Granfalloon

A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle), is defined as a "false karass". That is, it is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.

This article is about some intentionally cryptic concepts. For the heraldic and military flags, see gonfalon.

As quoted in And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (2011) by Charles J. Shields, Vonnegut writes in his introduction to his book Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974) that a "granfalloon is a proud and meaningless collection of human beings"; Shields also comments that in the same book, Vonnegut later cites the demonym of 'Hoosiers' as "one of [Vonnegut's] favorite examples" of what the term embodies. Another example of a granfalloon given in Cat's Cradle is 'alumni of Cornell University'. Kurt Vonnegut himself was born in Indiana and attended Cornell University.

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