User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
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Rating: really liked it
A novel is a dead tree with words on it.
Breakfast of Champions is a great dead tree with words on it.
Rating: really liked it
I have a little inner book snob that desperately wants to like Vonnegut. In the very unlikely event that I should find myself at a convention of bookish intellectuals, I feel like I'd fit right in if I sipped my champagne and said "Oh yes, indeed, I simply adore what Vonnegut has to say about the absence of free will..."
This is the kind of bollocks that runs through my mind on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, I just don't find him that funny most of the time. Perhaps jokes about open beavers are funnier to readers who don't have vaginas - who knows? - but it goes sailing right over my head. Maybe this is why my invitation to the bookish intellectual convention seems to have got lost in the mail.
He also repeats the phrase "which looked like this" and follows it with a sketch of everything from a flamingo to a swastika to the aforementioned beaver, in both senses of the word "beaver". Again, is this funny? Should I find it funny?
The funniest parts are his jokes about white people and the way in which they celebrate their "discovery" of America in 1492, despite the fact that others had actually been living on the continent for thousands of years. But even that is a little overdone these days, and haven't others done it better? It sure feels like it.
That being said, I enjoyed Cat's Cradle. Easily my favourite of his works.
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Rating: really liked it
Breakfast of Champions = Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt VonnegutBreakfast of Champions, is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut.
His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author.
Breakfast of Champions has themes of free will, suicide, and race relations among others.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوم از ماه ژانویه سال 2017میلادی
عنوان: صبحانه قهرمانان؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم: راضیه رحمانی؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1393، در 312ص، مصور، شابک9786002781147؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده ی 20م
صبحانه قهرمانان، رمانی طنزآمیز است؛ دغدغه های ذهن نويسنده، درباره ی دو پیرمرد سفیدپوست لاغر اندام است، که روی سیاره ای در حال مرگ زندگی میکنند؛ «کیلگور تراوت»، نویسنده ای پرکار، و در عین حال، ناکام است، که به جز یک خوانشگر، هیچکس انبوه کتابها، و داستانهای او را، نخوانده است؛ روزی با اعمال نفوذ همین تنها خوانشگرش، به جشنواره ی هنر شهر کوچک «میدلند سیتی» دعوت میشود؛ او که از این دعوت شوکه شده، تصمیم میگیرد تا به آنجا برود؛ حضور «تراوت» در آن شهر، رخدادی است، که زندگی چندین شخص را دگرگون میکند؛ یکی از این اشخاص «دواین هوور» است، که فروشنده ی ماشینهای «پونتیاک»، و از ثروتمندترین شهروندان «میدلند سیتی»، هست؛ «ونه گات» در واقع، شخصیتهایی آفریده، که با آنها خود را متحول میکند، و به این نتیجه میرسد، که انسانها دو بعد «ماشینی» و «مقدس» دارند؛ تا زمانیکه یک انسان، ماشینوار عمل کند، وضعیتش پیچیده، تراژیک و خنده دار خواهد بود؛ اما در درون همه ی موجودات، به طور یکسان، ماهیت مقدسی نیز، وجود دارد، که نویسنده آن را «نوار لغزش ناپذیری از نور» مینامد؛ این ماهیت، در وجود تک تک این موجودات، شعله میکشد؛ «ونه گات» در این رمان، از تکنیکهای بسیاری سود برده، تا اصول سنتی داستان نویسی را، در هم بریزد؛ وی از همان آغاز داستان، درباره ی چگونگی، و پایان آن سخن میگوید، اما رخدادهای پیش بینی نشده، در این میان، خود حدیث دیگری هستند
نقل از متن: (سرآغاز کلام: «صبحانه قهرمانان» نام انحصاری نوعی برشتوک صبحانه از شرکت «جنرال میلز» است؛ هر گونه استفاده از این عبارت در سراسر کتاب، و برای عنوان آن، نه مبنی بر ارتباط با شرکت «جنرال میلز» و بهره مندی از حمایت ایشان است و نه به منظور بی اعتبار ساختن محصولات خوبشان؛ «فیبی هرتی»، که کتاب به او هدیه شده، به گفتاری آشنا، دیگر دستش از دنیا کوتاه است؛ «فیبی» بیوه ای اهل «ایندیاناپولیس» بود، که در پایان دوره ی «رکود بزرگ» با او آشنا شدم؛ آن زمان، «فیبی» حدوداً پنجاه ساله بود، و من شانزده ساله بودم، یا در همین حول و حوش؛ «فیبی» مایه دار بود، منتها چون در تمام دوران جوانی اش هفت روز هفته، سر کار رفته بود، دیگر برایش عادت شده بود، و دست از کار نمیکشید؛ او نکته های منطقی و گیرایی در ستون «توصیه هایی به عاشقان دلخسته» مینوشت، در روزنامه «ایندیاناپولیس تایمز»، روزنامه ای که زمانی معتبر به حساب میآمد، ولی حالا دیگر منسوخ شده؛ منسوخ؛ او برای فروشگاه زنجیره ای «ویلیام اچ بلاک» آگهی مینوشت، کسب و کار این فروشگاه هنوز هم، در ساختمانی که پدرم طراحی کرده، رونق دارد؛ «فیبی» برای حراج تابستانه ی کلاه حصیری، آگهی زیر را نوشت: «این کلاههای حصیری اونقده مُفته که میتونید بخریدشون واسه سایبون گلهای رُز باغچه تون، یا حتی رو هم بچینیدشون تا اسبتون بپره از روشون!»؛ «فیبی هرتی» مرا استخدام کرد، تا از روی آگهیهایی که برای تبلیغ لباس نوجوانان مینوشت، رونویسی کنم؛ بخشی از کارم پوشیدن لباسهایی بود، که ازشان تعریف و تمجید میکردم؛ با هر دو پسرش که هم سن و سالم بودند، رفیق شدم، و تمام وقت خانه آنها پلاس بودم؛ «فیبی» در صحبت با ما و دوست دخترهایمان، اصلاً عفتِ کلام نداشت، و حرفهای رکیک میزد؛ از این گذشته، شوخ طبع بود و کاری به کارمان نداشت؛ از «فیبی» یاد گرفتیم که نه تنها وقت حرف زدن از امور خصوصی، بلکه در صحبت از مدرسه، تاریخ «آمریکا»، قهرمانان سرشناس، نحوه توزیع ثروت در جامعه، و خلاصه هر موضوعی بی ادب و جسور باشیم؛ من خودم تا به حال از صدقه ی سر همین بی نزاکتی، توانسته ام لقمه نانی به دست بیاورم، اما هنوز در این مقوله خیلی ناشی ام، و مانده تا به «فیبی هرتی» برسم؛ مدام سعی میکنم از بی ادبی «فیبی هرتی»، که بسیار برازنده اش بود، تقلید کنم؛ به نظر من، آن زمان، به خاطر حال و هوای رکود اقتصادی، داشتن جذابیت برای «فیبی» بسیار آسانتر بود تا الآنِ من، چون او به همان چیزی اعتقاد داشت که اکثر «آمریکایی»های آن زمان بهش معتقد بودند: این که وقتی رفاه اقتصادی از راه برسد، مردم خوشبخت و منطقی و منصف خواهند شد؛ دیگر هیچ وقت این کلمه را نشنیدم؛ منظورم «رفاه» است؛ این کلمه قبلاً مترادف با بهشت بود، و «فیبی هرتی» معتقد بود آداب گریزی ای که به همه توصیه میکرد کمک میکند تا بهشت «آمریکایی» محقق شود؛ هنوز راه و رسم آداب گریزیِ «فیبی» مُد است، اما دیگر هیچکس بهشت «آمریکا»یی را باور ندارد؛ البته هیچ کس، الا «فیبی هرتی»؛ در این کتاب، از تصوراتم درباره ماشین وار بودنِ آدمها خواهم گفت؛ این دیدگاه در دوران کودکی ام شکل گرفت، زمانی که مبتلایان به مراحل پیشرفته سیفلیس و اختلال حرکتی ــ به ویژه مبتلایان مرد ــ مضحکه تماشاگران سیرکها و مردم پایین شهرِ «ایندیاناپولیس» میشدند؛ سیفلیسیها اسیر موجوداتی فنری شکل و گوشتخوار بودند، موجوداتی آن قدر ریز که فقط با میکروسکوپ میشد مشاهده شان کرد؛ این میکروبها، وقتی از گوشتِ بین مهره های ستون فقرات قربانیان عبور میکردند، باعث به هم چسبیدن مهره ها میشدند و، در نتیجه، مبتلایان به شکل ترسناکی باوقار و شق و رق به نظر میرسیدند، گویی چشمانشان دارد از حدقه میزند بیرون؛ یکبار، در تقاطع خیابانهای مِریدیِن و واشینگتن، فردی مبتلا به سیفلیس دیدم؛ زیر ساعتی ایستاده بود که پدرم طراحی کرده بود؛ مردم محل به آنجا میگفتند «تقاطع آمریکا»؛ مرد سیفلیسی سخت به فکر فرو رفته بود که چگونه با پاهای رنجورش روی خط کشی خیابان قدم بردارد، و خود را به آنطرف خیابان «واشینگتن» برساند؛ تنش رعشه خفیفی داشت؛ انگار درون بدنش موتوری کوچک کار گذاشته بودند که درجا کار میکرد؛ مشکل از اینجا ناشی میشد: مغزش که بایست به پاها فرمان حرکت میداد دیگر کار نمیکرد، چون موجودات ریز، زنده زنده خورده بودندش؛ رشته های عصبی و اتصالاتی که بایست دستورالعملها را منتقل میکردند هم یا دیگر عایق بندی نبودند یا همان موجودات ریز کاملاً جویده بودندشان؛ کلیدهایی هم که در مسیر اتصالات قرار داشتند یا مسدود شده بودند یا کاملاً به هم جوش خورده بودند؛ او حدوداً سی ساله بود، اما بسیار پیرتر به نظر میآمد؛ فکر میکرد و فکر میکرد؛ آنوقت، مثل زنان گروه همسرایان، دوبار پشت سر هم پایش را به جلو پرتاب میکرد.؛ آن زمان، که بچه سال بودم، او درست مثل ماشین به نظرم میرسید؛ در آن دوران فکر میکردم آدمها تیوبهای پلاستیکی ای هستند که درونشان واکنشهای شیمیایی در حال فعل و انفعال است؛ وقتی بچه بودم، افراد زیادی را دیدم که گواتر داشتند؛ دووِین هووِر، فروشنده پونتیاکی که قهرمان این کتاب است، هم چنین کسانی را به چشم خود دیده؛ این ساکنان بدبختِ زمین غدّه های تیروییدشان چنان ورم میکرد که انگار در گلویشان کدوخورشتی پرورش داده اند؛ همانطور که بعدها ثابت شد، تنها کاری که مبتلایان به گواتر بایست انجام میدادند مصرف روزانه یک سرِ سوزن ید بود و بس؛ آنوقت میتوانستند زندگی آرامی داشته باشند؛ مادرم مغزش را با داروهای شیمیایی درب و داغان کرد، داروهایی که مثلاً قرار بود باعث شوند راحت بخوابد)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 05/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 11/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
“in nonsense is strength”
Nothing is sacred in :
Breakfast of Champions. The narrator/Philboyd Studge/Vonnegut makes his appearance as the Creator of the Universe (or at least the creators of the characters in his novel) as he delivers what amounts to a searing meta-critique of American culture. "The big show is inside my head," he tells a waitress as he watches his main protagonists, and decides what they will do next. After his brief appearance in
Slaughterhouse-Five, it was fun to see Kilgore Trout, the failed science fiction writer, take center stage. Of course, Vonnegut makes it clear that he as the narrator is the one pulling the strings and arranging, of all things, a Nobel Prize in Medicine for the confused Trout. Fun, interesting and bizarre! 4.25 stars
Rating: really liked it
This is one of my earliest favorites and I have gone back to revisit several times over the years.
In high school I was both amazed and hooked by Vonnegut's wry humor and devilish mid-western charm. I have since caught on to the more serious metaphors and themes into which he delves. But the humor drew me in initially and makes me think of Vonnegut today.
Insanity explained as a chemical imbalance and dysfunctional families, relationships and communities described as matter of factly as a still life portrait. The novel within a novel, and the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, further leaves the reader with a depth of appreciation for this classic.
*** 2019 Re-read
I'm adding this to my all time favorites list.
When I think about Vonnegut and his writing, I am most often thinking of this book, his playful yet thoughtful way of describing his universe. And here it is demonstrably his universe as he the author, the creator, makes a guest appearance in Midland City to see all the goings on firsthand. And perhaps other creators, he does not control his handiworks by rigid cable and reign, but rather loosely and as with dry rubber bands.
Throughout this wonderful book we find drawings made by Vonnegut himself, illustrating his concepts and ideas. I smiled throughout the book, as I always do, and laughed out loud many times and many times because of his felt tip pen doodle.
Funny as he is, and charming too hen he wants to be, Vonnegut also tackles some heavy subjects as well, such as economics, fairness and institutional racism. This book is about the fabulously well to do as well as for those who do not have diddlysquat.
The scene with Rabo Karabekian (the protagonist of Vonnegut’s later book Bluebeard) where he describes his minimalist painting is one of Vonnegut’s finest. Trout's visit to the Midland City Arts Festival by way of Sugar Creek is also one of my favorites.
A joy.
Rating: really liked it
“Like most science-fiction writers, he knew almost nothing about science.” Breakfast of Champions is not my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel and I have a bit of difficulty to understand why. Maybe because it was crazier than the others that I’ve read, with long passages without any sense. There weren’t one or two deeper themes that I had to dig between the irony and the absurd. It was more of a collection of crazy talk (or talk by crazy men) mingled with the author’s ideas about the world. I enjoyed the latter parts more than the former, I laughed out loud many times but it wasn’t enough.
For the whole novel we are prepared for a momentous meeting between our main characters, the still undiscovered, aging, soon to become monumental, SF writer, Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover, a successful Midwest car dealer. Dwayne, due to bad chemicals in his brain, is slowly going crazy and the meeting with the SF writer will make him derail irrecoverably. The story switches between Kilgore’s trip to reach an Art festival in Midwest to Dwayne’s increasingly weird mind. At some point we also get to meet the author, which was an interesting feature.
The plot offers Vonnegut the opportunity to launch in a bleak satire on race, politics, social standards, sexism, etc. I don’t know how Vonnegut can be pessimistic and funny at the same time.
“As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tis-sues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales”For more than half of the book, I listened to the brilliant narration of John Malkovich. I believe the actor’s voice and Vonnegut’s work go perfectly together. However, I do not usually listen to audiobooks so it might have altered my reading experience somewhat.
I enjoyed the novel, it’s Vonnegut duh, but I felt he crammed a bit too much inside the pages. I also don’t believe it is the place to start if you are a newbie to his work. Slaughterhouse 5 would still my first choice. By the way, Kilgore Trout is a character in that novel as well. There are many characters, themes and places that appear in more than one novel of the author and that is a prize for his fandom, of which I am still part of.
“Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.”
“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
Rating: really liked it
This past December I was
flung to the earth by the force of gravity, which never relaxed for a second.
This resulted in an bad ankle injury which has required an ortho boot, limited activity, and physical therapy.
(
I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for—to find out how much a [person] could take without breaking).
Two weeks ago, I received a shoulder shrug from the doctor and his advice: “You need an MRI if this doesn't improve soon.”
Almost all the messages which were sent and received in his country, even the telepathic ones, had to do with buying or selling some damn thing.
Getting an MRI is right up there for me with shopping naked at my regular grocery store or being hog-tied, gagged and deposited in the trunk of somebody's Buick.
So, I procrastinated making the call for days, then finally took a deep breath, put on my happy face, and called the person who scheduled the MRI appointments. You could say I put my best foot forward, when I made that call (at the moment, that would be my
left foot).
A woman answered, and right from the first words out of her mouth, I was greeted with vitriol. Hatred, almost. (
Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why).
I couldn't believe it. I had dreaded making the call in the first place and then I was put on the phone with this woman. Was it the pandemic that had brought this employee at this medical office to this place, or had she always been such a condescending and miserable person? She must have
hoped to get through what little remained of [her] life without ever having to touch another human being again.
Such a small remark was able to have such thundering consequences because the spiritual matrix. . . was in what I choose to call a pre-earthquake condition. Terrific forces were at work on our souls, but they could do no work, because they balanced one another so nicely.
After she knocked me out with three unprovoked verbal blows in a row, my voice was quivering and I almost hung up the phone, but instead I said, “I called you to schedule an appointment, and you have been rude to me from the first word. (Which wasn't hello). You have no idea how much courage it took me to make this phone call or how stressful it is for me to have another MRI. How can you have this job, of scheduling people for stressful appointments, without any compassion or professionalism? This is not okay, and I am hanging up now and I will schedule this appointment at a later time.”
I hung up the phone and sat down on my bed and cried. (
A writer off-guard, since the materials with which he works are so dangerous, can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap). It may sound dramatic to you that I cried, but sometimes a little kindness can make all the difference in the world, and when someone stuffs their fist in your mouth instead, you can't help but fall apart.
A lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made.
It took me a full week to summon the courage to call again, and,
naturally, when I did, the same woman answered the phone. We were both fully aware that it was the same person from the previous week on the call, but we danced around the issue. My goal was to stay professional and make an appointment; I think her goal was the same, but she couldn't resist one verbal barb at the end.
When I arrived at my appointment yesterday, it was the same woman again. I could not believe it. (Truly, is she the only employee there or what??). She greeted me with, “I just called your phone. I looked at the time and wondered if you'd show.” (I was supposed to arrive at 9:15 and it was 9:17).
I didn't want further conflict, so I said, “I'm sorry. When I'm nervous, I start peeing and it's like I can't stop. I've spent most of the morning on the toilet.” Then I pulled down my mask and showed her the dried blood on my lower lip. I started to laugh (I was a nervous wreck) and I said, “I broke out with a cold sore last week, thinking about this MRI, and I ripped the scab off with my fingernail when I tried to spray
Rescue Remedy in my mouth in the car. I filled two napkins with blood. I'm a mess.”
She stared at me for a moment, then handed me the paperwork. I was standing at the counter, filling it out, when she said, “I haven't been very nice to you, have I?” I looked up, but I didn't say anything. She said, “I was rude to you on the phone and you called me out on it. I've been thinking about it all week, and I've realized that I've been slowly turning into a person that I don't like anymore.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I responded to her honesty by saying, “It's a tough time, and we're all dealing with a lot of stress right now. I'm sure you're trying your best.”
She said, “Nah. I wasn't trying my best. I've been turning into this person long before the pandemic. You're right; I wasn't kind to you, and I hope you'll accept my apology.”
I accepted her apology and asked her to please forgive me, too. Then two incredibly cheerful and compassionate men ushered me back to the MRI. I discovered I was able to go in “feet first” (thank you, Jesus!). Chopin was playing on the headphones.
I decided: some days are really shitty, some are almost divine.
[Their] situation, insofar as [they were] a machine, was complex, tragic and laughable. But the sacred part of [them], [their] awareness, remained an unwavering band of light.
Rating: really liked it
[ a main theme in Vonnegut's novel, symbolizing holding up a mirror (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
What is life we live from day to day? What do we eat at breakfast? How do we cope with our problems and what are we doing for fun? What dreams do we dream and what ideas do we have in our heads?
The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Under the close scrutiny of
Kurt Vonnegut our quotidian life turns into the most preposterous occupation in the world.
He spoke of his wife and son again, acknowledged that white robots were just like black robots, essentially, in that they were programmed to be whatever they were, to do whatever they did.
Some obey God, some obey government, some obey voices in their heads and some obey no one.
Rating: really liked it
God, what a terrible book of nonsense.
The two main characters are just overly weird and bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. And I mean really really bizarre. (I suspect many people say they like Vonnegut because he is so damn weird, but theres gotta be a purpose to it. You can't just have completely random ridiculous thoughts that do not have any purpose towards the message of the story. When you do that, its like the intellectual version of VH1 reality; people love it for shock value, while I, and others like me, are disgusted by its lack of substance. You feel dumber for having spent part of your life dedicated to it.)
Theres zero suspense as you are told what the ending will be in the first chapter. The entire book is a build up to that "event" which ends up being a short, disappointingly mild one.
The entire book was written in an obnoxious tone, speaking about everything "humans" do in an condescending manner. As if the author considers himself not only separate from, but better than the human race and its tendencies.
Finally, as if the book wasn't self indulgent enough for Vonnegut, he inserts HIMSELF as a character for the last third of the novel, telling us what he can and can't do if he wishes and how every characters actions are predetermined by his will, even as he interacts with them. This came across as so arrogant and narcissistic that it was almost too much to bear.
It is clear to me after reading Breakfast of Champions that Kurt Vonnegut's biggest fan, by far, is Kurt Vonnegut himself.
Rating: really liked it
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose." —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Conan Doyle's famous quote came to mind as I was reading this boisterous book: it was as if Vonnegut had decided to empty his cluttered attic of kooky ideas in order to share them with the rest of the world. In many ways, it reminded me of the underground magazines I helped to publish as a student; all printed on stiff sheets of A4 paper and haphazardly stapled together.
I didn't enjoy this as freely as I did
Galápagos, mostly because much of the book is defiantly and deliberately infantile (he did caper through life with a self-confessed immaturity), but what is abundantly clear is that Kurt Vonnegut Jr was a creative genius several years ahead of his time.
This is a quick read, partly due to the author's own marker pen doodles popping up between blocks of narrative.
In essence, the book is a veritable salad bar of supposition, a depository of doctrines and an info dump of great ingenuity.
What I most love about Mr Vonnegut, apart from his satirical humour, is the man's rebellious nature and his devil-may-care keenness to offend: but this went hand-in-glove with his resentment of social injustice and his wonderful humanity.
Suffice to say, our modern world needs more Kurt Vonneguts!
Rating: really liked it
You’ll have to forgive me for saying this, but having spent a violent youth under somewhat violent circumstances, this innocent bystander’s bird’s eye view of a total fracas hit the Golden Buzzer for Vonnegut in my young eyes.
He could henceforth do no wrong for my jejune and confused self because he Was that innocent bystander.
Vonnegut’s Nom de Guerre, in case you missed his point, is Kilgore Trout.
Yes, Trout is Kurt’s alter ego.
He was a shell-shocked recluse of a great SF writer (Vonnegut’s beginnings were in SF writing, like his Player Piano), who, like Stephen Dedalus, viewed the world from a coolly remote vantage point:
“Disinterested... paring his fingernails.”
A sensitive onlooker in the grotesquely violent American political landscape of the 1970’s.
And no, it is surely no accident that - back then - political repression was increasing as the mores of a post-Pill public (like his schizophrenic son, Mark) were getting looser!
C’est la guerre.
And ‘Kilgore’ Vonnegut - caught in the crossfire of craziness as Watergate boiled over and his sick son Mark called out for help - is suspended, shell-shocked, within the mad violence of a local car dealer’s armed schizophrenia.
No, it’s not a happy read.
But Kurt Vonnegut had to write it.
For had he not let off steam by writing it -
The same Grim Ghoul of Madness woulda torn him apart.
Rating: really liked it
"As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen."Me too, Mr. Vonnegut. Me too. I'm not quite approaching my fiftieth, but yeh, me too.
In
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut writes as an author writing an author and their hapless creations. He uses satire to poke fun at things like:
Capitalism: "The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were."
Stereotypes: "If a person stopped living up to expectations ... everybody went on imagining that the person was living up to expectations anyway."
White-washed American history: "1492 -- The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them."
"Group mentality: "They trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
Vonnegut also uses this book to question whether any of us has free will. Are we at the mercy of some creator, our stories already written? Are we at the mercy of our brain chemistry, which dictates what we do and when we do it?
I generally love satire and Vonnegut does it well. There were several "chuckle moments" in this book. There were also a few parts where it dragged but for the most part, I enjoyed it.
I will note that the "N" word is used extensively. It's offensive (I hope) to modern ears, but it gets our attention and forces white people to reflect on our own ugliness and complicity in racism. It shoves a mirror right up in our faces.
Vonnegut uses stereotypes of Black people in order to speak against racism, which is a prevalent theme throughout the book. The stereotyping of his characters was used to portray the idiocy of seeing people with preconceived ideas based on one aspect of who they are.
I appreciate that Mr. Vonnegut placed the problem of racism firmly on the heads of white people. When his characters filled a stereotype, it was because white people had given them no other choice.
For example, Black characters were sometimes criminals and drug dealers, but that was because white people either wouldn't hire them or, when they did, wouldn't pay them a living wage. The characters were left with little choice but to engage in criminal behavior in order to support their families.
White people often create stereotypes for minorities, force them into filling it, and then blame the minority for fitting the stereotype instead of placing the blame where it truly belongs.
It infuriates me when I hear white people talk about crime in inner cities, usually to turn the topic away from Black people being brutalized and murdered by police. They use the stereotype (news alert: most Black people are
not criminals) in order to place the blame on the victims.
But
we deserve the blame.
We created the extreme poverty in which many Black and Latinx people live.
We created the drug problem.
We need to start accepting responsibility for the problems
we created. Not Blacks, not Latinx. Us.
So don't give me that BS about drugs in the inner city and "black on black" crime (as though white people never kill other white people). It's a poor excuse and you know it.
(Not to mention that even if someone does engage in criminal activity, they never deserve to be murdered because of it.)
So anyway... back to the book.
The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the clever way in which Vonnegut used this book to speak against institutional racism.
Though this is a very serious subject and the book is philosophical at heart, it is written in a light-hearted way. It's a quick and easy read and I didn't even quite notice what Vonnegut was doing until I reflected on the book after having finished it.
There are many truths in this book and Vonnegut's use of satire to point them out was brilliant.
(June 2020 classic-of-the-month)
Rating: really liked it
Good old Kurt (God rest his soul) has truly helped me understand what all this fuss is about "wide open beavers".
This is a quick and rewarding read (with funny drawings) that makes you think about the world in a totally new way. I love how Vonnegut writes about America as a civilization which died out long ago and is addressing an audience who knows nothing of it.
This book is hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time. It follows a sci-fi author (Trout) of Vonnegut's own creation who meets a Pontiac dealership owner (Hoover) in the 1970's. Their meeting puts Hoover over the edge of sanity through one of Trout's novels, making him believe he's the only person with free will in the universe, and that everyone else is a robot (a meat machine as Vonnegut puts it).
The highlight for me is one of Trout's novels about an alien race that communicates only by farting and tap-dancing. You have to read it to see what happens...
