Breakfast of Champions (2006)

By Kurt Vonnegut
You know, I’m starting to think I should develop a more complicated rating system than the good old “score out of ten” method. There are some books that are good in so many ways, yet strangely unmoving. I’m afraid I found this book to be one of them - The Master and Margarita was another.

Vonnegut tells the story of the not-so-gradual disintegration of the mind of Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover, intertwined with the semi-adventures of one Kilgore Trout, science fiction author, and a number of other characters. (Many of these characters appear in other novels by Vonnegut). From the books I’ve read, the disintegration of the human mind appears to be a recurrent theme of Vonnegut’s – and there is always a suggestion that it mirrors Vonnegut’s own experiences quite closely. But who can tell – authors are paid to make things up, after all.

One interesting thing Vonnegut describes in this novel is how he wishes to make all the facts and people presented in this book equal in weight, with none more important than the other – the structure and style of the book made a lot more sense after I read this bit, not unlike how you need commentary to fully appreciate an abstract painting. (NB: Another Vonnegut creation, the modernist painter Rabo Karabekian, also makes an appearance in this novel). Vonnegut feels that everyone expects their life to resemble the structure of a novel, with major players, bit players, beginnings, middles and ends (and so on) and thinks instead that we should all just get used to chaos and our unalterable insignificantness in the universe.

The way in which Vonnegut tells his stories is so different from anybody else, which makes his books quite fascinating to read. (E.g. “I had a paper tube in my mouth. It was stuffed with leaves. I set it on fire.”). Normal things become surreal. But the emotional aspects of this one left me a bit cold – strange, because Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is one of my favourite books ever.

Writing style: 9
Brain food: 8
Emotional drain: 3
Enjoyment factor: 6