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Jun 05, 2017
Don't try Vonnegut at home boys and girls. Leave it to the experts. Cat's Cradle is a novel that defies categorization. It has been pigeon holed as social satire and as science fiction, but that is like nailing jello to a tree. It comes off as unhinged as one of Hunter S. Thompson's memoires of the druggy Sixties. This novel is written in the first person by an unnamed protagonist who is essentially Vonnegut himself. Like the narrator of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" it is the reflections of a traveler to an impoverished third world country that is being treated as a doormat by the West. The themes of Stangelovian science gone terribly wrong and Scientology-style crap religion are woven through this work yet they come in an out of focus in an apparently aimless fashion. It all culminates with the end of the world as neither a bang nor a whimper but a yawn. Try it if you dare but don't be surprised if it leaves you scratching your head. WTF did I just read?