A Post-Birthday Greeting from Tralfamadore

 (Now on Trans-D: A Country at War (Part 1a) - The Art of Slaughterhouse 5)

"Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other." (Chapter 5)

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice." (Chapter 10)

- Excerpts from Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 classic Slaughterhouse-Five, (or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death). In the quote Vonnegut addresses his mythical realm of Tralfamadore, an exoplanet many light-years away from Earth which first appeared in Sirens of Titan and, later, in Timequake.*

It is to this planet Billy Pilgrim, the central character of Slaughterhouse 5, is taken after his abduction and where he is held as an entertaining specimen in a Tralfamadorian zoo. (Inset left is a digital image by Janmesh Shah.)

The unique thing about the novel is that Slaughterhouse 5 is not considered a science fiction tale. It is hailed as the primo 20th century anti-war novel, while, at the same time, the thinly disguised memoir of a former WW2 soldier who literally marched through a living hell but somehow survived to tell the harrowing tale.

"Kurt Vonnegut's fiction is often explicitly science fiction, yet Vonnegut recoils at the use of the term -- scared off, I suppose, by the books written by Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter-ego. So you won't find Vonnegut in the science fiction department either, even though "The Sirens of Titan" is about flying saucers, "Player Piano" is about the effects of  in a near-future society, and "Cat's Cradle" is about a lab-created crystal with the capacity to plunge Earth into a permanent Ice Age. These are science fiction themes, whether Vonnegut wishes to admit it or not. And since his books are so readily available, I won't complain. At least I know where to go in the bookstore to find his books..."

- Mac Tonnies via Posthuman Blues, Sunday, March 14, 2004. Mac was a huge fan of Vonnegut. For him, Vonnegut was right up there with Kafka, Kerouac, Ballard, Bradbury, Burroughs, Gibson and P.K. Dick. His favorite Vonnegut novel was Breakfast of Champions (1973). It was one of the books he'd want on hand if he was stranded on a deserted island.

That being said, Mac's bewilderment regarding Vonnegut's attitude towards the sci-fi genre was not unique. Critics still debate this topic today in spite of Vonnegut's own essay on the topic, On Writing Science Fiction:

"Years ago I was working in Schenectady for General Electric, completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines, so I wrote a novel about people and machines, and machines frequently got the best of it, as machines will. (It was called Player Piano, and it's coming out in hard covers again next spring.) And I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer.

I didn't know that. I supposed that I was writing a novel about life, about things I could not avoid seeing and hearing in Schenectady, a very real town, awkwardly set in the gruesome now. I have been a sore-headed occupant of a file-drawer labeled ''science- fiction'' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a tall white fixture in a comfort station."

In the case of the planet Tralfamadore and Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut was writing about alien abductions during a decade when alien abductions and UAP sightings were just beginning to trickle into the public domain via local mainstream news sources. The phenomenon emerged in the early 1950s but,75 years later, we are still none the wiser and have little understanding of the abduction experience.

As it was, via an article entitled The Laughing Time Traveller, we learn:

"...that Vonnegut invented Tralfamodore as a child when he was stargazing with his extended family on a jetty at their summer home on Lake Maxinkuckee in north-western Indiana."

Hmmm... How many ways can we translate that line? Memories are such slippery things.

Inset right is Kurt Vonnegut in 1940 when he was a lad of 18.  Two years later he enlisted in the army (joining the Children's Crusade).**

Tragically, soon afterwards his mother committed suicide (on Mother's Day, no less).

Maybe a year after that Vonnegut, an American of German descent, emerged from Slaughterhouse Five as a POW in Germany to watch helplessly as the great city of Dresden and most of its people were burned in a firestorm created by Allied missiles; a sight which haunted him for the rest of his life.

What you can't tell from the photo is that he was very tall. Oddly enough, he reminds me of Mac in some way. Mac may have thought so, too.

(Continued below the jump...)

Cats, Our Mysterious "Others"

Our resident alien, Charlie, who has diligently overseen the creation
of this post. (2026, DS.)

"When a man loves cats, I am his friend, and comrade, without further introduction."

- The words of Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author, humorist, and champion of cats. He was known to rent cats when he was away from home (missing his own, vast feline collection.) His favorite cat was a black cat (with a white ruff) named Bambino. Twain is also credited for stating: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." Both quotes and the photo of Twain insert right were sourced from the Smithsonian article: Mark Twain Liked Cats Better Than People.

"Mark Twain" was, incidentally, the name of of the building in Kansas City in which Mac Tonnies (and his cats) resided. (See blog sidebar.) Mark Twain is also one of the memetic connectives between this post and a new  cross-post on my other blog which will appear shortly regarding Kurt Vonnegut. Had Vonnegut, another of Mac's favorite authors, been a cat person, he would have appeared here as well.

Sunday, January 26, 2003

"Why 'Posthuman Blues'? Jack Kerouac's Book of Blues contains some essentially worthless poetry...but if he'd toted a palmtop instead of a ruled notepad, his output would likely find a small but fervent niche audience. His Book of Blues is rich blogging material, written as one would scribble postcards to one's own clone or multidimensional counterpart."

- Mac Tonnies completing his very first post on his new blog, Posthuman Blues. I wasn't aware that the "Blues" half of his title was inspired by Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) and wasn't aware of Book of Blues although I did know of his reverence for On the Road.

Inset left is a vintage photo of Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (his parents were French Canadian) and his cat. This photo, in essence, inspired this post. I suddenly had the hunch that there were more unexpected cat people to be found... and I was right!

(Source: Ranker. Note: slow-loading page but well worth the effort. Numerous celebrities with their cats... from Herman Hesse to Sartre to Bette Davis to Stanley Kubrick!)

Sunday, August 17, 2003

"I was on my computer waiting for a pizza to arrive when I noticed that Spook, my oldest cat, was unusually interested in the window above my air conditioner. I followed her gaze.

The bat from the previous night was hanging from the blinds! Inexplicably inside my apartment!

It immediately started flying all over the place, coming perilously close to the ceiling fan. I ran to the phone and called my apartment's emergency maintenance number and was told that a loose bat in my apartment didn't constitute an emergency. I told them it fucking well did and that they better send someone to help me trap it. (None of this was the bat's fault. I actually like bats; I just don't like sharing my living room with them.)

By this time both my cats were chasing the bat with gleeful abandon. The phone rang: the pizza guy calling from the lobby nine floors down. I grabbed my checkbook and met him at the door just as a maintenance guy and my building's new manager began conferring about the Loose Bat Situation.

The bat, probably exhausted and starving, flew into the kitchen as we walked into my apartment, and the maintenance guy was able to trap it in a towel. It made angry buzzing noises through tiny fangs as he escorted it into the hall. Fortunately, he had every intention of setting the bat free outside.

Now my cats are listless and forlorn. At first, Spook diligently kept looking for it and meowing plaintively. I think the realization that the bat is gone is finally hitting home. But it was certainly fun while it lasted."

- Mac Tonnies via this humorous Posthuman  Blues post. Mac had been blogging for 8 months before mention of his feline companions entered his Posthuman narrative. I guess he was looking for some comic relief... and he found it.

Inset right above is great photograph of one of Mac's fave songwriters, Morrissey, having a magic moment with his tabby found here.

Inset right is one of the most remarkable cat paintings I could find: Suzanne Valadon's glorious Raminou (1920). Valadon was a pretty remarkable artist whose remarkable story can be read in full on this (remarkable) blog. For more Valadon cats see Katzenworld. For a Trans-D article featuring Valadon, see here.

(Continued below the break...)