not that big of a mystery per se but how the events unfold and what they all really mean is quite interesting. A running theme in the book is the parallel drawn between Bokononism and Christianity, between Science and Religion, between Comprehension and Reality, and such stuff. And the author actively wants us to think about these issues. San Lorenzo is a fictional setting used by the author to discuss elements of our own society. Okay, I'll stop mentioning the obvious.
The book overall is fairly thought-provoking, as much as it is humorous and confusing and metaphorical and satirical. The characters are amusing, sometimes pitiable, often quotable, and usually just outright weird. And it's a very easy-to-read book. An interesting aspect, though, is that it has 127 chapters. And chapters are on an average just 1-2 pages long. The book proceeds like an anecdote after anecdote as the narrator experiences life before and in San Lorenzo.
I cannot write more about Cat's Cradle without invoking the power of spoilers. Thus, I'll stop here. It's a short fun read. I will give it a solid 4.34 out of 5. Currently, I am reading Midnight Tides (Malazan #5), The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1) and War and Peace. Midnight Tides is looking fantastic right now and since the other two are voluminous and monstrous respectively, I really hope they are worth the time investment. Until I am done with any of these, bye!
