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The ArtiFact Podcast is a long-form show on books, culture, painting, and music hosted by Alex Sheremet, Joel Parrish, and a revolving door of co-hosts and guests. Each subject is covered in depth and at length, with past shows featuring the Epic of Gilgamesh, Charles Johnson's "Oxherding Tale", Leonard Shlain’s "Art & Physics", John Williams's "Stoner", and more. Opinionated, controversial, and prone to making enemies and friends of friends and enemies, ArtiFact delivers new perspectives on the arts by artists of talent.
Episodes
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Taking up Mark Twain's mission, then greatly expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the best comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to dramedy to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1963’s black comedy, Cat’s Cradle, a 127-chapter novel split across a mere ~300 pages, best typifying Vonnegut’s idea that his books “are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips, and each chip is a joke”. Featuring an artificial religion and carefully built-up philosophy (Bokononism), WMDs familiar (the atomic bomb) and strange (ice-nine), well-phrased doggerel that serves any number of functions, and a subtly rich set of characters, the novel remains one of Kurt Vonnegut’s best.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/mrJyyTFaHYg
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Cat’s Cradle: structure, density, value systems, political lens(es)
09:20 – Bokononism, black comedy, Kurt Vonnegut’s artistic choices
19:40 – Keith on the degeneration of the novel
21:56 – Alex: will shortened attention spans kill the arts during this cycle?
29:29 – Ch. 1: “Call me Jonah”, Ch. 2: the karass & Vonnegut’s ‘good’ doggerel
51:40 – The Bokononist compulsion to “write things down” + artistic mystique
55:40 – Alex: how art helped me introspect & make better decisions
01:00:52 – How Cat’s Cradle tries to resolve the object/subject dilemma
01:02:40 – Understanding the Bokononist vocabulary
01:28:46 – Ch. 5: Newt/Felix Hoenniker + how Kurt Vonnegut builds Cat’s Cradle upward
01:47:12 – Keith on Felix Hoenniker’s “saint” (‘miracle’) function
01:52:42 – Ch. 11: “Protein”: how Kurt Vonnegut generates character capstones
01:56:58 – Who is Mona? Wherefore is Mona?
02:05:00 – Hoosier + the concept of a “granfalloon”
02:13:46 – Why did Kurt Vonnegut choose ice-nine as his WMD?
02:26:32 – Reading the final 3 chapters
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