My friend lent me this book--Breakfast of Champions--and recommended I give it a shot. Last night I cruised through the first 25 pages and I can already tell it's gonna be an entertaining book. The book opens with an explanation of human life in America, narrated with irony disguised as a sort of naive curiosity. Alien to American customs, he is left puzzled by their absurdity. Nothing is spared examination, starting with the very discovery of America itself.
He then examines what became of the sea pirates--and the country they subsequently built. The American Anthem, the American Flag, and the baroque symbolism employed on American currency are all fair game for questioning:
If [the citizens] studied their paper money for clues to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it. Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about. It was if the country was saying to it's citizens, "in nonsense is strength"
Needless to say, I look forward to the rest of the novel.
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| Kurt Vonnegut, Jr |
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