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<\/a>The Sirens of Titan<\/em>\nKurt Vonnegut<\/strong><\/p>\n
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., by my own personal standards, is quite possibly the God of creativity and existential thought.\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.at least as far as putting it to literature goes. Lately, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgo back\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and read some of his classics. For those who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet already read Cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cradle please do, as it will make your head spin in all the right ways. I am definitely one who has added \u00e2\u20ac\u0153busy, busy, busy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to my list of appropriate responses of the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how are you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The oldie-but-goodie book of this month for me was, however, The Sirens of Titan. A novel in which Vonnegut not only seeks to question what the meaning of life is and why we are here, but also seems to, well, answer it. If you were a fan of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite sure \u00e2\u20ac\u015342\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sufficed, then I highly recommend The Sirens of Titan as your next plan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though, the latter came before the former and undoubtedly influenced Douglas Adams, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a chance some of us read one before the other.<\/p>\n
The Sirens of Titan begins with our two main characters meeting for the first time in a fabulously decorated, rich and luxurious house (complete with a magical waterfall): Winston Niles Rumfoord (an astronaut, who, while traveling space wound up in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and now can only materialize at infrequent intervals on earth) and Malachi Constant (the wealthiest man of the 22nd century). Rumfoord, as a consequence of being in the infundibulum, now has the gift of seeing the future and relates to Constant the events that will unfold in his near future, including Malachi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s travels to Mars, Mercury, and finally to Saturn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moon Titan. (If you are wondering what a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chrono-synclastic infundibulum\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is, then you can refer to Vonnegut\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own definition which says that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a place where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all the different kinds of truths fit together\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the effect of being caught in said infundibulum is essentially to become a kind of quantum wavelength.)<\/p>\n
The book primarily revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth, but the events leading up to the war and the events afterwards are really the fruit of the novel. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel I am at liberty to spoil much of what occurs as the mystery is part of the experience, but I can say that there is nothing quite like reading about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The church of God the utterly indifferent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to make you question your own humanity. Vonnegut has a history of pushing people to reconsider the obscure belief that humans are somehow the center point of the universe. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a humbling piece of work, for starters, but it is also one that makes you question your own truths which you hold relevant in your life. As all the followers of the new religion recall: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take care of the People, and God Almighty will Take Care of Himself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Sirens of Titan was first published in 1956 and was Vonnegut\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second novel after Player Piano. In his later years, Vonnegut would grade each of his novels, giving The Sirens of Titan an A and Player Piano a B. His latter works seemed to score higher on his personal scale, though only two made the A-plus group: Cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five.<\/p>\n
So, if you are feeling sad and depressed and want to feel happy again, DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T read this book \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but, if you are willing to ask yourself some of the ultimate questions about human existence and get an honest opinion about the fragility of life, then I suggest being brave and reading The Sirens of Titan. I do, though, also recommend having a beer on hand to help with the aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., by my own personal standards, is quite possibly the God of creativity and existential thought.\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.at least as far as putting it to literature goes. Lately, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgo back\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and read some of his classics. For those who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet already read Cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cradle please do, as it will make your head spin in all the right ways. I am definitely one who has added \u00e2\u20ac\u0153busy, busy, busy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to my list of appropriate responses of the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how are you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":1052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false},"categories":[98,9,115],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/the-sirens-of-titan.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hyogoajet.net\/hyogotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}