Why this book:  My good friend Jay read it after I recommended  Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five to him. I had read Slaughter House Five twice and found it really clever, creative, and powerful.  I had read Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in college and it made quite an impression on me.   The irony was delicious.  Vonnegut is a very creative and eccentric writer and I thought Jay’s recommendation of Breakfast of Champions  would justify reading this one as well.

My impressions:  First, I did not “read” the book – I listened to it on audio, narrated by John Malkovich as an audible book.  I would have gotten more out of reading it, though Malkovich was probably the perfect voice to read this.  The book is indeed a bit bizarre, and following it – paying attention and appreciating the satire and nuances while driving  – was at times difficult.   It is very much a satire – and represented Vonnegut’s views on the absurdity of some of what we simply don’t notice or take for granted in the way we live.

Breakfast of Champions itself is named for a wry comment that a waitress makes to one of the characters in the book referring to a drink.  Vonnegut tells the story as if to an extra-terrestrial, who doesn’t know or understand much about human beings, the earth or how humans live together, especially in America.  So he explains everything – and his explanations highlight the absurdity of so much we see and do.  The protagonist is Kilgore Trout, an obscure very-little read science fiction writer who suddenly finds himself catapulted into the public eye as the guest of honor at an arts festival.  Up to that point, most of Kilgore Trout’s weird but creative short stories had been used as filler in pornographic magazines. Kilgore Trout is old, reclusive, not quite destitute, eccentric and now finds himself dealing with decisions he’s never made before.

Vonnegut uses a number of unusual means to make his points.  He treats sex very dispassionately and biologically, and satirizes our fascination with it by describing in laboratory terms the parts of the bodies of varies characters in the book – as though these dimensions were essential to know their character.  He injects himself into the story, remarking that the characters in the book do what they do because he, the author, makes them do these things. And then near the end, he actually becomes one of the characters in his story, sitting at the table with Kilgore Trout and other characters in the book.   He concludes with a conversation between Kilgore Trout and himself – ‘his creator.’   He convinces Trout that he is a mere character in his book and then asks him what he would like to do, ask, tell – because he – Vonnegut the author – can make it happen.   The metaphor is fascinating.  The absurdities in the book are sometimes over the top – but always attention getting, clever, sometimes ingenious, sometimes simply disturbing.

Would I recommend it?  Depends on your sense of the absurd and of irony.  It is indeed a clever book – but there really wasn’t much of a story line – some interesting and truly absurd characters – it reminded me a bit of Catch 22 in how the characters were paradies of archetypes we see in every day life -good and bad.  The story served as a vehicle for Vonnegut to share his whimsical look at the human race and things we take seriously, and as such, it wandered a bit.  Vonnegut himself was definitely out on the edge.