I am about to finish Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. I checked out the book from the Multnomah County Library four weeks ago. I've never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before. The book looks like this:

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I'm enjoying the book because it feels easy to read. I'm not enjoying the book because parts of it induce discomfort. There are many things in the universe that make me feel the opposite of discomfort. One of those things is a lava lamp.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

A lava lamp emits light but also contains a bulbous wax that forms, rises, and falls with the help of heat provided by an incandescent bulb inside the base. The lava lamp reminds people of the 60's, when life revolved around love. My lava lamp looks like this:

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* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Listen: On the base of the lava lamp is a sticker. The sticker is a picture of me and Agent in jail. In the picture, both of us stare out forever from behind bars. Agent and I are not actually in jail, but if we were, we'd probably be happy anyway.

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n  "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."n
—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 (though there is much anecdotal evidence to the fact that he was a cantankerous sourpuss when the mood struck).

Suffice to say, personal failings notwithstanding, our modern world needs more Kurt Vonneguts!

Fantastic, funny and consuming! This is one of those rare gems of literature that is at once simplistic and deep. I had a hard time putting it down. ‘Arguably Vonnegut at his didactic best; accept no substitutes.

So this guy, Dwayne Hoover, is a rich owner of stuff, primarily a Pontiac dealership, and he has these bad chemicals in his brain. Kilgore Trout is this completely unknown science fiction writer whose stories are printed in adult magazines and such. Anyway, Dwayne reads one of Trout's novels and he thinks it's real which really messes with those bad chemicals in his brain.

The book is this collision course of these two meeting each other with all kinds of distractions and subplots and observations thrown in the mix. Vonnegut himself is a character in the book, and if you think it already sounds weird, the last third of the book gets even weirder! But, oh man oh man, it is fascinating! It's hilarious! It's pessimistic! It's honestly one of he strangest books I have ever read, but it is also the most fun I've had reading a book in a long time. And the themes presented aren't fun themes. Vonnegut hits on some pretty heavy stuff, and he never holds back in how he presents it.

There are some very interesting illustrations as well. They don't really add much to the story, but they are there. Sometimes it's a picture of an apple, sometimes it's a road sign, sometimes it's an interesting take on human anatomy. That place a pretty big role as well. About halfway through, Vonnegut takes some time to break down female and male measurements and keeps it going throughout the rest of the book. Again, not sure what it added to the story, but it was there.

A lot of stuff was just there. And it was awesome. I don't know why.

He really hits on humans as robots and free will. Vonnegut has a pretty bleak outlook on life and society in general, and he presents his worldview in a very unique way in this book. For such negativity, I had a blast reading it. It was much more straightforward and, in my opinion, it was much better than Slaughterhouse Five. I can't even remember why I wanted to read this, but wow was it a great surprise. I don't think I'll read anything like it again.

Breakfast of Champions: A dog’s breakfast of Vonnegut’s perennial themes

This was the sixth Kurt Vonnegut book I listened to this year, and it was a major let-down compared to The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, and Slaughterhouse Five, despite being narrated by John Malkovitch. It has all the familiar themes and characters, as he makes simplistic digs (assisted by childish drawings) at racism, capitalism, inequality, mental illness, politics, pollution, and the hypocrisy and absurdity of American life in 1970s.

But unlike in his earlier and better works, this book feels tired and fragmented, and his characters themselves, especially Dwayne Hoover, an unpleasant, racist sociopath car dealer, are hard to empathize with. Even Kilgore Trout, the hack SF writer alter-ego for Vonnegut himself, is not as cynically funny as I hoped for. Instead, he is just a sad-sack old man who has given up on expecting anything good in life. And when Vonnegut decides to appear in his own book and confront Kilgore Trout as his literary creation, their exchange is surprisingly dull. If you are going to break all the narrative rules and meet directly with your own characters, the least you can do is give them something interesting to discuss. Perhaps this was true to life and there wasn’t much to say, but I was really hoping for more insight.

In fact, Vonnegut says flat out in his preface that he wanted to "clear his head of all the junk in there" as he was nearing his 50th birthday, and decided to throw all those ideas and characters into yet another cut-up style exploration of the themes that worked so much better in earlier books. It’s the type of self-indulgent behavior that only a successful author unable to come up with new material is able to get away with. And even a bad book by Vonnegut is pretty good compared to most satirists of America’s foibles, but when you’ve set the bar as high as he has, it makes lesser works very disappointing. I would recommend avoiding this one and reading the books I listed above, since his empathy for the common man seems to have been swallowed up in cynicism and fatigue from writing the same things again and again. Like all great athletes and artists, sometimes you just need to know when to quit.

There are some authors who can write pertinent social commentary in a way that is both humorous and horrifying at the same time. Kurt Vonnegut is one of those writers. Most of his satirical takes start off like classic SNL skits to hook you, and then, as you're being dragged down the rabbit hole, he hits you over the head with candid facts. "Breakfast of Champions" makes your head swim. You won’t forget its sobering lessons about the value of our climate, social insecurities, nature, race relations, and how we should all live much more peacefully until the last page is turned.

The book is, among many other things, a satire. A book composed of a compilation of Vonnegut’s true-to-life observations and anecdotes about the world. The story follows Kilgore Trout, a struggling science fiction writer, and Dwanye Hoover, a businessman who is losing his mind. Trout accepts an invitation to go to a local arts festival while we follow Hoover’s business dealings before an eventual meeting of the two minds. It’s sporadic and hypnotic, much like a Mel Brooks film. As the two characters navigate their respective futures, Vonnegut uses their interactions as a vehicle to shine a light on topical issues such as unequal distribution of wealth, mental health, consumerism, art, the environment, etc., etc. It’s an interesting and entertaining structure, to say the least.

One of the hallmarks is the content of Kilgore‘s science fiction books. Plague on Wheels, for example. It’s a story about a planet filled with automobiles that leave oil in their wake as they reproduce, and they all inherently thrive off fossil fuels. These entities ultimately extinguish the planet's atmosphere and look to space travelers to borrow oxygen. You get the picture. It’s sort of like reading your favorite comic strip. Sporadic ideas and musings that make you think about a topic in a different way. It’s an adult version of Calvin and Hobbes.

Although some may find portions of the book preachy or irreverent, I believe every one of us can take something from the text to use as inspiration, a warning, or a good chuckle. Whatever way you look at it, the knee-jerk reactions of each thought might bring about this face:

Incredibly hilarious and also terribly sad, in the best Vonnegut-ian tradition - though perhaps even sadder than his other works; and crazier than them, too. If someone can write a book with so many silly drawings, that is Kurt Vonnegut. Still, when it all boils down to the actual novel, it is a tiny beat weaker (only a bit) than works like Slaughterhouse 5 or Cat's Cradle, especially in its ending.

The problem with Kurt Vonnegut is that I have no idea how much he actually means anything. Maybe that's the point. One one hand, Breakfast of Champions has a very resigned quality to it. The story is about two men on a collision course: Kilgore Trout is a grizzled, defeated science fiction author; Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy Midwesterner destined to use one of Trout's novels as the basis for a psychotic break with reality. This situation cannot be avoided. Vonnegut seems to be saying that a lot of other situations on Earth are unavoidable too: racism, lust, envy, greed, hypocrisy, and so on.

Vonnegut writes of Trout:

But his head no longer sheltered ideas of how things could be and should be on the planet, as opposed to how they really were. There was only one way for the Earth to be, he thought: the way it was.

Everything was necessary. He saw an old white woman fishing through a garbage can. That was necessary. He saw a bathtub toy, a little rubber duck, lying on its side on the grating over a storm sewer. It had to be there.

On the whole, it's a pretty pessimistic view of the universe. But there are moments. Like the moment where an artist gets up and tells a bar full of people that every human being is an unwavering band of pure light. This man is an opportunistic hack, but his speech and his painting still bring unexpected joy to everyone present (including the author).

I'd like to think that Vonnegut is saying that, yeah, life sucks, there's no way around it, but maybe once in a while things seem good anyway. Considering the book as a whole, I wonder if I'm just looking for the silver lining. I guess that's what makes the book an enduring work—it reflects a lot of truths about life but doesn't offer any pat answers.

The House of Trouts:

Kilgore Trout’s latest book, World’s Funniest Thermonuclear Accidents, was forthcoming from Michael O’Mara. He shared a bathroom with Kilgore Trout, whose latest book, Complications in the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum, had forthcome from Yale Press. The two Trouts co-rented a kitchen with Kilgore Trout, whose book I Was a Teenage Obergruppenführer, had not found a publisher. All three Trouts did not read each other’s books and did not discuss literary matters at all. When one Trout saw another, he said: “Nice day, Mr. Trout.” If one Trout was working on his book and the other Trout spotted this, he said: “Hard at work, Mr. Trout?” One time, Kilgore Trout broke Kilgore Trout’s prize antique cup, handed down nine generations of the Trout family. Kilgore Trout looked at his shattered heritage and said: “Accidents happen, Mr. Trout.”

Original Review:

Kurt at his most caustic, rambunctious and playful. When Vonnegut releases Kilgore Trout into the world on his fiftieth birthday and he looses the ghost of his father, this scabrous novel becomes a personal and moving account of a man, his father, and a big old lemon of a world. There’s an early clip of Kurt reading from this on YouTube, where the tale was told in first-person from Dwayne Hoover’s POV (and Kurt was but a phantom), but the third-person narrator opens up the metafictional element that proves integral to the heart of the novel. But listen: this is a furious assault against all that America holds dear, an impish black comedy mixed with his typical whimsy, pitch-perfect satire, and unique Midwestern charm. A film version was attempted in 1999 with that towering comedic presence Bruce Willis to disastrous results, turning real wit into sitcom farce. So for those unsure about this strange little novel, take my word that this ranks among Kurt’s greatest books, along with the nine or so others of equal import: Mother Night, The Sirens of Titan, Jailbird, etc.

n  n

ما وجه الشبه بين فونجيت وبوكوفسكي وغيرهم من* رواد مدرسة الولا حاجة الأدبية ؟؟
نعم السفالة وعدم التقيد بأي شيئ من المعنى الادبي او الاخلاقي تشعر انهم يكتبون لانفسهم فقط، فونجيت هنا مثلا لايرتبط بأي ترتيب زمني او كتابي او عقلاني فمثلا يقفز بين شخصياته ويسمي نفسه الخالق...

■فونجيت هنا يسخر من كل شيئ
يسخر من الانسان وخاصاً من الرجل الابيض
من العبودية
من ميكنة الانسان وتدميره للطبيعة
يسخر من دولته اميركا وسياستها

نعم سخريته لذيذه بعض الشئ وسافلة ولكن ان كنت تظن ان الكتاب ملئ بها فانت مخطئ الكتاب شديد الملل ، فمثلا ماذا سوف استفاد انا من معرفة متوسط حجم قضيب الرجل وخصر المرأة ف اميركا واشخاص الرواية.؟؟؟!!!

ولكن الحق يقال الكاتب له تشبيهات ساخرة جيدة
فمثلا بدلا من قول كحول يقول فضلات الخميرة..
اشخاصه عبثيين لايوجد فيهم شخص طبيعي حرفيا، مجموعة من المجانين والشواذ ....

سمعت من قبل ان المترجم القدير قد سعى جاهدا ليترجم ذلك الكتاب للعربية ولا افهم لماذا حتى الآن هل انتهى كل كتاب الأرض لترجمة ذلك الهراء؟! يمكن ان يكون العيب مني فأرجوك لاتتأثر بمراجعتي تلك وجرب بنفسك..
أما انا فأعتقد اني لن اعطي للكاتب فرصة ثانية، العمر لحظة....

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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این عجیب بودن، این دیوونگی شخصیت‌ها رو واقعاً دوست داشتم ♡♡

تراوت اصلاً شناختی از سیاستمداران نداشت. آن‌ها در چشم تراوت شامپانزه‌های بی‌ریخت و هیجان‌زده‌ای بیش نبودند. یک بار داستانی درباره شامپانزه‌ای خوش‌بین نوشت که رئیس‌جمهور ایالات متحده شد. نام قصه‌اش را 《 درود بر فرمانده 》 گذاشته بود. ص ۹۸