Dave -- This One's 4 U

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

Delta

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me if I had ever read Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. I was ashamed to admit that I hadn't and agreed to post my review of the book on this blog.

Vonnegut, if you haven't read him, is brilliant. He's also, as I am finding here, difficult to describe. Reading a Vonnegut novel is kind of like being a stranger in a strange land. The reader is never too sure of the rules of the narrative and as such, can't rush to judgement or conclusions. Often, as in Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut uses the elements/conventions of science fiction to dislocate his readers and force them to construct/consider an entirely new world view.

In this novel (which apparently he wrote to celebrate his 5oth birthday) we are introduced to Dwayne Hoover -- a mentally ill, self-made man from the Mid West who owns car dealerships, restaurant franchises, and the local Holiday Inn. Dwayne's chemical imbalance causes him to have a psychotic break (he suspects everyone else in the world is a robot) and he goes on a rampage beating his lover, his son, and a host of other innocent bystanders.

The interesting twist in this novel is how Vonnegut blurs the line between creator and created. Vonnegut is at once the author, the narrator and a "real-time" character in the novel who manipulates the narrative to his own advantage. He "drops in" on his creation and hangs out in the lounge at the Holiday Inn, watching his characters in action, and thinking up new things for them to see/do. The overt parallels between Vonnegut and his deranged hero are also disturbing -- suicides, depression, middle age, the Mid West. Layered into that complexity is the presence of Kilgore Trout, the aging, somewhat distracted science fiction writer (some say Vonnegut's alter-ego) who, in some respects, facilitates Hoover's collapse. What does it all mean? I have no idea ... but it sure was fun to read. Three Heinlein's out of five