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 The Lycaeum Forums » Arts » Poetry and Literature (Moderators: Kosmo, Moo)Topic:
 LBC Book of the Month; Nov. - "The Sirens of Titan" by Vonnegut

[ST1R]

Here were some of my favorite quotes from The Sirens of Titan.

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. .. Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward-pushed ever outward."

"...right now you're as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on the street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats-men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings when they are lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he suffecently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless paper a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine."

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of orginization. If there are such things as angels, I hope they are organized along the lines of the Maffia(sic)."

"Take care of the people, and God almighty will take care of himself."

"Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else.
And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, 'Tralfamodore'"

[farmerjack]

It was quite a coincidence that we read the Plague and Sirens of Titan one after the other.

One of the main points of each was that a man cannot control all the evils around him. All he can do is control himself and the best way to do that is by first doing no harm.

ATM I cant remember the name of the man in the Plague who spoke this - he was the guy who paid the smugglers to get him out of town but ultimately decided to stay. First to do no harm by not allowing his potentially contagious backside outside the city walls, and secondly to spend his remaining days helping the sick.

Boaz, the cypher who was always the product of his environment, first horrid via his controller job in the martian army, second the sweetheart via his association with the cave dwelling kites, spoke the same message and pretty much chose the same fate by remaining in the cave to give his kind and loving vibration to the kites - AND not returning to the real world where he knew he'd just be corrupted again by the cruel world.

Who says we can't have a book club?

[Moo]

ATM I cant remember the name of the man in the Plague who spoke this - he was the guy who paid the smugglers to get him out of town but ultimately decided to stay.

Rambert.

I will be back soon with some more about my thoughts of the amazing book that this thread is devoted to.

[Moo]

Say fellas!

Well then, I am here to share what I thought of it so very late.....

Some questions for those who read it:

-What did you all think of the Rules of the Earthling religion, as it turned out to be upon Constant's return?  Especially the weights everyone carried around.  What did you fellas and ladies think of those weights?! The proudly worn handicapps!!!!

-All of the specific numbers in the book -- do you fellas and ladies think there was a meaning to these specific numbers as a whole?  IMO, there is not -- of course not!

-Interesting how Constant only visits Beatrice -- is Vonnegut signifying that he feels this is the way to be?  For Constant only to "enjoy showing off his husbandry?"  (Page 313)

And then here are some favorite parts and descriptions:

-Loved how Salo's feet "suck" to the floor when he nervously shifts.... 

-Loved the Description of Redwine at the end of page 223.

-Description of raindrops on page 224, 4th para., cascading down the bell rope.  "enterprising drops of rain"

Vonnegut is amazing in every paragraph.

-"blister in the woods"

- "A greased eel couldn't have squeezed in" -- page 234.

- One of my ultimate favorites was how the son Chrono ended up flying of from the nest in a fury of.... testosterone?     But he still loves his mama. 

Hope to hear some responses, or other words.  ENjoyed to do this, thank you to those who participated.