Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

My disintegrating paperback copy of this deceptively small novel was printed in 1970, though the copyright is 1963. It is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s fifth published work. And it’s dynamite. Or, should I say, ice-nine, the substance that destroys life on earth. I like to give copies to friends and family as high school graduation gifts, because the book contains so many fundamental truths about life, all in one place. 

Vonnegut creates a scientist and his family, a destructive form of water, and a nihilist religion. In his deadpan way he describes the Hoenikker family – Dr. Felix, the father, genius with no moral compass whatever; his daughter Angela, a tall gawky woman with a gift for playing clarinet; his son Franklin who shuns nearly everyone, spending his time building a model railroad world; and young son Newt, a midget born at their mother’s death, cared for by Angela. Dr. Felix invents a substance the US Marines can use so they don’t have to slog through mud in their forays into battle. But that’s not all the substance does. 

Vonnegut introduces such ideas as one’s karass, the people with whom one is connected; granfalloons, people who imagine they are connected; wampeter, the purpose for which a karass exists; boko-maru, the ecstatic kneading of one another's feet; and foma – lies. He invents other terms too, but these are the most important. They’re delineated in the religion Bokononism, which is outlawed on the island where it is practiced. No one may be a Bokononist – lest they suffer a hideous death – and yet, they are all Bokononists. 

I’ve told too much – if you’ve never read this, you ought to find a copy – preferably a crumbling artifact on a used book store shelf – and collect some fundamental truths you might have overlooked thus far.

The Lost Time Accidents, by John Wray

This 2016 novel is a mashup of ideas from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five), Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow), and P.D. Ouspensky (A New Model of the Universe). Wray probes Time, and the possibilities of time travel and what that might mean to the power-hungry, through the lives of a singular family.

The Lost Time Accidents are the grail pursued by the offspring of Ottokar Gottfried Toula, a Czech gherkin-maker with a hobbyist's interest in time. In 1903 he discovers something about its nature, writes a few cryptic sentences, and is hit by a car and dies before he can explain further. His sons, Kaspar and Waldemar, move to Vienna and study physics. Their work coincides with publication of the Theory of General Relativity; the family feels Einstein has trespassed on their understanding of time, and ever after, they refer to him only as the Patent Clerk. Contempt for him feeds Waldemar's anti-Semitism.

Kaspar and Waldemar part on chilly terms as students: Kaspar marries the daughter of his Jewish professor, and Waldemar decamps to Czechoslovakia where privation begins his transformation into the monster he will become, the Nazis' Black Timekeeper of Czas, performing unspeakable experiments on Jewish subjects in a camp where he has complete autonomy. Kaspar and Sonja and their twin daughters leave Vienna as Nazism descends. Sonja dies en route to America, and Kaspar takes the girls to Buffalo where he joins a watchmaking company. He marries again eventually, and his son Orson, raised primarily by the twins, becomes a prolific author of pornographic sci-fi, his output reminiscent of Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout. These twins, Enzian and Gentian, function as an isolated dyad, Enzian the theorist and Gentian the practical one; they decamp to a building in Harlem where they can pursue their experiments, Enzian thinking and studying and working on time travel devices while Gentian becomes a local character, enjoying city life on her shopping expeditions.

Orson finally writes a real novel, a thinly-disguised account of his eccentric family and their preoccupation with time, which because it is published in 1969, becomes a runaway bestseller. The Revelations-like final section spurs formation of a cult, the U.S. Church of Synchronology (UCS), derisively dubbed the Fuzzy Fruits by Orson. He marries a student boarding at his house, and they have a son, named Waldemar by Enzian and Gentian. This young man is the narrator of this tale, and it falls to him to find the solution to his great-grandfather's Lost Time Accidents, and to discover how his namesake disappeared when the prison camp he ran was liberated by the Soviets. The story is told, in alternating sections, as a family history and a series of letters - confessions might be a better word - to his clandestine lover, the wife of the founder of the UCS.

If all that sounds convoluted, it is. To Wray's credit, he dodges the main pitfall of time travel stories: altering the past which alters the present. And he's a witty and vivid writer:
"The Xanthia T. Lasdun Memorial Ocean-View Manor & Garden was a thirty-six-chambered assisted-living facility in Bensonhurst, with that bleary, nicotine-stained shabbiness every neo-Tudor building in the world seems to exude. Its garden, as far as I could determine, was the condom-festooned median of lower Bay Parkway, and its ocean was the droning, alluvial parkway itself."
But Wray does enough name-dropping (Sonja models for Gustav Klimt, and Kaspar sits in on a discussion between Wittgenstein and another luminary) to remind me of people who've done past-life regressions and concluded they were Cleopatra, Napoleon, Michelangelo - never anyone ordinary.

In a mystery, which this story is in essence, it's important that the resolution be worth the effort it takes to get there. Well, not for me. Maybe Mr. Wray should read some more Ouspensky, or study Vonnegut's storytelling art. Vonnegut, you see, doesn't do suspense. He'll tell you in the moment of introducing someone, how and when that character dies, or accomplishes something or fails to. This frees him from the burden of coming up with a blockbuster climax, and allows the reader to focus on other aspects of the story. Not a bad strategy, when you don't have a breakthrough vision.

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Reviewed by NC Weil

Spoiler Alert! I’m discussing the entire book. If you haven’t read it and would like to be surprised, stop reading this now.

Winston Niles Rumfoord, an aristocrat from Newport, Rhode Island, and his dog Kazak, during a journey to Mars, blunder into a chronosynclastic infundibulum, a phenomenon of Vonnegut’s creation – effectively, it puts intruders into a time-space scrambler, setting man and dog on a comet-like orbit in which they materialize at regular intervals in various places. Rumfoord discovers that he can view the future as easily as the past, and uses this knowledge to manipulate people – individually and as a species – on his origin planet.

Malachi Constant, the richest man in America, is abducted under Rumfoord’s orders to serve in the Army of Mars, a huge cadre recruited and kidnapped from every nation on earth, and trained as a conquering force. The vast majority have antennae implanted in their skulls that direct their actions, and their memories are wiped to make them obedient soldiers. A select few do not have antennae – disguised as ordinary soldiers, they are the true commanders, carrying controllers to manipulate their platoons.

For Constant, known on Mars as Unk, memories keep bubbling up, despite a series of memory cleanings.  The commander in his unit is Boaz, who takes Unk under his wing because he knows he was once a rich and famous libertine – he intends to have Unk show him the legendary nightlife of American cities after they conquer Earth.

Salo is a Tralfamadorian stranded on Titan, a moon of Saturn, awaiting a replacement part for his spaceship so he can continue his journey across the universe with a message whose contents he does not know. He is a machine. The last 200,000 years of Earth history and human development have been messages to Salo that the part is on its way.

Rumfoord’s purpose in amassing and deploying the Army of Mars is to unite Earthlings, first against a common foe, then as adherents in the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. The dehumanization and slaughter of the Army of Mars, part of his grand plan, troubles him not in the least. God the Utterly Indifferent bears a strong resemblance to Rumfoord.

Unk and Boaz leave Mars on the supply ship, but instead of joining the invasion, they end up on Mercury, where the ship’s guidance system takes it deep into a crevasse then stops. In the caves of Mercury, Unk and Boaz go their separate ways, and when finally the native creatures – harmoniums – spell out the escape route, Unk leaves but Boaz remains on Mercury.

Vonnegut considers free will from a number of angles: Malachi Constant’s fortune is inherited from his father, who acquired it by investing in companies based on their initials. Market knowledge is no match for dumb luck. Malachi says, “Somebody up there likes me,” which Rumfoord throws back at him through the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, whose scapegoat is a small statuette called a Malachi, symbolizing that luck has nothing to do with God.

Did Rumfoord establish his religion in order to protect the human species from self-destruction after his demise? On Titan, the only place he is always present, we see him dematerialize, whisked off to some other part of the universe never to return. So he knows his cycles of visiting Earth and other places between the Sun and Betelgeuse are going to end, and earthlings will be left not only without his guidance, but without the Tralfamadorian meddling that defined Earth cultures for 200,000 years. At that point, we will be in need of structure. So is Rumfoord’s treatment of our species ultimately humane, or yet another example of his megalomaniacal certainty that only he could guide Earthlings?

If your entire life (beginning to end) is open to viewing any time, can you have free will? That would imply you could change your future, but Rumfoord merely sees his future, and is less an actor than a cog. Doesn’t sound like free will.

Salo, messenger of the Tralfamadorians, has been programmed to make his interstellar journey – no free will here. Everything that happens on Earth has been in service of ordering the replacement part for his spaceship then delivering it – no free will for Earthlings. The Army of Mars are brainwashed and controlled with antennae in their heads – no free will here. Unk’s travels from Mars to Mercury then to Earth, then to Titan, are all because of Rumfoord’s manipulation – no free will for Unk.

Adherents to the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent are convinced by Rumfoord’s prophecies – which are for him mere glances into a future he knows. They have surrendered their wills to their religion.

The only being who exhibits free will in the entire book is Boaz, Unk’s platoon commander. He chooses to stay on Mercury when Unk announces he knows how to leave the crevasse – in the company of the harmoniums, away from his own species, Boaz has discovered his own goodness. He feeds the harmoniums with music, protecting them from overdoses, and in doing this, realizes that his life has been caught up in being hurt, and hurting others. He’s done with that. Making harmoniums happy is a better life than any other he can imagine.

Is Vonnegut saying that a human can have free will only when he’s no longer around other humans? Is he saying that kindness is an avenue to freedom? Vonnegut was famously cynical – likely he would say that Rumfoord represents humanity – lacking freedom, but only too happy to impose entrapment on everyone else, and that being a heartless megalomaniac is an advantage.

Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

It's been a while since I read a Vonnegut novel, so it was fun to fall back into his wide-open storytelling style: dramatic tension? Nah. Good guys and bad guys? To him, we are all both. Mysteries solved by the characters? He deflates those by telling us right away what they do not know: how it turns out, who did it, etc.

Vonnegut does offer up a real mystery, about the Galapagos Islands ecosystem, without pretending he knows the answer:  How did the creatures documented by Charles Darwin on the islands get there? A thousand miles of deep water separate the islands from mainland South America. No land bridge, no evidence that they were ever part of the continent. They are volcanic in origin, which suggests they formed by erupting from the sea floor. Some evolutionary biologists have posited that animals floated over there on rafts of vegetation, and Vonnegut states this theory in a way that would make you squirm if that were your explanation. He just leaves you to ponder. This calls to mind lines from Cat's Cradle: "Fish got to swim, bird got to fly, man got to sit and wonder why, why, why."

What he does tell us is who's going to die, when and where. Which they do. Having laid bare the fates of his characters from the very start, he then shares their defining moments of life so we can appreciate them anyway. He weaves the twin species drivers of sex and death into an often funny story, whether he's describing the mating dance of the blue-footed boobies or the way one character met her husband-to-be.

In brief, a cruise ship runs aground on one of the Galapagos Islands. Some of the dozen people on board repopulate the world with vastly-modified descendants while everyone on the mainland is rendered sterile by a virus invading their reproductive systems.

As in previous stories, Vonnegut shows little respect for intelligence, finding it cause for misery far oftener than benefit. He calls us big brained creatures, making clear that this is no compliment:
"If I may insert a personal note at this point: When I was alive, I often received advice from my own big brain which, in terms of my own survival, or the survival of the human race, for that matter, can be charitably described as questionable. Example:  It had me join the United States Marines and go fight in Vietnam.
Thanks a lot, big brain."

His characters have no more consistency in their behavior or judgment than any batch of humans you could assemble: the retired school teacher heroine marries a con-man who stalks wealthy widows then disappears with their money. She believes the lies he tells, including his made-up name. But he dies before he can do her any harm, thus bringing her happiness. And the ship's captain, an arrogant racist, is the father of the only surviving branch of the human family, though he doesn't even know it. The fertile females, members of a primitive tribe rescued from starvation in the rainforest, are able to communicate among themselves but with no one else among the shipwrecked. I'm sure Vonnegut took special joy in launching this stone-age tribe past modern technology and culture (all doomed) to give birth to our future.

In Happy Birthday Wanda June, Vonnegut took us to Heaven where everyone dead is hanging out, including Hitler - and they're all happy and getting along wonderfully. In this writer's cosmos we are all good and evil, no matter our sins. He faults our brains, which are as attracted to creating havoc as to helping one another, and our fecundity, which keeps us from acknowledging the precariousness of life.  Your big brain may very well enjoy this book. Just keep in mind that the world as you know it could change drastically in an instant. And when you figure out how those land tortoises got to the Galapagos, let me know!