{"id":1157,"date":"2011-07-11T20:58:58","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T04:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2011-07-11T20:58:58","modified_gmt":"2011-07-12T04:58:58","slug":"review-cats-cradle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1157","title":{"rendered":"Review: Cat&#8217;s Cradle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am amazed how different Kurt Vonnegut&#8217;s books can be while remaining Vonnegut books.\u00a0 <em>Cat&#8217;s Cradle<\/em> has a unique tone and focus among his work, but it is difficult to imagine a reader believing that anyone else wrote it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cradle<\/em> has a lot to say about religion, science, government and how they all interact as constructs of the complex humans who create them.\u00a0 The water is deep there, but the environment is plenty warm.\u00a0 While Vonnegut calls out the follies and inconsistencies of people and their intellectual constructs, he is always wryly affectionate to the individual people &#8211; or their fictional equivalents.<\/p>\n<p>This is the work from which Vonnegut&#8217;s calypso-themed <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bokononism\">Bokononism<\/a> religion appears, and is one of the key characters.\u00a0 The religion gives him plenty to say about how they start and perpetuate themselves, but his genius is in making it simultaneously inviting.\u00a0 A semi-nihilistic Caribbean religion with pidgin calypso hymns sounds pretty good.\u00a0 No matter how calculated and ridiculous Bokononism sounds at times in the book, the underlying attractiveness of it takes some of the teeth out of the satire.\u00a0 That warm feeling goes a long way.<\/p>\n<p>It also contains a Memorial Day speech that is every bit as powerful as Mark Twain&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_War_Prayer\"><em>The War Prayer<\/em><\/a>, while remaining respectful of the valor of young soldiers.\u00a0 Vonnegut manages to scorch the men who lead young men to war while still lauding their spirit.\u00a0 It is a remarkable piece of writing, and worth reading even if the rest of <em>Cradle<\/em> is not for you.<\/p>\n<p>Overall an interesting work that walks a tightrope between satire and warmth.<\/p>\n<p>Strongly Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am amazed how different Kurt Vonnegut&#8217;s books can be while remaining Vonnegut books.\u00a0 Cat&#8217;s Cradle has a unique tone and focus among his work, but it is difficult to imagine a reader believing that anyone else wrote it. Cradle has a lot to say about religion, science, government and how they all interact as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1159,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/1159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}