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leekinsella 's review for:
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
I was conflicted as to whether I'd give this book 4 or 5 stars, but after reflecting on it the past several days, I decided to go with 5. There are just so many deep layers to unpack with this novel that are well concealed by all of its surface-level scatology, pornography, and racism. If you're looking for a book with a great plot, this isn't it. If you are looking for a quintessential "Vonnegutian" read, there are few better than this. At first I found the random tangents about inconsequential characters to be distracting, but then I came to this line in the book:
"Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done." - chapter 19
Once you put yourself in the author's shoes, the writing style and narrative decisions start to make a lot of sense. While writing Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut was dealing with an ugly divorce and the mental breakdown of his son Mark. He is clearing the junk out of his head. His experience with "bad chemicals" probably affected his personality and outlook on the world to the point where he could relate to Kilgore Trout. They are both perpetually suffering prolific authors whose meaningful writing is hidden within shamelessly vulgar publications.
The book is simply about humanity. The world has taken a bad turn, but humans are for the most part born as loving "machines" and must be "programmed" by external factors in order to hate. No line drives this point home more than this one, referring to a girl's pet greyhound named Lancer and the ex-con Hoobler:
"Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made." - chapter 18
"Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done." - chapter 19
Once you put yourself in the author's shoes, the writing style and narrative decisions start to make a lot of sense. While writing Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut was dealing with an ugly divorce and the mental breakdown of his son Mark. He is clearing the junk out of his head. His experience with "bad chemicals" probably affected his personality and outlook on the world to the point where he could relate to Kilgore Trout. They are both perpetually suffering prolific authors whose meaningful writing is hidden within shamelessly vulgar publications.
The book is simply about humanity. The world has taken a bad turn, but humans are for the most part born as loving "machines" and must be "programmed" by external factors in order to hate. No line drives this point home more than this one, referring to a girl's pet greyhound named Lancer and the ex-con Hoobler:
"Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made." - chapter 18