I didn't like Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions. I should have liked it—Vonnegut is an extremely important 20th century writer. I expected to like it—I liked several of his other novels. I tried to like it—and there are brilliant passages in it. But it the end, I was just glad it was over with.
At the largest level, the problem is that Vonnegut interweaves fantasy with reality, and fantasy with fantasy. One of the characters is supposed to be the author, and he interacts with the characters he has created; he gets badly mauled by a dog of his own creation. He creates and uncreates characters, moves them to different times and places, and offers commentaries on his reasons.
At the stylistic level, Vonnegut's prose is choppy, partly because he keeps darting around in overlapping universes. The other reason is that he throws in so much minutiae of verisimilitude that there is a long distance between subject and action.
Thematically, the problem is nihilism. The author and his surrogates are at pains to point out and illustrate the banality and inanity of modern life, presumably for comical effect. This is a dystopian novel, no holds barred.
None of the characters is developed in a sympathetic way; they are basically place-holders in a game of 3-D chess.
Existentially, Vonnegut wanted to show the interconnectedness of everyone's stories, the absurdity and tragedy in everyone's lives, and the futility of the whole flawed human enterprise.
You have to be the right age to appreciate this type of bitter humor and this casual way of mixing fantasies like cards in a deck.
So, if I disliked it for all these reasons, why did I keep reading it? Because some of Vonnegut's ravings express his insights in a unique and impactful manner.
Here's a paragraph that aptly describes his intentions:
"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 (my italics). If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done."
Here's a funny line that is still apt:
"Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present."
Here's a good description of women's defense mechanisms:
"The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they didn't use them for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get. So, in the interest of survival they trained themselves to be agreeing machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking and then they thought it too."
For a major fan of Art History, the most interesting part was a commentary on the Minimalist paintings by Barnett Newman, who puzzled art-lovers with canvases bearing only one or two stripes on a uniform background. Here's an example of Newman's simplest composition, grandly called Onement:
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| Onement, 1953 by Barnett Newman Internet |
To carry his interpretation, Vonnegut creates a character called Karabekian who has painted a work called The Temptation of Saint Anthony. He then places the painter in a bar scene where the patrons scorn his work, saying a child could do better. This quote is his response:
The painting did not exist until I made it…Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find…
It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal–the ‘I am’ to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us–in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us."
Just because I didn't like the novel doesn't mean I didn't appreciate it. But I'm eager to get onto something richer and more satisfying.
