Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Quotes:
This novel introduced readers to my favourite of the Vonnegut stylistic devices where he begins a new paragraph with:
”Listen:”
Then he proceeds with his narrative. I remember this novel from highschool English class. My teacher told us that Vonnegut thought hisreaders had short attention spans and thus could only pay attention for a limited number of sentences at a time. So he interrupts every five or so paragraphs with a break, with the paragraphs not being more than usually 5-20 sentences. and a “Listen:” or a “so it goes”, etc. as an attempt to pander to his audience.
His audience has always tended to be young people in college and university. When I heard this in highschool, I must say I was offended and may have remarked “well I never”.
However, I increasingly have a shorter and shorter attention span and I love Vonnegut, so maybe he was right!
Vonnegut also uses the phrase “and so on” as a an apathetic digression since he believes attention spans are short and thus no one who necessarily be paying attention to his text anyways.
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Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?
It makes me feel pretty good. Maybe a little lonely, but still pretty good.
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Listen:
The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her.
"Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me.
"The big show is inside my head," I said.
Fair enough!
Vonnegut continually revisits the theme of the purpose of life. What do you think the meaning of life is? If you know please email me at jsandhu6@uwo.ca---------------------------------
“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,” said the driver.
”I won’t know myself until I find out whether life is serious or not,” said Trout. “It’s dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s serious, too.” (Chapter 10)