9780385333481 | 038533348X "Cat's Cradle" by Vonnegut, Kurt, Adams Book Company

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Cat's Cradle

A Novel

Author(s): Vonnegut, Kurt

List Price: $17.00

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Imprint: Dial Press Trade Paperback

ISBN: 038533348X or 9780385333481

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Descriptions and Reviews

	“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforget ...
	“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—*The New York Times* Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly>hr<“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly>hr<Kurt Vonnegut’s black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” (The New York Times) with Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.>hr<Chapter One The Day the World Ended Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John. Jonah--John--if I had been a Sam, I would have been Jonah still--not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there. Listen: When I was a younger man--two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago . . . When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended. The book was to be factual. The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then. I am a Bokononist now. I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic of San Lorenzo. We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that bought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended. Chapter Two Nice, Nice, Very Nice "If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass." At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, "Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free-form as an amoeba. In his "Fifty-third Calypso," Bokonon invites us to sing along with him: Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist, And a British queen-- All fit together In the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice very nice-- So many different people In the same device. Chapter Three Folly Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person's trying to discover the limits of his karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes that such investigations are bound to be incomplete. In the autobiographical section of The Books of Bokonon he writes a parable on the folly of pretending to discover, to understand: I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things." "Give it to your husband or your ministers to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand." She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon]. Chapter Four A Tentative Tangling Of Tendrils Be that as it may, I intend in this book to include as many members of my karass as possible, and I mean to examine all strong hints as to what on Earth we, collectively, have been up to. I do not intend that this book be a tract on behalf of Bokononism. I should like to offer a Bokononist warning about it, however. The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is this: "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." My Bokononist warning in this: Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. So be it. . . . About my karass, then. It surely includes the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the so-called "Fathers" of the first atomic bomb. Dr. Hoenikker himself was no doubt a member of my karass, though he was dead before my sinookas, the tendrils of my life, began to tangle with those of his children. The first of his heirs to be touched by my sinookas was Newton Hoenikker, the youngest of his three children, the younger of his two sons. I learned from the publication of my fraternity, The Delta Upsilon Quarterly, that Newton Hoenikker, son of the Noel Prize physicist, Felix Hoenikker, had been pledged b

Alternative Editions

Cat's Cradle; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Henry Holt and Co., Henry Holt and Co.

Cat's Cradle; by Vonnegut, Kurt; HarperCollins, HarperAudio

Cat's Cradle; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Random House Publishing Group, The Dial Press

Cat's Cradle Low Price CD; by Vonnegut, Kurt; HarperCollins, HarperAudio

Other Books by this Author

Armageddon in Retrospect; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Penguin Publishing Group, G.P. Putnam's Sons

Armageddon in Retrospect; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Penguin Publishing Group, Berkley

Armageddon in Retrospect; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Penguin Audio, Penguin Audio

Armageddon in Retrospect; by Vonnegut, Kurt; Penguin Publishing Group, Berkley

More Books by this Author...

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