Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

It is confusing why they always label Kurt Vonnegut a Science-fiction writer. Yes, his stories contain sci-fi elements, but they’re always little more than cheesy rhetorical devices. In Breakfast of Champions the only thrusts in the direction of science-fiction are the numerous references to the terrible writings of Kilgore Trout dotted around the book; they’re more like parodies of sci-fi than the real stuff, used as a way to get unusual ideas across by dressing them up in the most ridiculous clothing imaginable. This is exactly the same with Vonnegut’s alien ‘Tralmalfadorians’ from Slaughterhouse 5 – which are not so much a fantastic ‘Woah, what if there was a society like THIS!’, or a clever Star Trek way of getting across insightful comments about our own world, as they are about creating a really bad joke to make fun of the human race. It’s never made clear whether the Tralmalfadorians (I could be misspelling it, but I don’t think it matters) are actually real, or just the fevered imaginings of the protagonist – their inherent ridiculousness and the way they’re interacted with suggests the latter, but even so, they’re a relatively minor part of the whole book. Vonnegut’s work is always firmly grounded in the world of 20^th century America.

          In Cat’s Cradle our token sci-fi throw-in is a substance called ‘ice-nine’, and unlike the previous examples mentioned, this time the sci-fi stuff actually has a bearing on how the book progresses. ‘Ice-nine’ is a chemical that can instantaneously freeze water solid, an ice with a melting-point of one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit – it matters not how much water and how little ‘ice-nine’, as just one sand-sized grain could freeze an entire ocean in a single moment. And, considering that each ocean is connected to every other ocean, and each ocean connects to countless bays and seas, and is fed by an interconnected series of rivers pouring into it all; you get the picture. ‘Ice-nine’: Caution, do not get wet!

          I think the science behind this idea is dodgy, but then I do not consider Vonnegut an actual science-fiction writer. He’s too warped for that. This is a book that was written at the height of the Cold War, a book about the end of the world –  a strange and disturbing end it is too.

          Like all of Vonnegut’s work I’ve so far sampled, the plot, characters and setting are paper-thin and can’t be deconstructed or examined satisfactorily – all attempts to do so will be disappointing. The characters are mere sketches, the setting little more than a backdrop, and the plot not especially worthy of note – while in this book Vonnegut doesn’t actually go whole-hog post-modern on us by telling us the ending at the beginning, there’s no harm in knowing that it’s a book about the end of the world – something that is hinted at all the way through. The characters, plot, setting and themes all mix together to create a potent little cocktail that is greater than the sum of its parts. After reading this book I felt quite nauseous, not because of any intense goriness or especially horrific imagery that appeared in it – Vonnegut’s not that sort of writer – but as though I had ingested something not altogether beneficial to my health. Would I recommend it to try? Not if you want a cosy bed-time story that warmly reinforces everything you believe in and tells you ‘it’s all going to be okay.’ But then, why would anyone want to read a book about the unsalvageable brokenness of mankind? It’s either going to make you feel morbidly depressed, or you’re going to try everything in your power to reject everything it says and run crying and screaming into another camp.

          Or you could just say it’s a stupid, retarded book written by a delusional and pessimistic mind. Which is no more than a way of rephrasing the previous point.

          I however prefer to say that it is worth reading this sick little comic-tragedy, if only because there’s nothing quite like it in the world. Vonnegut has his own way with words, and to experience them will only ever cause you to grow as an individual – the reason we read in the first place. I still think that Slaughterhouse 5 is better, because though both are equally soul-rending, Slaughterhouse is somehow more... human about the way it presents itself. As bad as it gets in Dresden and beyond, at least it seems there is some kind of sputtering little LED of human decency and emotion lurking in the souls of some of the characters, and the protagonist has an actual heart beating inside him; whereas in Cat’s Cradle we feel that the people are in too bad a shape to save themselves. The world is destroyed by a simple thing, brought about by simple human weakness. There is no resistance possible, and the people aren’t worth saving.

          Anyway, I haven’t even said anything about the plot yet. So, it’s a first-person narrative from a guy, Jonah, who was writing a book about the development of the atomic bomb. He decided to research the life of one of the ‘Fathers’ of the bomb, Dr Felix Hoenikker, now deceased, and so attempts to get in touch with his three children: Newt, Frank and Angela. The story is broken up into very short sub-titled chapters with an average length of two pages, and in his meandering account Jonah slips in references to the religion of Bokononsim, a little-known cult from the island of San Lorenzo, which he for some reason adopts after the events he’s describing. As he delves further into the mystery of Dr Felix Hoenikker he learns of ‘ice-nine’, and is drawn by chance to the Caribbean island republic of San Lorenzo. Here, Jonah comes face to face with Bokononism and the end of the world occurs.

          Okay, so the plot isn’t great when summed up like that, and about half the book seems to be about this constructed religion of Bokononism, its principles and, for want of a better word, its beliefs. Like the Tralmalfadorians of Slaughterhouse 5, Bokononism is a strange construct used to convey some radical and crackpot ideas by dressing them up in the silliest clothes imaginable – it exists by saying that their entire religion is a pack of lies, something that no other human religion has ever admitted before. Its principles are to simply: ‘Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy’ (*harmless untruths. Cat’s Cradle, Penguin, pg. xvii), and then launches into these various foma, or harmless untruths; the most important notion being the interconnectedness of certain human beings regardless of racial, national or mental divisions, in something called a karass. I won’t try to explain any more because that’s what the book is for. 

If you want to bite the bullet, then go right ahead; nobody’s stopping you. Though I can’t say any more about Bokononism, I will at least end this review on one of its more enlightened concepts; a ritual whereby two people touch the bare soles of their feet together:

“        What I had seen, of course, was the Bokononist ritual of boko-maru, or the mingling of awareness.

          We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.

          The basis for the foot ceremony is this ‘Calypso’:

                   We will touch our feet, yes,

                   Yes, for all we’re worth.

                   And we will love each other, yes,

                   Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.                    ”

          [Excerpt from Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Penguin. Pp.112-113]

Bibliononism

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. Penguin Classics: St. Ives. (1965 [First Published 1963])

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

The Brontë family is one of the most celebrated collection of writers that English literature has to offer. During the mid 19^th century, three sisters embarked on a writing spree  that resulted in the arrival of a number of classics that have been, time and again, held up as masterpieces of writing; Jane Eyre from Charlotte, Wuthering Heights from Emily, and Anne – something of the Lepidus of the Brontës – wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I have time again voiced my apprehension and dislike for Victorian literature, a prejudice based not insignificantly on the fact that I was subjected to Jane Eyre at school, and hated just about every moment I was forced to devote thought and energy towards this long, dreary book.

          Let me say, first of all, how deeply I apologise to Charlotte Brontë for ever thinking such things about her excellent novel.

          I suspect that now I have a greater understanding and appreciation for the English language, I am better able to get to grips with Jane Eyre and see it for what it is truly worth – a heck of a lot. The Victorian prose no longer seems stuffy and overpowering, the characters no longer strange and lacking humanity, and the story no longer tedious and dull. And compared to Pride and Prejudice it now feels fresh and abounding with life, filled with countless separate moments of genius, and fully accessible to a reader of not especially great intelligence such as myself. Yes it deserves to be read in this day and age, and I hope it will survive long into the future.

          The story concerns... you guessed it: Jane Eyre herself, a young woman trying to make her way in the world of 19^th century Britain. Orphaned as a baby, she begins the novel as a 10 year old living under the watch of her vindictive aunt Reed, who thinks nothing of inflicting psychological torture on a helpless child. Packed off to an unhygienic boarding school of Lowood, Jane is one of the children lucky enough to not die of illness during her time as pupil, and after a few years go by she sets out on her own in order to ply the trade of governess – a live-in tutor for the children of those who want to pay for her service. Her first job lands her at Thornfield, the domain of the curious Mr. Rochester, and the story proceeds from there – a story of love, heartache, lunacy, secrets, tragedy, mystery and providence, with a side-order of religious zealotry.

          What makes Jane Eyre such a good book – something that long ago once put me off the whole thing – is the sheer weight of the prose used. It’s very Victorian; old fashioned, packed to bursting with lots of lovely words, sentences that run on for whole paragraphs, and liberal uses of punctuation (especially the semi-colon, for which I have never seen it so handsomely and so often used).

          Of course I cannot possibly hope to convey the skill of a writer such as Charlotte Brontë in so few words, and so as to not risk reproducing large quantities of the book itself – something that would have to be done in order to satisfactorily quote from any part of Jane Eyre – we must abandon this train of thought before we find ourselves having long-since missed our station. It’s good – intelligent, elegant, communicative. Unlike Jane Austen who seems to use about five times as much language as is strictly necessary, an approach I feel is more designed to show off education and ability more than anything, Brontë only uses about two or three times more language than needed – and always to great effect. She instead tries to write something fluid, something that requires a bit of effort to get through but should not bog down the reader; something to entertain and engage rather than to merely impress. At least that’s the way it seems to me. My thoughts on Pride and Prejudice are still recorded in one of my previous reviews should you wish to pick any bones, and just for the record I consider Jane Eyre to be its superior in every way. Give me a Brontë to read, not an Austen.

          One of the most apparent aspects by which Jane Eyre is an improvement over Pride and Prejudice is the protagonist. Whereas the story of Georgian courtship rituals struggled to establish anything that could be considered a character, our tale of a Victorian governess begins off the bat by making the right choices. One of the best ways for a character to gain the attention of a reader is to call for sympathy; and nothing calls for sympathy more than by seeing really awful things to happen to them as a child. Jane herself begins life as an orphan whose guardian, aunt Reed, truly despises her for the basic crime of existing; her older cousin John is a sadistic tormenter who has been given free rein to bully her, and Jane’s one attempt to defend herself – when her health and very life were at risk to John’s brutality – results in nothing less than psychological torture as punishment. Lowood school, where Jane is sent not long after this opening incident, is likewise a dreadful place for a child – although I got the impression that Jane, despite the malnutrition, the cold, the lack of hygiene, the enforced humiliations; at least preferred this place to living under aunt Reed’s roof. The Jane who eventually emerges from all this years later is one that is very difficult not to sympathise with, one whom we see is talented, clever and self-assured, and we can happily follow her through all the subsequent chapters as she faces the challenges of Thornwood and beyond. A section I particularly like, one where Jane’s glibness is on full display, is when she finds herself in the company of a Gipsy soothsayer who desires to read her fortune:

“        ...her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.

          ‘Well, and you want your fortune told?’ she said in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features.

          ‘I don’t care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.’

          ‘It’s like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold.’

          ‘Did you? You’ve a quick ear.’

          ‘I have; and a quick eye, and a quick brain.’

          ‘You need them all in your trade.’

          ‘I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble?’

          ‘I’m not cold.’

          ‘Why don’t you turn pale?’

          ‘I am not sick.’

          ‘Why don’t you consult my art?’

          ‘I’m not silly.’

          The old crone ‘nichered’, a laugh under her bonnet and bandage: she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it, began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very deliberately: -

          ‘You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.’

          ‘Prove it,’ I rejoined.                                                 ”

                   [Excerpt, pp.227-228]

          Our supporting character, Mr. Rochester, is certainly an interesting choice to pair her against – one whom I might say is a hundred times more noteworthy than Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy. Rochester’s much darker nature is an excellent contrast to Jane, and it’s quite clear that the main reason he’s attracted to her is because she is able and willing to talk back to him, and can hold her own against his mental sparring. That both he and Jane are made out to be not especially attractive is an unusual choice in such a genre; whereas both sides would normally have to be noticeably pretty or handsome in order to appeal to one-another, and whereas Pride and Prejudice makes it plain that money accounts for everything where love is concerned, here we have a romance sparked purely by the intellects of both parties. Rochester falls off his horse for this mere governess because this mere governess is Jane Eyre, not just any girl who wanders into his life. A decent proportion of the book is taken up by their dialogue, their unending back-and-forth that can go on for page after page after page, and it always took a while for it to start becoming tiresome. Likewise, while the characters feed off one another, the plot is driven by Mr. Rochester’s mysterious past and the regiment of skeletons in his closet, and it takes a great deal of time for the whole story to come out and for the whole back-story to make sense – though the number of times Rochester alludes to said skeletons in said closet during conversation with Jane, it makes me wonder if he was really quite so keen on absolute secrecy as he’s made out to be. 

          One last character to dissect, a guy who fills up the last quarter of the book, is a certain Mr. St. John Rivers (St. John, a strange and tricksy first name which is not pronounced ‘Saint John’ as logic would dictate, but is apparently said as ‘Sinjin’). Due to circumstances which have driven her from Mr. Rochester’s company, Jane finds herself in the care of the priest St. John and his sisters, and what a strange turn the novel takes at this point. St. John is basically an example of when religious belief is taken way too far. He’s presented as a good man, devoted to his practical work as a Christian, but he is unable to enjoy or appreciate life or his fellow human beings. His eyes are ever focused on God, and considering that God is a little less solid than the members of his own family whom he purports to care about, one might be inclined to feel a certain dislike for him. He is often likened to a Classical statue, beautiful and perfect, but hard and cold to match. He has no warmth for anyone he supposedly cares about – his sisters, and Jane of course – and has his heart set on becoming a missionary, thereby winning salvation for himself in heaven. What makes him an arsehole is this; he’s so damned certain in his own, particular interpretation of his religion – officially Anglican, but theologically closer to Calvinism – that he will not tolerate anything like human frailty, especially not in himself. For Jane, who falls more deeply into the pit of religion during last third of the book, St. John presents a very different challenge to everything else she’s faced before – especially when it becomes apparent that St. John pretty much believes he IS God. Listen to his words to Jane at the end of chapter 34:

“        ‘...To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight – take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me that you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; [...] Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!’        ”

                   [Excerpt, Pg. 461]

          This guy really is crazy. So the girl shows she has a mind of her own, and all of a sudden St. John says she’s denying God? And by refusing him, she’s therefore refusing Him and is thus something of a heretic and an apostate? I don’t believe in such a thing as zeal, but there is madness, with all its varied and curious forms. No matter; he’s an interesting character this St. John, and certainly makes the novel more striking because of it.

          Do I have any criticisms of this book then? Well, while not a battle to get through like Pride and Prejudice was, it’s still a little on the long side – but then that’s not really a bad thing, if you can stand devoting yourself to these things we nowadays call ‘books’, as it always makes actual progress and the reader’s time is never wasted in its course. The one thing that irritated me at any point during the book was the refusal to print certain place-names:

“        Millcote, ---shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England; yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town, ---shire was seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: [...] Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A---; a busy place enough, doubtless: so much the better.     ”

                   [Excerpt, Pg. 110]

          The refusal to name names, like ‘---shire’, which appears more like censorship than anything, is something that genuinely irritates me – that it should so often be used by Brontë here is a deep shame, for it is the one thing that spoils her otherwise flawless prose. I have no idea whether this was a fashion of the day or something, (this technique, for want of a better term, was used in other 19^th century novels like Pride and Prejudice and Black Beauty), but I hate it. I really hate it, and would rather they have just made up names or used real place names rather than cause this juddering halt in the writing every time they wish to refer to a county.

          Jane Eyre is a perfect novel, and the only reason that I can see for not tackling it is for the same reason I did not enjoy it at school; I was too young to appreciate it. Now, many years later, I have well and truly chowed-down on the bullet and picked the thing up again, and found to my delight a fresh new book in my hands, complete with interesting and engaging characters, an exciting and complex plot and genuinely beautiful writing. This is why I love reading; whereas a film adaptation can only condense the plot and regurgitate a fraction of the dialogue, here we can look upon the words of someone who lived over a century and a half ago and so successfully captured a story on mere paper with nothing more complex than a pen and her own brain.

And what I expect must have been some incredible feats of editing.

                  

Bibliogatory

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Collins. (1953 [First Published 1847])