Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Cat's Cradle

Title: Cat’s Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
List: #66 on Radcliffe’s Top 100 20th Century Novels
Worth reading? Maybe.

Cat’s Cradle is a very pessimistic book. It does not have a clean, happy ending that solves all problems. Rather, the story builds and builds towards a very destructive conclusion. Even the pseudo-religion that permeates the book is not one of hope in the face of chaos. Instead, it offers mainly cynicism and even its founder states that all its principles are lies.

And yet, Cat’s Cradle was not a bad book to read. It flowed quickly through the very short (about two pages each) chapters and told a compelling story of the fictional co-creator of the atom bomb and his disregard for the effect of his inventions on anyone else. It also offered a good criticism of the arms race and the desire to get more and more destructive weapons without considering the consequences.

But for all that, I still found Cat’s Cradle pretty weird. And I don’t really think it is a must read. But it was okay. So maybe it is worth reading.

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