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. While he was in Ilium, John let a poet named Sherman Krebbs stay in his apartment. When he returns he finds that Krebbs has wrecked the place, killed his cat and his avocado tree, burned his couch, and written a poem in excrement on the kitchen floor. Krebbs is a nihilist, someone who believes in nothing and finds life meaningless. John says he was tempted to see the coincidence of the stone angel as meaningless and to conclude that life itself was meaningless, but Krebbs s outlandish behavior convinces him that nihilism is a mistake. Krebbs gives him another shove in the direction of Bokononism, which argues that everything happens for a reason, even if the reason is not immediately apparent. A series of strange coincidences propels John into contact with Frank Hoenikker, who disappeared shortly after his father s funeral. John sees an advertising supplement in the New York Times for the tiny island nation of San Lorenzo. On the cover is a picture of a breathtakingly beautiful woman, Mona Aamons Monzano, and John falls instantly in love (80). Looking inside for more pictures of Mona, he instead comes across Frank Hoenikker, who is San Lorenzo s Minister of Science and Progress (80). Then he is assigned to write an article on another resident of the island, Julian Castle, who gave up a life of wealth and privilege to found a hospital and care for San Lorenzo s poor. On the plane to San Lorenzo, he meets Horlick Minton, the new U.S. ambassador, and his wife Claire. The Mintons are devoted to each other and pay very little attention to anyone else. Having been dismissed briefly from the diplomatic service for expressing the opinion that Americans are not universally loved, they view their new assignment with cynical detachment. The Mintons show John a copy of a book on San Lorenzo by Philip Castle, the son of philanthropist Julian Castle. The book introduces John to the Bokononist religion and gives him a glimpse of the island s long, sad history. Bokonon, whose real name, Johnson, became Bokonon in the island s strange dialect, is a black man originally from Trinidad who traveled the world before his fate finally delivered him to San Lorenzo. Faced with the hopeless poverty of a large population on an island with few resources, Bokonon and his fellow traveler Earl McCabe created a religion called Bokononism and pitted it against a repressive government Page 81headed by McCabe. Bokonon used depressionera bodybuilder Charles Atlas s concept of dynamic tension as the basis for a system that turned life on the island into a morality play in which good and evil battle endlessly. Bokonon took on the role of the persecuted holy man hiding out in the jungle, while McCabe became the dictatorial president who punished all Bokononists with death on a giant fishhook. Although the new system did not improve the economic conditions on the island, it improved the lives of the people by making them actors in a cosmic drama and giving their lives meaning. John also meets H. Lowe Crosby, a bicycle manufacturer who hopes to build a factory in San Lorenzo, and his wife Hazel. Like the narrator, Hazel is from Indiana, and she delights in meeting other Hoosiers and expounding on the great things that have been accomplished by people from Indiana. Hazel s mania for Hoosiers gives John an opportunity to introduce the Bokononist concepts of the karass and the granfalloon.A karass is a team that does God s Will without realizing it, while a granfalloon is a false karass composed of people who supposedly have something in common, but which has nothing to do with God s plans. Crosby is attracted to San Lorenzo because the people are poor and supposedly desperate for any opportunity to earn a living, so he expects they will work hard and not give him any trouble, unlike the unionized workers back home. Papa Monzano, McCabe s successor as the island s dictatorial presidentforlife, punishes any kind of crime by hoisting the perpetrator on a large fish hook and letting him hang in public until he dies. While Crosby admits that this may be too brutal for a democracy, he does favor the reinstatement of public hanging to restore a healthy respect for the law in the United States. Crosby is the novel s spokesman for American capitalism. He claims to love democracy and freedom but actually prefers a dictatorship that promises him total power over his workers. The plane trip also gives John time to get to know two of Dr. Hoenikker s children, thirtyfouryearold Angela and nineteenyearold Newt, who are flying to San Lorenzo to attend their brother Frank s wedding. Frank is engaged to Mona Aamons Monzano, which is disappointing news for John, who claims to have fallen in love with her picture in the New York Times. When the plane arrives in San Lorenzo, it is greeted by 5,000 of the island s listless inhabitants, a marching band that does not play, and a seriously ill president who collapses in the middle of his welcoming speech. After Papa Monzano is whisked away to his mountain top castle in an ambulance, the Mintons are taken to the U.S. embassy, Angela and Page 82Newt accompany Frank to his home, and John and the Crosbys are taken to Casa Mona, a gleaming new hotel in Bolivar, the capital city. Soon after his arrival at the hotel, John receives a call from Frank asking him to come to his house for dinner. There he meets Julian Castle, the philanthropist he is supposed to interview
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