Quote Porn
Women
"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."
"I had been given careful directions. The directions were confusing, but I followed them and had no trouble. It was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on."
"I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive on its own terms."
Cat's Cradle
"Science is magic that works."
" 'I'm not a drug salesman, I'm a writer.
'What makes you think that a writer is not a drug salesman?' "
"In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.
And God said, 'Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.' And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. 'What is the purpose of all this?' he asked politely.
'Everything must have a purpose?' asked God.
'Certainly,' said man.
'Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,' said God.
And He went away."
A Few Thoughts
The thing about Women is that its title is almost definitely the exact opposite of its target audience. It's a book to be read with a grain of salt; I am no more than an armchair, believe-in-the-tenets-but-not-in-the-effort-involved feminist, but the objectification of women hits a ridiculous high-water mark in Women, even for a dirty old man in his fifites writing in the 1970s. With that said, if you can forgive a novel written in a less enlightened context &/or consider it a period piece, Bukowski is an absolute riot, and his stories are like a 30-years-older Tucker Max from 30 years ago.
Ernest Hemingway once famously said write drunk, edit sober. Bukowski ate, breathed and lived this. Women describes so many of his California nights spent in a bending blur wherein he typewrites several pages of manuscript, only to black out and wake up the next morning wondering if he'd written anything at all. I enjoyed the book's style much more than Post Office: rather than recounting his days on a menial job, Bukowski details the dream of so many young single folks who want to get paid to write and not have a job to show up at and effortlessly be an object of desire to attractive members of the opposite sex and drink every night into oblivion and just generally be a hot mess forever by virtue of god-given talent. It's a pipe dream in book form, and it's more of a laughing affair than a bragging one.
The book isn't without its shortcomings: Bukowski encounters a stream of women who seem to each get younger, prettier and wilder than the last. Wash, drink, rinse, drink, repeat. A less forgiving attention span or stricter intolerance for chauvinism may not find it as funny nor as engaging as I did, but then, most folks of that opinion will read the book's summary and know better than to begin reading it at all.
Of the handful of Bukowski I've read, this book is the most on point with the quotables and the food-for-thoughts. Although seldom surprising in his insights, Bukowski's phrasings (see above quote porn section) often coolly express something his reader feels deep down, except that he's got the knack to pound it into his typewriter in just the right way after the drink has taken hold.
Speaking of writers with a knack for phrasing collectively unconscious profundity, Kurt Vonnegut enjoys zeitgeist status among science fiction fans. Cat's Cradle is his highest rated novel on Goodreads, and it's easy to see why: while Vonnegut expresses his standard wonder at the potential of science with his sardonic views on spirituality, Cat's Cradle endeavors to spin more of a creative story than most of his works. Particularly, the creation of Bokononism and its adherents in addition to the inventive horror of Ice-9 are much more adventurous than some of Vonnegut's fictions, and less reliant on his own life experience. While I enjoy all the Vonnegut I've read, Breakfast of Champions & Slaughterhouse Five both often feel like Vonnegut recounting tall tales from his own life rather than writing a straight up fiction.
My favorite part of this book might actually be the ending. Once the principal technologies of Cat's Cradle's world are understood, it's relatively easy to predict the eventual outcome of the book. However, despite this predictability, as Wikipedia so eloquently summarizes, Bokonon's final reflection that "if he were younger, he would have climbed to the top of Mt. McCabe, placed a book about human stupidity at the peak, and, through the administration of ice-nine, become a statue" is deeply cynical. Vonnegut has a way of making his utter pessimism seem pleasant and benign, and the ending scene (especially given what Bokonon symbolizes) is a great representation of that.
The issue with creating a religion with all its own words and customs is that it lends itself to rifling off sentences that border on Jabberwocky. At the best of times (see: Dune), the author elaborates and reminds several times, the words feel natural and the prose flows like familiar English. At the worst of times (see: Infinite Jest), the creations and nicknames and tropes blend together to cause moments of confusion. On a sliding scale of Dune-IJ, Cat's Cradle tends towards the more confusing style, and with its relatively few pages, I finished the book just about when I started to recall without effort exactly what a granfalloon or wampeter was. While these ideas added to the story, they created a sludgy reading experience that I never came to appreciate like I did in some other linguistically creative books.
All told, Cat's Cradle is the most conventional, WYSIWYG example of Vonnegut's work that I've had the pleasure of reading, with a narrative capable of standing alone without the aid of symbolism—even though there's plenty to be found.
Ernest Hemingway once famously said write drunk, edit sober. Bukowski ate, breathed and lived this. Women describes so many of his California nights spent in a bending blur wherein he typewrites several pages of manuscript, only to black out and wake up the next morning wondering if he'd written anything at all. I enjoyed the book's style much more than Post Office: rather than recounting his days on a menial job, Bukowski details the dream of so many young single folks who want to get paid to write and not have a job to show up at and effortlessly be an object of desire to attractive members of the opposite sex and drink every night into oblivion and just generally be a hot mess forever by virtue of god-given talent. It's a pipe dream in book form, and it's more of a laughing affair than a bragging one.
The book isn't without its shortcomings: Bukowski encounters a stream of women who seem to each get younger, prettier and wilder than the last. Wash, drink, rinse, drink, repeat. A less forgiving attention span or stricter intolerance for chauvinism may not find it as funny nor as engaging as I did, but then, most folks of that opinion will read the book's summary and know better than to begin reading it at all.
Of the handful of Bukowski I've read, this book is the most on point with the quotables and the food-for-thoughts. Although seldom surprising in his insights, Bukowski's phrasings (see above quote porn section) often coolly express something his reader feels deep down, except that he's got the knack to pound it into his typewriter in just the right way after the drink has taken hold.
Speaking of writers with a knack for phrasing collectively unconscious profundity, Kurt Vonnegut enjoys zeitgeist status among science fiction fans. Cat's Cradle is his highest rated novel on Goodreads, and it's easy to see why: while Vonnegut expresses his standard wonder at the potential of science with his sardonic views on spirituality, Cat's Cradle endeavors to spin more of a creative story than most of his works. Particularly, the creation of Bokononism and its adherents in addition to the inventive horror of Ice-9 are much more adventurous than some of Vonnegut's fictions, and less reliant on his own life experience. While I enjoy all the Vonnegut I've read, Breakfast of Champions & Slaughterhouse Five both often feel like Vonnegut recounting tall tales from his own life rather than writing a straight up fiction.
My favorite part of this book might actually be the ending. Once the principal technologies of Cat's Cradle's world are understood, it's relatively easy to predict the eventual outcome of the book. However, despite this predictability, as Wikipedia so eloquently summarizes, Bokonon's final reflection that "if he were younger, he would have climbed to the top of Mt. McCabe, placed a book about human stupidity at the peak, and, through the administration of ice-nine, become a statue" is deeply cynical. Vonnegut has a way of making his utter pessimism seem pleasant and benign, and the ending scene (especially given what Bokonon symbolizes) is a great representation of that.
The issue with creating a religion with all its own words and customs is that it lends itself to rifling off sentences that border on Jabberwocky. At the best of times (see: Dune), the author elaborates and reminds several times, the words feel natural and the prose flows like familiar English. At the worst of times (see: Infinite Jest), the creations and nicknames and tropes blend together to cause moments of confusion. On a sliding scale of Dune-IJ, Cat's Cradle tends towards the more confusing style, and with its relatively few pages, I finished the book just about when I started to recall without effort exactly what a granfalloon or wampeter was. While these ideas added to the story, they created a sludgy reading experience that I never came to appreciate like I did in some other linguistically creative books.
All told, Cat's Cradle is the most conventional, WYSIWYG example of Vonnegut's work that I've had the pleasure of reading, with a narrative capable of standing alone without the aid of symbolism—even though there's plenty to be found.
Head-to-Head
Characters: Bukowski's women, with occasional exception, may as well be a series of cardboard cutouts. Vonnegut's characters behave almost too much like real and sincerely irrational people for comfort.
Advantage: Cat's Cradle.
Plot: Cat's Cradle gets points for inventiveness. Women gets points for telling a half-true story of a fantasy life that, despite its lack of importance or gravity, left me wanting to read more.
Advantage: Push.
Ending: I'd take a selfie next to that statue.
Advantage: Cat's Cradle.
Writing/Language: Both of these writers are renowned for their turns of phrase. Picking a winner between books by each would net several hard decisions. In this case, Cat's Cradle artfully mixes Vonnegut's one-liners with plot devices and storytelling, but Women shines brighter with several of Bukowski's most clever reflections.
Advantage: Women.
Philosophy: Ask me in ten years when we're in a nuclear winter, or (more importantly) when I'm no longer in my twenties and have accepted that I won't be young forever, and I'll relate more to Cat's Cradle. But, in the here and the now...
Advantage: Women.
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
Honestly, Cat's Cradle is the higher seed for a reason: it's a more creative book, and it has aged better. But, like in the philosophy section where I flat out admitted that the more shallow message spoke to me; so, too, did the more shallow book.
Women upsets the higher seed to move to round two.
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