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Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (Joe & Mark)
89 Plays2 years ago
Joe and Mark discuss Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut having come up several times previously in episodes of Re-Creative.
For more information about this episode, or Re-Creative, please visit: re-creative.ca/cats-cradle/
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner.
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Spoiler Alert
00:00:00
Speaker
spoilers alert for cat's cradle if you have not read cat's cradle and don't want to know anything about it before reading it. Don't listen to this podcast please don't go read the book and try the book and then come listen to the podcast this podcast is for people who read the book or don't care about us talking about the book.
00:00:36
Speaker
That's better than the theme song that we normally use. Lied Joe. How's it going? I'm good. I have a question. I always have a question now. Yes, I've noticed that.
Nostalgia: Childhood Games
00:00:48
Speaker
Your favorite childhood game.
00:00:50
Speaker
That's an interesting question because it's actually something that I've thought about recently because now that we've moved to Riverview, New Brunswick, we're surrounded by a bunch of family who love to play games. So we often go to one another's place and we play a wide variety of games, which has got me thinking about the games that I used to play as a youth.
00:01:13
Speaker
My favorite game I remember was something called Full House. You owned a hotel. It was like one of those board games and everybody had a hotel and you would try to get as many guests as possible in the hotel and just make as much money as possible. I don't even know anybody who knows about this game anymore, but I loved it. I've never heard of it.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we played all the usual ones like Clue and Monopoly and, you know, and I liked Clue and- Sure. Yeah. You know? Did you have like a, like a, a schoolyard game that you liked? Like Hopscotch or like, I don't see you as a Hopscotch kind of guy, but- Well, you know, I played them all. Yeah, of course. Well, we've all played them all, I hope.
00:01:53
Speaker
Sure, I was not averse to jumping rope with the girls, you know, but boy, well, just, you know, big neighborhood games like Red Rover. Oh, it's a good game. Yeah, that was great. And like, if you got a really good Red Rover going in the neighborhood, that was a great game. Yeah, we had a version of that in the winter. I can't remember what we called it. I think ice gauntlet or something like that.
00:02:17
Speaker
where everyone got in a line and one person tried to run the gauntlet. The game was to get through to the end of the icy gauntlet and there's only a couple guys in the schoolyard that could actually get through and I was one of them because I was tiny but huge.
00:02:35
Speaker
Little tank they called me. And that's why you brought this all up so that you could go back and boast about your. Yeah. But you got me thinking that like, there's some other games that I really like to play when I was a kid. So yeah, it's fun. It's a fun topic. I mean, cause there's the other games, of course, which are games like hockey and baseball. Sure. Yeah. Those are, well, those are sports, technically.
Games vs. Sports Discussion
00:02:56
Speaker
Oh, but aren't they, what's the difference between a sport and a game? I don't know. I think a sport requires skill.
00:03:05
Speaker
And Red Rover doesn't require skill? No, that's just running. Oh, that's true. Yeah. There might be strategy. Yeah, maybe in a game there's strategy in sports or skill. Okay, something that we have to do in the near future. We got to organize a big Red Rover game. Okay. We'll play the CBC against Western University and we'll see who comes out of top. I like it. I'm going to recruit the football team, so good luck. Oh, yeah. There's not too many football players at the CBC.
00:03:35
Speaker
All right. I'll be fair. I'll only recruit academics. And I'll only recruit hosts. Okay. Yeah. Tom Allen would be great. Oh, come on. How old is Tom Allen at this point? He's got to be at least 80. Yeah, that's not fair. No, no, no. He's not 80. He's like younger than me probably. Okay. But that's not why we're here today. It kind of is though.
00:04:03
Speaker
Oh, yes, it is. That's right. We're going to talk about Cats Cradle, which is a childhood game. That is true. And did you play Cats Cradle? I'd never played Cats Cradle at once in my whole life.
00:04:16
Speaker
I have several times I remember. So I don't get the game. I don't really understand it. Now that you mentioned it, now they're too high. But I remember that I could make the cat's cradle and there was something about putting your hand in it and then they undo the cat's cradle onto your hand or something. Oh boy. You're supposed to transfer it from one to the next. Is that the game?
00:04:42
Speaker
Boy, maybe we better look this up before we...
Introduction to Cat's Cradle
00:04:46
Speaker
And obviously the reason we're talking about this is because of the Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat's Cradle. And of course in preparation for this podcast, I read that book and then reviewed it today, but didn't even think to take a look at the game itself. No, I didn't either. I did the same things you did.
00:05:07
Speaker
I read the book. I thought about the book. I even looked up a little bit about the book because I thought I knew everything about it, but I don't. Okay. Well, here's what it says. We've gone to everybody's favorite Wikipedia here. Cat's cradle is a game involving the creation of various string figures between the fingers, either individually or by passing a loop of string back and forth between two or more players. Right. And it's a cooperative game, right? Well, either by yourself or with another player.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, but there's no winners and losers in that game. I don't think so. Unlike the book where there were some definite losers. Yeah, the book had quite a few losers in it, to be honest. Yes, and we should explain so. So we don't have a guest today because every now and then we want to talk about pieces of art or works of art that we're passionate about.
00:06:00
Speaker
So early on, Mark had mentioned that he loved Kurt Vonnegut, and in particular, Cat's Cradle. So as I do after we talk to a guest on this podcast, I'm often inspired to go out and either read or listen to or watch whatever it is that they've been talking about. And so the book Cat's Cradle, even though it wasn't featured on one of our podcasts, it did come up, so I was inspired to go out and buy it. And I read it a few weeks ago,
00:06:27
Speaker
and thought it was a terrific book, not surprisingly, and thought, oh, this would be a great subject for the podcast that I could discuss with Mark, because I know that Mark is fairly knowledgeable about Kurt Vonnegut. That's right.
Kurt Vonnegut's Writing Style
00:06:41
Speaker
There's a picture of him on the wall of me, I said, of him. Yeah. I love him as a writer. I love this book.
00:06:50
Speaker
It's funny though, I just reread it and I don't have quite the same hagiography around this book that I used to. It's weird and it's similar to you. We talked about William Goldman got that right. I recently rewatched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Okay. And the script is great. Like the script is fabulous. The writing is really good, but the movie has some flaws in it that I just didn't remember.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah. And I think we talked upon that in a previous podcast, how these works of art, they change over time. But of course, it's not them that's changing, it's us that's changing. It's us. Yeah. It's us. And it's culture and society too. So don't get me wrong. Everyone should read this book. It's a great book. It still is a great book.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yes, well, I mean, it had been the first time that I read it and then I recognized the genius in it. It's, you know, the craft and the and it I was going to say that it holds up. I mean, I guess I can't really say that because I never had read it before. But I guess what it lived up to what I thought it would be when I read it. Yeah, I don't know that it holds up, but it certainly is.
00:08:11
Speaker
as good as I thought it was when I read it the first time.
Cat's Cradle: Structure and Ideas
00:08:16
Speaker
The first time I think I was, I can't remember how old I was, but I probably wouldn't have been more than 16 or 17.
00:08:22
Speaker
So this for me was like, I, the first thought I could book I read was breakfast of champions. Okay. Which I don't know if you've read that one, but, but it's, it's, it's more of this. It's way more of this. Uh, so like this book, I think it has 127 chapters or something like that. And they're, they're mostly like a page or two. Right. I couldn't quite figure out how long it was, but I'm guessing it's not much longer than.
00:08:50
Speaker
50,000 words or maybe 55,000 words. It's a really short book. But- Well, that's 202 pages in a bit. Yeah. Well, yeah. I've got the old Dell, one of those Dell paperbacks. Okay. Like, I don't even have the book that I read originally. It's just some paperback I picked up at some place at a second-hand store because I recognized they didn't have the book anymore.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I was reading it going, oh, this book, I can't remember this book being so short, but it really is. But the reason it's so short, the reason I think it's longer than it is, is that there's so much packed into it.
00:09:23
Speaker
Right? Yes. Am I wrong on that? Or is that just my interpretation? A lot of ideas packed into it. And I mean, it doesn't cover a long time span. No, that's true. But it's fairly linear and sequential. And I think it's fair to say that every word, every chapter kind of counts. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think Vonnegut's idea was that every chapter was like a joke.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yes, I read that he said that. I've seen some reviewers say every chapter is kind of like a little sketch and then there's supposed to be a joke at the end of it. But they all are very interconnected. They're not like- Yeah, they're not like Monty Python.
00:10:05
Speaker
No, yeah, they all serve a greater purpose. Of course, yeah, they build on one another. And the other thing I think that I did recognize this time around that maybe I didn't recognize before is that he's really good at writing a character, like just a few lines.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yes. Right? Like you kind of know who these people are very quickly. Yeah. And I want to touch on that a little later, some of the characters, but I think for the sake of the, uh, of the listener, we should step back maybe and, uh, and explain who Kurt Vonnegut is and then explain what this book is about.
Vonnegut's WWII Influence
00:10:38
Speaker
My God.
00:10:39
Speaker
All right. You want to start? Well, sure, because, you know, I actually practiced over over supper with my my wife and I went out to for for pasta tonight at an Italian restaurant. We're checking out all the restaurants and in Riverview and in Moncton. So we went to Rosanno's. So I was telling her about the podcast tonight and that we were going to be talking about Kurt Vonnegut. And she's like, well, who's who's Kurt Vonnegut?
00:11:06
Speaker
So I explained because like to me and you can correct me if I'm wrong but one of the significant things about Kurt Vonnegut is that he was a soldier in the Second World War and he was taken prisoner by the Germans and him and his fellow soldiers were kept in Dresden and you know those of you who know your Second World War history the firebombing of Dresden was one of the Singular events of the Second World War one of the most catastrophic events in human history
00:11:36
Speaker
where the allies just went overdressed and bombed it into oblivion, turned it into one big firebomb, and Kurt Vonnegut lived through that.
00:11:50
Speaker
And so he survived being taken prisoner, and then he survived the firebombing of Dresden. And then the following day, the Germans made him and his fellow soldiers clean up the remains of Dresden. And this became largely the subject matter of one of his novels, Slaughterhouse Five, which we could also talk about. Yeah, that's one we should talk about at some point, because it's really his masterwork. In some ways, it's his best book.
00:12:19
Speaker
But I think that experience, I mean, I haven't read all of his work, but of his work that I'm familiar with, it seems to inform it to a larger or smaller degree. And I think it's certainly reverberating in this book, Cat's Cradle, which is the way I interpreted
Critique of Science and Military
00:12:35
Speaker
it. And I think others have is an indictment of science and the military industrial complex.
00:12:42
Speaker
I think I would agree with that. I think I would have a slightly nuanced take on that because I don't think he indicts science completely. Even in the book, there's a line like science is the best thing we have. He does say that at one point, right? Maybe he indicts it the way that Churchill indicted democracy.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, the same way. It's not the best, but it's the best thing we have because his brother was a scientist, right? Yeah. No, I don't think he, I certainly didn't interpret that he was anti-science, but he's anti-science without any human considerations. Yeah. I think the thing about Vonnegut is that he's a humanist first, right? He only cares about humans. So things like science, military,
00:13:30
Speaker
corporations, those things don't matter. Insofar as they just make things harder for humans, right? They're supposed to make a human life easier. But as we're discovering, they make life harder. Yes. And we're, I think we're kind of like, well along the road, that Vonnegut would have really not been surprised by what he sees what's happening right now, in terms of how the world is.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yes, because it's, well, I mean, science has taken over for and technology for better or worse. And the way he references it in the book is a general goes to a scientist and asks him to create something for him, which in the case of the book is
00:14:20
Speaker
So that the Marines, the soldiers, they've got a storm of the beaches. Sometimes the beaches are muddy. Can you come up with something to get rid of the mud? To make things easier. To get rid of the mud. So then the scientist in the book, instead of thinking about the possible implications of what it is that he's creating, just takes it as a puzzle.
00:14:42
Speaker
And that is the nature of this scientist. What is the guy's name in the book? Hanukkah. Hanukkah. Felix Hanukkah is the name of this scientist. Hanukkah, yeah. So Hanukkah is really- Who also worked on the atom bomb? Yes, that's right. Because he's
Ice-Nine: A Metaphor
00:14:54
Speaker
- Right? That's the whole start of the book, right? The premise of the book is that the narrator, Jonah, as he describes himself, but his name's actually John, he says, you know, I'm writing this book about the day they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Right.
00:15:10
Speaker
That's the premise of the novel, right? And that's how he gets introduced to all of these characters, the sons and daughter of Hanukkah and all of the people that you meet in the book. He meets them because of that MacGuffin, right? Because, you know, the book never comes to anything. It doesn't matter at all. It's just like, that's the reason it stands. That's right. And then the... The Vindit, if you will. Yes, and we'll have to talk about that too. The religion and the... How do you pronounce that? Auchenism?
00:15:40
Speaker
I don't know. Book it on in the James Taylor. Because that's one of the little sub themes of the book is the nature of religion through the
00:15:55
Speaker
the buccanism, which comes to be embraced by the narrator. And to explain the title of the book, Cat's Cradle. So when he asked the children of the scientist, Hanukkah, what was your father doing on the day that the Atabamas was first wielded? That's right. The answer was he was playing with Cat's Cradle. Yeah. Where's the cat? Where's the cradle? Yeah. Is that a metaphor then, Cat's Cradle?
00:16:23
Speaker
I think it is. I think it is. Yeah. I mean, it's a metaphor for the, I don't know, the nothingness of these sciences and all our devices. That's what I took it as.
00:16:37
Speaker
I interpreted that as this particular scientist who represents a certain other breed of scientist that Kurt Vonnegut knew in his life. It's all about the mystery. It's all about the puzzle. It's about the game, figuring it out to the exclusion of any other consideration. I guess there is no solution to Cat's Great, all right? It's just the shape.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, so it's just something which, you know, baffled or intrigued the scientists on that day, much as when the general asked him to come up with something to help the soldiers in the mud,
00:17:11
Speaker
That was a puzzle that he had to solve. And then he solved it in a rather catastrophic manner. Horrible way. That's the creation of ice nine. Yes, the substance ice nine. And apparently there actually is a configuration of ice molecules called ice nine, but which has nothing to do with the ice nine in the book.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, I was trying to figure that out because I was reading about that. It's like, oh, OK, so this is an idea that Nobel scientists had at one point so that it's possible for the molecules to line up this way, I guess. Yeah, I guess the story is that somebody had mentioned the possibility of doing that of this ice nine to Jules Verne. Was it Jules Verne? Yeah, that's right. And then no, no, H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells. Yes. And he didn't want to use it. And then there is someone else who could have had a chance at it. And I can't remember his name.
00:18:02
Speaker
And then he died and he left the story with Vonnegut's older brother who told Vonnegut the story about it and said, well, Vonnegut's like, well, everyone else is dead, so I get to keep this one. That's right. This is my idea now. Yes, and you certainly used it to good effect.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah, he did because it's actually quite devastating, the idea that – and the idea really is complicated because a sliver of ice-9, so this ice that's made out of just H2O molecules, it's in a sense contagious, right? So any water that it touches then also turns into ice-9. So it's almost impossible to contain.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, and then we should explain that ice nine basically is ice at a solid room temperature. Yes, exactly. Yeah. In fact, that was one of the quibbles I had on the rereading of this book was at some point, it's mentioned actually twice that the melting point is over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, right?
00:18:58
Speaker
I don't recall, I will take your word. I'm almost positive. It's a crazy high heat. So yeah, it would have to be in a furnace or something before it would start to melt. But the characters do melt it. Exactly. That's my point. That's my continuity thing that I spotted. Wow.
00:19:17
Speaker
40 years later after reading, I'm like, wait a minute, that can't work because the melting point is this. The one thing I wanted to know was that I couldn't figure out or find before we started talking is that apparently this book had a real sort of underground popularity to
Bokonism and Human Connections
00:19:35
Speaker
it. And this is one of his early books, right? It was 63 when this came out. The book was
00:19:41
Speaker
quite influenced by the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think. I don't think it's an accident that half the book takes place on San Lorenzo, which is a fictitious island in the Caribbean. That's right. Like Cuba, yeah. Yeah. Much like Cuba, but even poorer than Cuba, really. I mean- Yeah, it's supposed to be the poorest nation in the world. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing on the island. There's no reason for any people to be there.
00:20:07
Speaker
That was interesting to me when I thought about that. But then also, this book had a real following in the hippie culture. Because of the Boccanism? I think the Boccanism was why. The Boccanism or however it's pronounced. I have no idea how it's actually pronounced. I want to say Boccanism because it sounds better to me.
00:20:27
Speaker
I'm okay with that. It reads balkanism just as well. I think that some of the ideas in that religion, I can see why they are appealing. Well, for example, the idea of a group of people who feel that they're related in some way. But they're really not. Yeah, like the classic example is the who's yours of Indiana. That's a gonfalune. A gonfalune.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. Gone Faloon. So the premise, one of the main premises of bokonism or bokonism is the idea that we're all part of what's called a carass. It's a group of souls that are connected. And I'm going to try to describe bokonism. So the idea of bokonism, it's first of all, a made up religion, as they all are.
00:21:14
Speaker
Okay, that's a whole other podcast. And it's a satire of religion, basically. But as religions go, this one's kind of cool because the guy who invented it, invented it knowing it was just a bunch of FOMA.
00:21:29
Speaker
a bunch of harmless lies. And the premise is that we're all part of a chorass, which is just a group of individual souls that are connected. And they're kind of revolving around these things that they call whoopeters. Such great names. So whoopeter is basically the thing that the chorass is trying to achieve.
00:21:55
Speaker
at the moment, and there's always two wumpeters in a caress. So one wumpeter is waxing and one is always waning. So, you know, there's always something we're trying to achieve. It's one of two things. And that's the true connection you have with other souls in the world. Whereas the world tends to see these other false connections like, you know, I teach at Western University, so therefore I'm a part of Western University, that's a confluence.
00:22:24
Speaker
I think I got that right. I don't know. I think so. I think so. I think it's one of the greatest charms of the book, and one could easily have written this book and left all of that out, because it's seeded through with these ideas of bokonism. Yeah. I don't know that she could write this book without that. I think it's the central theme of the book.
Character Sketches in Cat's Cradle
00:22:46
Speaker
The story is Jonah discovering who his harass is.
00:22:50
Speaker
He's got his whole life without knowing anybody in his caress. And then it all comes together around this wampiter of ice nine. And he learns who everyone is that he's supposed to be interacting with. I agree that the book wouldn't be anywhere near as successful without that. But I think it's the genius of Kurt Vonnegut.
00:23:10
Speaker
that like a lesser talent might have written this book with just the events that happen, you know, the invention of ice nine going to the Caribbean island and then the strange confluence events that result in ice nine being unleashed on the world. But it's the whole inclusion of
00:23:29
Speaker
bokonism that elevates it, that takes it all to another level so that you can appreciate it at that level. That really kind of comments meaningfully on the absurdity of life. Yeah. Through the events that take place in the book. I think we're saying the same thing just in different ways. I think we can no doubt politely agree. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Cause I think that is the true charm of this book is the jokes are pretty good. They're not as good as they used to be.
00:23:59
Speaker
I thought this was much funnier when I was younger, but that's partially just a matter of culture, right? Like I think.
00:24:06
Speaker
one of the characters, the younger brother, the younger Hanukkah brother is a little person. And I frankly had trouble reading some of the descriptions of the behavior around Newt. That was the, Newton Hanukkah was his name, like how people treated him. Well, that is the one element of the book that, yes. I mean, earlier I said that I felt like it, the book holds up like as a work of art, but it, yeah, it doesn't age quite as gracefully.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yes yes yeah yeah there was a term used to refer to that character which is not an accepted term i think anymore yeah and i don't think i'm overly sensitive but i think,
00:24:48
Speaker
It's just hard reading that word. The same way when you read Mark Twain now, even though the words was appropriate when he wrote it, it's not anymore and it's hard not to go, ah, that's hard to read. But I
Outdated Language and Sensitivity
00:25:00
Speaker
wouldn't change it and I wouldn't censor it and I wouldn't say don't read the book because the word's not good because so much of the rest of the book is so humanist
00:25:10
Speaker
That if Kurt Vonnegut was alive today and you say, would you, you know, would you do a second edition and change some of those descriptions? I'm sure he would say yes. Yes, I agree. Whereas Mark Twain probably would not. Maybe not. Yeah. But I mean, they are part of the same continuum. Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, they're both humorists. They both are satirists. They both are cynics in the sense that they think the world should be better than it is.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yes, and I think that the difference in this particular case with that word is that the word in Cat's Cradle doesn't matter. It could be a different word. It's just a word that is aged out of use, I think.
00:25:48
Speaker
Whereas the word in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is, well, now we're getting into dangerous territory. Well, I don't know. How can we get to this conversation without using the words? I'm not going to use the words. I'm thinking about it. I think actually if you talk to little people, I think the word that is used in Cat's Cradle might also be a similar word.
00:26:09
Speaker
But it's just just a different population that we don't hear about as much. We might just need to cut this whole thing out, but that's fine. Well, I don't know. I think stuff like this is where it gets a little dangerous. I don't know if we want to avoid the dangerous stuff because I don't either. Yeah. Yeah. Because here's the interesting thing. The regarding the word and I'm sure anybody can guess what word we're talking about to refer to a person of small stature. Yeah. So we had a guest on the podcast recently, John Corcelli.
00:26:39
Speaker
who wrote a book about George Carlin, the comedian, who was famous for being inflammatory in his language. Before we had John Corcelli on the show, I read up a little bit about some of Carlin's work, and in one of them, he uses that word as well. He uses it because he finds it a funny word.
00:27:02
Speaker
You know, so I wrote a review of John Corcelli's book because I love the book and wanted to get a review up on Amazon because any author needs to have reviews up on Amazon. And if you want to support an author, go and write a review. So I was trying to support John Corcelli.
00:27:22
Speaker
And in the first draft of my review, I used that word quoting Carlin thinking that I was trying to make a point about how, you know, much of a disturber George Carlin was. Yeah, he was. Yeah. And felt very uneasy about it, about using the word. And then ultimately went back and took it out and George Carlin would probably roll over in his grave. Oh, Joe, come on.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, but at the same time, why do you want to hurt people when you don't have to? Yeah. Because that's, for me, like, I wouldn't have expected George Carlin to purposefully hurt people. Yeah, he would, I think. Yeah. In that case, he would. Well, he did, you know? Yeah, he did. I guess he did. So. Yeah. And you know, I love George Carlin and I appreciate his sensibility, but I could not be George Carlin.
00:28:13
Speaker
No, I don't think I could be either. And I really don't think Kurt Vonnegut would either. I think that he is too much of a humanist to intentionally use a word that would be hurtful to people, especially the people he's talking about. Because in the case of Newt, he obviously has a lot of affection for that character. Well, here's another question. And he's always concerned about that character, I think, from the perspective of other people not taking the character seriously.
00:28:43
Speaker
Cause of a stature. Is there a reason why that particular character is in the book? Well, there's obviously a reason, but I don't know what it is. Uh, I think there is a reason. Yeah. Like I think in some senses he's the child substitute.
00:29:07
Speaker
That is how the rest of the characters see him and treat him, except for Jonah. I don't think Jonah does. So I think he's, he's the child in this scenario because there's no children in this book. You know, even though this is about the end of the world and that's one of the things he should be most concerned about is the children.
00:29:27
Speaker
Well, in fact, the woman that Jonah loves, there's an unpleasant scene near the end of the book. Yeah, that's a really unpleasant scene. Yes. That actually is actually maybe a trigger warning. Yes, that's right. Yeah. But the response from his love interest is, we are not bringing children into this world under these circumstances. This is not the time to have children. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, because it's the end of the world. Nobody's surviving this for very long. The world's turned to ice and that's it. It's over. Which is exactly what happens in a nuclear war too, I'd like to point out. This is an allegory for nuclear war.
Ice-Nine and Nuclear Allegory
00:30:10
Speaker
When there's a war, that's it. It's over.
00:30:14
Speaker
Even if people survive the war, the civilization's over, the Earth is over in any way that we understand. I mean, yeah, the Earth will survive and go on. There will be life again probably, but it won't be conscious life probably.
00:30:31
Speaker
No, no. Although some, you know, small life forms. Oh, maybe in a couple more billion years there will be. I mean, but, you know, for us it's over and for civilization is it's over and for consciousness for a while it's probably over. Yeah. And I think so in that sense, it is a very much a cautionary tale that scientists need to be careful, especially if they're working with and or for the industrial military complex.
00:31:02
Speaker
and what they work on and create. Because we still obviously, and this always gets me, the amount of nuclear weapons that are on this planet, you don't hear many people talk about it so much anymore, I don't think. It's changed a little bit, I think, with the invasion of Ukraine and the nuclear saber rattling. Well, and they just moved the doomsday clock up again.
00:31:32
Speaker
We're closer than we've ever been. Yeah. Yeah. We're 90 seconds from now. Do I agree with it? I don't totally agree with it, but what they're doing is trying to make people realize that what's going on in the Ukraine could spill out of control very easily. And as you say, everyone has nukes or not everyone, but there's enough nukes in the world to destroy everything several times over.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's ultimately one of Kurt Vonnegut's main points. There's no two ways about it. It's moronic, right? It is. Nobody in their right mind. You and your house and my and my house, we would not have weapons in our house that could kill everybody. You don't even consider it, right? So why do we have that in our human house, Earth?
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I actually I'm glad we're talking about this because I really do feel like this is something that we should be really talking about because yes, we should be getting rid of these goddamn weapons. We don't need them. We really don't need them. There's there's no point to them.
00:32:39
Speaker
except to maybe destroy ourselves. And maybe some people like the idea of death hanging over the entire planet. Well, that goes back to Bocchanism, right? Like at the end of the book, Bocchanon, he does make an appearance at the very end of the book, right? And he's written a poem and he says, it's his suicide poem basically, or his calypso, they call them calypso, something in the book. And he's like, I'm going to end the world.
00:33:07
Speaker
And he's talking about his world, but in a real way, that's what nuclear weapons are. It's a death wish. It's a collective death wish. It's like, well, I can't imagine what happens after I'm gone, so therefore I want there to be something that ends everything.
00:33:29
Speaker
I think it's partially why, as a culture, we're so fascinated with post-apocalyptic stories, is this idea that maybe there's a recognition that we are going to die, or that I'm going to die, and therefore, why would there be anything after me? And that's what Bochenon's saying at the end, right? He's saying, well, I'm going to destroy the world, i.e., I'm going to kill myself.
00:33:56
Speaker
Cause that is the world to him. It's a rather solipsistic view, but, but it's true. I think for most people, well, but then, I mean, there are the people who work to create a legacy that lives on beyond them. Yes. But that's how long is that going to last? I mean, seriously, there's maybe a handful of people who've mastered more than a thousand years. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
So that doesn't really matter either. What matters is the here and now, what you do in the moment. That's where bokonism is at its best, I think, is what it's like talking about that. But it doesn't really do that very well. Yes, yeah. I think of Ozymandias. Yeah, of course Ozymandias. The world is not as permanent as you think.
00:34:44
Speaker
Hmm. So, and that I think is, so this is Kurt Vonnegut with this book and with his other work. Well, he's got us talking about it, you know, he's got us talking about, which is the point, I think. And it's still quite relevant. I mean, it's still a relevant conversation we're having here.
Nuclear Threats Today
00:34:59
Speaker
Well, it's relevant right up until we get this sorted out, which we completely haven't. No, we have not, but I'm hopeful that we will. Well, how is it that surely 98% of the population of the world understands the stupidity of having nuclear weapons?
00:35:21
Speaker
in the world, but yet we still have them. Why is that? Well, I think it's very hard to turn the ship around. I think that's the problem is that neither side. Well, I don't even know their sides anymore. Like there's so many nations that have weapons of mass destruction.
00:35:39
Speaker
And more acquiring them all the time. And wanting to acquire them, because from some perspectives, when the Ukraine war started, I was like, well, it's really too bad they gave up their nuclear weapons. You know, when the Soviet Union split up, like there's that big agreement, right? They used to have a whole bunch of nuclear weapons there.
00:35:59
Speaker
if they'd had them. Yeah, a lot of people probably felt the same thing. I would have to admit for myself who's completely opposed to nuclear weapons, even I had a little moment of, oh, gee, yeah, too bad. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that didn't happen because that would have spilled out of control very quickly because they probably would have needed to use them or wanted to use them.
00:36:23
Speaker
I don't know. I just think we should get rid of them because they are an existential threat. It's something that we can control. There's a bunch of existential threats we can't control, most of them we can't, but some of them we can't. And we don't seem to want to control any of them. So to answer your question, 99% of us don't want to live from paycheck to paycheck either. But we do. But that's what happens. So why is that?
00:36:50
Speaker
But I think in the case of nuclear weapons, not enough people have read Kurt Vonnegut. That's true. They should all read the book. Or not enough people like Kurt Vonnegut, not that I would wish this on anybody, lived through something like the Dresden firebombing, which informed your perspective.
Conclusion and Appreciation
00:37:07
Speaker
That's true, but I wouldn't wish that on anybody. And sometimes that goes the other way too, right? Yes, I suppose. Yeah, I think sometimes it goes the other way.
00:37:15
Speaker
So let me ask you this as we wrap up discussion of this book. Do you still like the book? I do. I still really liked the book. It's still very charming. I really like, like I said, the character sketches. I really liked them a lot. I was a little bit annoyed at how many there were at one point because it's such a short book and there's probably like 30 characters that are pretty well drawn.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And they, they all don't pay off. So as a writer, I was a little annoyed by like, okay, why am I learning about this person is okay. But for the most part, I really loved rereading the book. And I really enjoyed being with Kurt Vonnegut again. And this remember, this wasn't his, this was a fairly early book of his, this was only his fourth book. So he hadn't kind of mastered
00:38:04
Speaker
this sort of sketch cartoon-y kind of, it's almost like a cartoon novel in a sense. Like each, remember he was, people might not know this, but he liked to draw, and he draw cartoons, and he kind of could convey a huge amount of meaning with this really simple line drawing, and that's what this novel is like. Each chapter is like a simple line drawing,
00:38:29
Speaker
But there's so much in it that you kinda get more information than there actually is. Well there is a weight to it, there is a depth to it. It is more than a, I completely take your point, but it is more than just a cartoon. Because I think we've all read those books. I'm not saying it's cartoonish, I'm saying it's like a dense,
00:38:50
Speaker
A piece of artwork that's embedded somehow in the cartoon, right? Like if you look at it just at the surface, it's a cartoon drawing, but then you look at a bit longer, like do one of those magic eye things and suddenly there's like four dimensions. There's space at the time and you can see the characters both directions. It's like a, it's like a Calvin and Hobbes versus a Hagar the Horrible.
00:39:14
Speaker
Okay, I don't know. It's like if Calvin Hobbes was a Dostoevsky novel. Wow, okay. That's yeah. That's basically Vonnegut's book. That's what it is. It's like
00:39:33
Speaker
On the surface, it's nice, simple, clean drawings, but then there's like, there's all this. I completely get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like on the surface is like the tip of the iceberg. There's systems, there's cultures, there's human emotion, there's intelligence. Yeah. I can't put it any better than, than you just put it. Yeah. So everyone should go read it. Yes. Well, thank you for introducing it to me. Oh, well, I'm glad you read it. Thank you. Any final thoughts then on the book?
00:39:58
Speaker
No, just I think everyone should have a go at it. Yeah, there's maybe a couple of words that are going to be upsetting, but power through it because I think the whole book is going to be illuminating and help you kind of frame modern life. I mean, we're still dealing with these issues. Okay, there you have it. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle. Thank you, Mark. Thanks, Joe.
00:40:40
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity. Talking to creative people from every walk of life about the art that inspires them. And you're probably wondering, how can I support this podcast? I am wondering, Joe, how can I support this podcast? I mean, apart from being on it.
00:40:57
Speaker
There's no advertisements in this podcast. There's no tip jars. There's nothing about like buying us a coffee or anything like that. But there is a way that you can support us. And what is that? It's not about supporting us. It's about supporting the people that we're talking to. I think most of the people we've talked to are artists of some description and they probably have some kind of artistic product that you could buy. And if you enjoyed it, maybe you can review it for them.
00:41:21
Speaker
Oh yeah. But maybe us too? Yeah, you know what? Us too. It wouldn't hurt. They could buy our books. And how do they find us? Recreative.ca. Don't forget the hyphen. There's a hyphen in there. Re-creative. I took your line, sorry. Well, because I stole your line. So yes, re-creative.ca. Janks. Oh yeah, you heard that. I stole your line again. As well, if you like what you've just heard, you could consider subscribing to the podcast. And leave a comment if you like it. Thanks for listening. Spread the word.