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A review by jwells
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
This was something like my fourth book by Vonnegut, and I can't quite decide whether I actually enjoy him or not. (Should I keep reading until I decide? Or give up? lol)
About halfway though I lost patience somewhat, and decided that I'd finish this one, but it would be my last. His tendency to throw out the rules began to strike me as self-important. The book meanders all over the place and includes a lot of seemingly pointless detail, some of which is apparently supposed to be shocking. Or, actually, what would the 1970s readership have made of the penis measurements and stuff? Would it have been funny? I started skimming past them, TBH. (Though I did observe that absolutely every woman described by bust-waist-hip measurement has an hourglass figure. LOL. You aren't as observant - or as subversive - as you think, Mr. Vonnegut. Outside of porn, women have more than one body type.)
I started to feel like all of this breaking of fictional convention was Vonnegut's way of saying that he alone had some sort of special access to secret truth, which he could only convey by making his books Difficult (read: tedious). He thinks he is too special to obey the Rules (which are there to make fiction enjoyable to us mere readers). I started to think, I don't need to suffer through this; there are plenty of men ready to tell me all about how special and insightful they are, without me having to spend my leisure reading time on it.
What I didn't expect was that Vonnegut had the clarity to say exactly what he thought was wrong with the Fiction Rules, and why he's spending the entirety of Breakfast of Champions flouting them. It's in the middle of chapter 19, using the poor writer character Beatrice Keedsler as a scapegoat representative of traditional fiction. That's what she writes, the kind of fiction with "leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details... lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end." The kind of fiction I was wishing this book was. lol
Vonnegut, self-inserted into this book, says he thinks that some of the problems in society come from treating each other as if we are living in this kind of fiction. He therefore won't tell stories like that. Instead:
"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..."
If that's not a perfect mission statement of this book. In the last chapter, he's still introducing new characters and telling us their back stories (the doctor in the ambulance and his inability to handle criticism).
Maybe we'd question whether he's right; does traditional fiction really cause us to mistreat one another? I've read that fiction readers actually develop more empathy, compared to non-readers. But at least you can't say he didn't explain what he's doing, and why. He just doesn't want anyone to be treated as a "minor character" in real life.
Two other points:
About halfway though I lost patience somewhat, and decided that I'd finish this one, but it would be my last. His tendency to throw out the rules began to strike me as self-important. The book meanders all over the place and includes a lot of seemingly pointless detail, some of which is apparently supposed to be shocking. Or, actually, what would the 1970s readership have made of the penis measurements and stuff? Would it have been funny? I started skimming past them, TBH. (Though I did observe that absolutely every woman described by bust-waist-hip measurement has an hourglass figure. LOL. You aren't as observant - or as subversive - as you think, Mr. Vonnegut. Outside of porn, women have more than one body type.)
I started to feel like all of this breaking of fictional convention was Vonnegut's way of saying that he alone had some sort of special access to secret truth, which he could only convey by making his books Difficult (read: tedious). He thinks he is too special to obey the Rules (which are there to make fiction enjoyable to us mere readers). I started to think, I don't need to suffer through this; there are plenty of men ready to tell me all about how special and insightful they are, without me having to spend my leisure reading time on it.
What I didn't expect was that Vonnegut had the clarity to say exactly what he thought was wrong with the Fiction Rules, and why he's spending the entirety of Breakfast of Champions flouting them. It's in the middle of chapter 19, using the poor writer character Beatrice Keedsler as a scapegoat representative of traditional fiction. That's what she writes, the kind of fiction with "leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details... lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end." The kind of fiction I was wishing this book was. lol
Vonnegut, self-inserted into this book, says he thinks that some of the problems in society come from treating each other as if we are living in this kind of fiction. He therefore won't tell stories like that. Instead:
"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..."
If that's not a perfect mission statement of this book. In the last chapter, he's still introducing new characters and telling us their back stories (the doctor in the ambulance and his inability to handle criticism).
Maybe we'd question whether he's right; does traditional fiction really cause us to mistreat one another? I've read that fiction readers actually develop more empathy, compared to non-readers. But at least you can't say he didn't explain what he's doing, and why. He just doesn't want anyone to be treated as a "minor character" in real life.
Two other points:
- The theme of free will wraps up in the dual metaphor that humans are both "meat machines" and "bands of sacred light." Extremely Vonnegut, to spend an entire book being gratingly cynical and then end on a note of touching humanity. Still can't decide if I want another book like that or not. LOL
- Trigger warning for the N-word. Second god-damned book in a row for me. W-t-everloving-F. I got to read something that's either prior to the 60s or later than the 70s.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness, Violence, and Racism
N-word used multiple times