wildcat

I finished Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan a few hours ago and then just now picked up his Cat's Cradle, which was on my bookshelf in spite of the fact that I've never read it and don't even remember acquiring it. I'm sure there was a reason, and let's face it -- this is not the first book to arrive on my shelf without any logical explanation. After that I went through my bookshelves to find any other errant Vonneguts that I hadn't read and came up with Bluebeard, but I'll pick at that one after I've read this one. I seem to remember Deadeye Dick was in there somewhere but it's dissolved into the firmament.

Not the first time or last et cetera et cetera Amen.

Sirens is very effective at making you dislike it's characters but still root for them, or forget that you don't like them right up until they disappoint you again. They're like people like that. It would appear that Vonnegut was trying to rewrite the Bible and Alice in Wonderland at the very same time and maybe if you cock your eye it's A Christmas Carol as well, although the only holiday-related paraphenalia in book are effigies of Malachi Constant for burning. And the only young boy to catch your hearts is a little monster who turns into an evil alien Mowgli. In short, this book is every other major book ever published, ever. That's a lie, by the way, and it's both quite readable and easily lifted with only one hand, which means something in a time when that new Annie Leibowitz book is out and you could very seriously injure someone by hefting it over your head and bashing their head with it.

Quite simply, the book is about people using other people and then looking quite shocked to learn that, yes, they themselves have been used. It's rather expertly done -- I spent much of the book trying to figure out why a particular character acted in the way that he did only to discover why, and then to discover that the reasons may have been an illusion.

Names are interesting in the book. Not because they're all weird, which is fun, but because there are so many of them; people are saddled with names and change them, are renamed, almost at whim - well, not whim, plot, but the process leaves them sagging under the weight of discarded and forgotten identities.