Vonnegut: Player Piano vs. Cat's Cradle
I’m going to attack the book review in a different way this time.
I just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Keep in mind I listened to Player Piano at the same time so I got a solid juxtaposition of his writing style from his earlier days to his not so early days. Player Piano was his first published work from what I understand and Cat’s Cradle came about, I don’t know, ten years later. What I noticed most is how much Vonnegut grew as a writer from Player Piano to Cat’s Cradle.
Let me point out the glaring differences in these two novels and then at the same time hopefully detail how repetition shapes a writer more than classes or seminars or what have you.
It’s hard to tell from the start but Cat’s Cradle and Player Piano have plenty in common. In saying that, although their over a decade a part they are still conceptually the same book. Before pointing out what they have in common let’s first draw from what they don’t have in common. ‘Piano’ centers around engineers being the elite in society, the one percent, the prestigious and privileged. Indeed, it is about men who no longer get their hands dirty. Our protagonist, who is portrayed through the first-person narrative, is the everyday man of the future. He’s middle-class in his mind but he’s upper-class by rank and he’s having a problem acting as such. This seems to be different from the protagonist of Cat’s Cradle, a young male journalist of the middle-class who becomes a king of an island. On any level, when you examine these angles you find that in both stories the protagonist is somehow meant to rule, make decisions for all those around him. One might argue that this is Vonnegut’s ego seeping into the story, somehow. Ego or not, Vonnegut found a way to write the same story through different eyes. It’s called keeping it fresh people. Everybody take note. Years of repetition did nothing but grow him as an author. Just sayin.
Here’s another similarity but difference with the two novels. Both characters have beautiful wives whom they are disconnected, emotionally. The wives don’t seem similar and they are not the same type of character but they have the same role in the story—the woman of no consequence who is totally hot.
Before I go on I will not ask you how many times you’ve effectively rewritten the same character and didn’t know it. I believe Vonnegut knew he did it so he made it work for him. Just saying he kept it fresh. Everybody take note. Repetition. Growth as an author. Just sayin.
Vonnegut does something else that’s pretty interesting in both stories. See, Vonnegut, in his novels, was a world builder, at least in these two books. After he developed the world, he simply added the third act and then called it a wrap. Example. In “Cradle” once the island of San Lorenzo is completely set up he breaks it down in heart wrenching fashion; in other words, after you meet all the characters and know where they’re from and where they’re going and their stories are completely interlaced with the physical world, the story comes to a drastic close. In ‘Piano’ he does the same. Vonnegut had an interesting way of showing all the angles right before turning it on its head. He liked to lay down all the information so that the reader would infer plenty and then spring the last act on us.
The big difference in the two novels is that Player Piano is twice as long as ‘Cradle”. In ‘Piano’ he exemplified his point longer, and don’t be mistaken, he was making a point in this one, in both of them. That, and in Piano he used significantly more adverbs. In other words, the big difference between the two is that in one he trusted the reader to pick up the meaning of what the characters were doing and in the other he didn’t trust the reader as much, so he had to force the issue, probably using more words, more adverbs.
They’re both great books and perfect examples of what a writer can do when they know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Vonnegut grew in large part from writing and retooling his style, learning what to edit and even when to show and not tell and vice versa. Both of these stories throw you through a range of emotion but ultimately to epiphanies.
See the cat? See the cradle?
U.L. Harper is the author of the sci-fi/horror/literary novel In Blackness Stop by Amazon.com and pick it up or stop by Smashwords.com or B&N.com
I just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Keep in mind I listened to Player Piano at the same time so I got a solid juxtaposition of his writing style from his earlier days to his not so early days. Player Piano was his first published work from what I understand and Cat’s Cradle came about, I don’t know, ten years later. What I noticed most is how much Vonnegut grew as a writer from Player Piano to Cat’s Cradle.
Let me point out the glaring differences in these two novels and then at the same time hopefully detail how repetition shapes a writer more than classes or seminars or what have you.
It’s hard to tell from the start but Cat’s Cradle and Player Piano have plenty in common. In saying that, although their over a decade a part they are still conceptually the same book. Before pointing out what they have in common let’s first draw from what they don’t have in common. ‘Piano’ centers around engineers being the elite in society, the one percent, the prestigious and privileged. Indeed, it is about men who no longer get their hands dirty. Our protagonist, who is portrayed through the first-person narrative, is the everyday man of the future. He’s middle-class in his mind but he’s upper-class by rank and he’s having a problem acting as such. This seems to be different from the protagonist of Cat’s Cradle, a young male journalist of the middle-class who becomes a king of an island. On any level, when you examine these angles you find that in both stories the protagonist is somehow meant to rule, make decisions for all those around him. One might argue that this is Vonnegut’s ego seeping into the story, somehow. Ego or not, Vonnegut found a way to write the same story through different eyes. It’s called keeping it fresh people. Everybody take note. Years of repetition did nothing but grow him as an author. Just sayin.
Here’s another similarity but difference with the two novels. Both characters have beautiful wives whom they are disconnected, emotionally. The wives don’t seem similar and they are not the same type of character but they have the same role in the story—the woman of no consequence who is totally hot.
Before I go on I will not ask you how many times you’ve effectively rewritten the same character and didn’t know it. I believe Vonnegut knew he did it so he made it work for him. Just saying he kept it fresh. Everybody take note. Repetition. Growth as an author. Just sayin.
Vonnegut does something else that’s pretty interesting in both stories. See, Vonnegut, in his novels, was a world builder, at least in these two books. After he developed the world, he simply added the third act and then called it a wrap. Example. In “Cradle” once the island of San Lorenzo is completely set up he breaks it down in heart wrenching fashion; in other words, after you meet all the characters and know where they’re from and where they’re going and their stories are completely interlaced with the physical world, the story comes to a drastic close. In ‘Piano’ he does the same. Vonnegut had an interesting way of showing all the angles right before turning it on its head. He liked to lay down all the information so that the reader would infer plenty and then spring the last act on us.
The big difference in the two novels is that Player Piano is twice as long as ‘Cradle”. In ‘Piano’ he exemplified his point longer, and don’t be mistaken, he was making a point in this one, in both of them. That, and in Piano he used significantly more adverbs. In other words, the big difference between the two is that in one he trusted the reader to pick up the meaning of what the characters were doing and in the other he didn’t trust the reader as much, so he had to force the issue, probably using more words, more adverbs.
They’re both great books and perfect examples of what a writer can do when they know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Vonnegut grew in large part from writing and retooling his style, learning what to edit and even when to show and not tell and vice versa. Both of these stories throw you through a range of emotion but ultimately to epiphanies.
See the cat? See the cradle?
U.L. Harper is the author of the sci-fi/horror/literary novel In Blackness Stop by Amazon.com and pick it up or stop by Smashwords.com or B&N.com
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