by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”

Thus, my journey into the writings of Kurt Vonnegut began with this book. I had only ever heard about this book through sorts of fringe discussions or mentions; I knew virtually nothing about it other than the title and author. I found it in no other than Ray’s Archives Bookshop on Grand River Ave, along with some other pick-ups. I had accumulated about six books from that trip alone, my pockets feeling the strain, and my backpack, which was also my personal item for my upcoming flight back to Texas, was starting to push the limits of what qualifies as a “personal item.”

The book is not long, but it fits in a lot. The story focuses on a journalist, told in retrospect, accounting for how the world ended. The story is allegorical for many aspects of the Cold War. Hell, the thing that ends the world in Cat’s Cradle is a delicate substance called ice-nine. The substance is a type of water, an ice, which upon contact with any liquid water immediately turns all water adjacent to it frozen. Now that’s pretty cold.

The story features a carousel of characters who are, to readers, complete idiots blinded by their own agendas, visions, and power. The narrator seemingly manages to be just that, a narrator. Eventually, however, the narrator is chosen to be the next president of San Lorenzo, the pseudo-Caribbean island that is home to the outlawed-but-practiced-secretly Bonkonon religion and a failing utopia. San Lorenzo is not so much like Cuba, but the allegorical context is there to remind readers of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place the year before the book’s publishing.

Reading older books, especially from the 20th century, reminds me how little stake I have in satire and allegories. I would venture to say that I worry less about nuclear war than the average person in the 1960s. I would also venture to say that satirizing literature in today’s society holds less water and makes less of a splash. There may be a couple of reasons for that, but the main one I would identify is that people today have a larger platform to skip the metaphors, allegories, and satire and go straight to the punch. The main form of consumption has become social media, and on social media, you can be (within rational limits) as vocal as you want about anything. There is no gag on the internet, aside from tyrannical admins or algorithms that limit people’s voices.

But a book, a good one, slows down the voices and forces you to read, word for word over a few hours, while you slowly come to the realization: “Oh! ice-nine is literally the atomic bomb. But could ice-nine could also be Communism? Maybe, but I don’t think Vonnegut would have made such a vague allegory or restricted himself to the atomic metaphor.

I mentioned I don’t have much stake in the historical context of older books because much of those past worries don’t perturb me today. That is not totally true. We still have our fingers around the button, just not on it anymore. Our world still has nuclear arms, faux promises of utopias, and charlatans who promise to change things or show us the way.

Above all, stories of the past focus on humans. It’s the classicly oversimplified grade school pedagogy of man versus man, nature, self, or society. Whether or not we are in a cold war, surviving a great depression, or pioneering new lands doesn’t, and shouldn’t matter, to a contemporary reader. To quote Carl Sagan:

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

While we may be citizens of a distant epoch, we are still human. We are the offspring of the previous generation and every preceding generation before them. All books invite us into what the world was like at that time, what fantasies was the author conjuring, or what was looming in the backdrop of the average person’s daily life.

Vonnegut’s writing, from what I can surmise so far, is highly reflective of his experiences. I am thankful he decided to share his brain in the most indirect and direct ways.

I give Cat’s Cradle four and a half stars.