Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C

Breakfast of Champions was the first of Kurt Vonnegut's novels that I read upon its original publication. Like many others, I was introduced to KV via Slaughterhouse-5 and went back and read his entire back catalogue while awaiting his next title. 40 years later, whenever a KV audiobook comes up in a sale, I get it and re-read it in a format that should be, in theory, ideal for conveying his idiosyncratic voice.

My results have been mixed in a specific way -- books I didn't care for as in my younger days (Mother Night, Rosewater) are ones I loved listening to, timeless classics still relevant today, while those long ago dubbed classics (Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions) now come across as dated, juvenile, amateurish.

That I felt that way about BoC is no surprise -- KV himself gave it a C, the second lowest grade he gave his own novels. Listen: he was right. He tells you in the foreword (and he said it again over the years) that this is an exercise in dumping random ideas that were cluttering his brain. It sure reads that way. When he strays from his characters to pursue and purge these thoughts, he loses momentum from what could've been a good straightforward narrative, and he loses me. I'm all for metafiction, but his would've better as straight fiction.

I was hoping this version, with the great actor John Malkovich narrating, would make for a memorable audiobook experience. Malkovich should stick to acting. His deadpan delivery is all wrong -- he sounds like he is reading the lines for the first time. He takes long pauses in the middle of sentences and then runs on to new sentences without pause. I would normally blame myself for setting my expectations too high, but this performance by one of my favorite actors is technically and stylistically bad.

All that said, there are interesting angles for Vonnegut fans. Like Kilgore Trout, KV was dealing with newfound fame following the publication of S-5 and was not sure he wanted to keep writing, themes he explores. He was dealing concurrently with his son's schizophrenia (recounted in Eden Express), hence the primary themes madness, free will, perceptions of reality -- we didn't know about his when the book was published, but in hindsight, looking for this theme helped me get through the mediocrity of the overall work.

Be warned that there is potentially offensive language and subject matter. KV allows the racism of some of his characters to come through with frequent use of the N word, he informs the reader of the dimensions of every male characters' junk, and he also discusses female genitalia in detail.

On the other hand, KV has a genius for distilling things into simplistic language that really packs a punch -- he describes Vietnam as a war to save rice-fueled Asian robots from Communism by dropping things on them from the sky, and defoliants as chemicals used to destroy the trees the rice-fueled robots use to hide from the things dropped on them from the sky. (He doesn't call them Asian, he uses a slur that I will not repeat.)

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Funny..., Even if Malkovich Could Not Care Less

This book is amusing enough if you've enjoyed other Vonnegut works, and even uproarious at times regardless of whether you've ever read Vonnegut. And yet, I couldn't help feeling like a newcomer to a succession of inside jokes, or to a running gag that only Vonnegut devotees get. I think this insider-feeling to the novel is one reason why Vonnegut graded this book a "C" in hindsight.

I was peeved at John Malkovich's narration, particularly since it was the clincher in buying this audiobook. In steely staccato, he speed read through this book with an unrivaled indifference.

By comparison, I've found other renowned actors' narrations have exceeded my expectations; for example, Maggie Gyllenhaal's reading/acting of The Bell Jar, Tim Robbins of Fahrenheit 451, Richard Armitage of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and Jennifer Connelly of The Sheltering Sky. I guess that's the difference between really caring and just cashing in.

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two comments

1) Vonnegut speaks honestly about relevant social issues without being sanctimonious.

2) Malkovich says "doodely-squat" and "wide-open beavers" beautifully and its everything you could hope for.

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Classic Vonnegut ; missed opportunity by Malkovich

What didn’t you like about John Malkovich’s performance?

Malkovich's deadpan tone is spot-on. Not spot-on is his frequent misreading of sentences and his weird tendency to run consecutive sentences into each other. I don't think Malkovich had his attention focused on the task. His mind was wandering. This performance was well done in many places, but in many other places it was distracting and off-putting.

If you are unfamiliar with Vonnegut or with this book Breakfast of Champions in particular, then I do *not* recommend listening to this audiobook. It will not make you a fan of Vonnegut.

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Do not listen if you haven't read the book

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

If you haven't read this book on paper, listening may ruin your experience. I learned through the narration that the book is heavily illustrated and the story directly refers to those illustrations - they are not merely complements.

I'll be returning the book so that I can read it in print. I would instead recommend Slaughterhouse 5 as narrated by Ethan Hawke if you prefer to listen. His was a fantastic performance.

Would you be willing to try another one of John Malkovich’s performances?

No. Minimum of fifteen words so I'll keep on rambling like the narrator about what I'm reading another sentence started here without punctuation and here is a picture of a wide open beaver.

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Not one of his better ones

I love Kurt Vonnegut (and here there is a picture of a big heart). However, I don't believe that this is one of his better stories. Of course, he admitted it was not one of his better stories. In addition, because the drawings make the book a little more enjoyable, not having them makes it a little less enjoyable. John Malkovich (and here there is a picture of a bald man) does an OK job. However, his voice comes across as a bit bored.I'm curious how I would've experienced the story with a different narrator (and here there is a picture of a big question mark).

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Brilliant narration of a brilliant book

Just finished listening to Breakfast of Champions as read by John Malkovich. I thought Malkovich did an amazing job, his descriptions of the hand-drawn illustrations from the book made me laugh, as did many, many things in the book. Far from being “just” a reaction to the state of the world in 1973 when it was first published, the book seems to me to have been scarily prescient of the state of the world around me right now (2016).

There was so much I loved about this book there is no way I can fit it all into one review. Here are just a few of the things:

1) The way Vonnegut explained in one or two sentences what common words meant, as if someone in the far future were reading the book and would need explanations, as here:

“Dwayne's bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver from under his pillow and stick it in his mouth. This was a tool whose only purpose was to make holes in human beings.”

“A lamb was a young animal which was legendary for sleeping well on the planet Earth.”

2) Spot-on observations about the human condition, which appeared practically every paragraph, as here:

“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.”

“The whole city was dangerous—because of chemicals and the uneven distribution of wealth and so on.”

“It didn't matter much what Dwayne said. It hadn't mattered much for years. It didn't matter much what most people in Midland City said out loud, except when they were talking about money or structures or travel or machinery - or other measurable things. Every person had a clearly defined part to play - as a black person, a female high school drop-out, a Pontiac dealer, a gynecologist, a gas-conversion burner installer. If a person stopped living up to expectations, because of bad chemicals or one thing or another, everybody went on imagining that the person was living up to expectations anyway. That was the main reason the people in Midland City were so slow to detect insanity in their associates. Their imaginations insisted that nobody changed much from day to day. Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of awful truth.”

3) Sentences and sequences that made me laugh out loud, like this:

“Like everybody else in the cocktail lounge, he was softening his brain with alcohol. This was a substance produced by a tiny creature called yeast. Yeast organisms ate sugar and excreted alcohol. They killed themselves by destroying their environment. Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”

“Thomas Jefferson High School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty.”

Brilliant, mind-blowing novel, totally different from anything else I have ever read. I would highly recommend this version narrated by Mr. Malkovich.

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Magnificent!

If you could sum up Breakfast of Champions in three words, what would they be?

This is the best marriage of author to reader ever envisioned on this planet! Mr. Malkovich is perfection in his narration of Kurt Vonnegut's tragicomic meta-fiction novel. I hope he reads the rest of Vonnegut's canon. Bravo!

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a match made in somewhere and so on

This is the ultimate match-up; Vonnegut read by Malkovich. Huge Vonnegut fan that I am, he can do no wrong in my mind. Sassy and cynical, with depth but accessible. Our foibles, and follies, and self absorbedness in black and white. The quirk of Vonnegut is timeless and apropos. But we never open our eyes, do we. Ironically, my favorite part is the epilogue; a place I can closely relate and oddly brought me to tears.

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in nonsense is strength

“in nonsense is strength”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Sometimes, I think of Breakfast of Champions as top shelf Vonnegut (five stars). Sometimes I think of it as second shelf Vonnegut (four stars). I think it could exist easily on both shelves. Since I own a couple copies, and have read it a couple times, I will forever physically keep it on two shelves (Library of America on one, Laurel Mass-Market Paperback on a lower shelf). The Laurel Mass-Market is also the one I try to bribe and incentivize my son into reading. I'm sure the picture of the asshole and the beaver might just be the inspiration my sixteen-year old needs to start this book.

Imagine here is a picture of Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole tattooed on a young man's arm:

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Imagine here is a picture of Vonnegut's drawings of beavers, in what looks like a Finnish copy of Breakfast of Champions (if you look really close you can also see Vonnegut's drawing of women's underwear bleeding through in blue):

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Speaking of vaginas. Today is Valentines Day. Christians, and by Christians I mean a Pope (I can't remember who), tried to turn a Roman festival into a Christian holiday honoring a martyr (this also could be a common myth). I'm more fascinated, however, by Roman festivals than I am by martyrs or myths. Anyway, Valentines was supposed to smother out Lupercalia, a day where men dressed in the skins of sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran around the walls of old Rome, with the thongs called februa in their hands whipping people (mostly people with XX chromosomes) who happened to be around.

Imagine here is an artsy painting of men dressed in goat skins whipping women:

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Women, girls, and childbearing young women would line up to receive lashes from these whip-wielding Romans. Supposedly this was meant to ensure fertility, or at least prevent sterility, in women and ease the pains of childbirth (I'm not sure how the math works -- as if Pain from a whip is a negative (-) and pain of childbirth is a positive (+)). Anyway, I started and finished this book on Valentines. I also took my wife out for Mexican food tonight and bought her exactly 2.2lbs of dark chocolates.

Imagine here is a graphic showing how people decide which restaurants to go to on Valentines:

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The only reason I bring this up is today is Valentines and also because Vonnegut wrote published this book in 1973. Since, I was born in almost in the middle of in 1974, the reality is I spent some period of 1973 -- as this book was flooding the Earth -- being conceived (I try not to think too hard about this) and gestated (or this) and eventually birthed (or this either). I think, perhaps, my birth was so easy for my mom directly because of Vonnegut's book. This book. Yes, I am basically saying that in February 1974, this book, recently published might have been a literal februa for my mother. Perhaps, Vonnegut's pounding these words into existence somehow helped in my conception. Perhaps, Vonnegut is the one man in the Universe completely responsible for my existence. Yes, there is my father, but this is way beyond Fathers and Sons. All I know for certain that part of my brain since my teenage years has been marked, folded, energized by Vonnegut. Not through magic or some mystical force, but rather through the teeth and bite and whip of his words. The old fashioned way.

Finally, imagine here is a picture of my brain receiving its extra fold from Vonnegut's at age 5 months:

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