The Electric Monk

“

Billy asked for something to read on the trip to Tralfamadore. His captors had five million Earthling books on microfilm, but now way to project them in Billy’s cabin. They had only one actual book in English which would be placed in a Tralfamadorian museum. It was Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann.

Billy read it, thought it was pretty good in spots. The people in it certainly had their ups and downs. But Billy didn’t want to read about the same ups and downs over and over again. He asked if there wasn’t, please, some other reading matter around.

“Only Tralfamadorian novels, which I’m afraid you couldn’t begin to understand,” said the speaker on the wall.

“Let me look at one anyway.”

So they sent him in several. They were little things. A dozen of them might have had the bulk of Valley of the Dolls - with all its ups and downs, ups and downs.

Billy couldn’t read Tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books were laid out - in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams.

“Exactly,” said the voice.

“They are telegrams?”

“There are no telegrams on Tralfamador. But you’re right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message - describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the many depths of many marvelous moments all seen at one time.”

” -

From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Sounds a little like Twitter, doesn’t it?  Only, I rarely find anything on Twitter to be “beautiful and surprising and deep.”

(via johncommoner)