Goodbye Blue Monday

"What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books", says Kurt Vonnegut about his book - "Breakfast of Champions".

I, myself, did not feel lousy when I read this book. I did not. To me, it was a totally different way of writing and I enjoyed it to the last word and the last one of those sketches that populate the novel.

The novel was written in 1973, set in Midland City, a fictional town. The novel was supposed to be a fiftieth birthday present to himself.

It is a satire on slavery, racism, sex, pollution, greed etc. all directed at the American society. Every attack is straight and impolite. He attacks the copyright law, when he mentions, more than once, that the novel has no association with General Mills. General Mills has copyright on the expression "Breakfast of Champions". Not once, could I avoid thinking that this is a parody of himself.

It is the story of "a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old men on a planet which was dying fast" - Dwayne Hoover, a successful and insane Pontiac automobile dealer, and Kilgore Trout, a largely unsuccessful and unknown fiction writer. Kilgore Trout would win the Nobel Prize for science and Dwayne Hoover would turn into a homicidal maniac, thanks to Kilgore Trout's "Now it can be told". Their destinies were written and published by Kurt Vonnegut.

The author has peppered the novel with simple sketches like Amercian Flag, chickens, fried chicken, cow, hamburger, the monument intended to be raised over Kilgore Trout's ashes, gun, flamingo, a switch box, beaver, jackets, sheep, trucks, stork, "fairy land", "please, do not disturb", "What is the purpose of life?" etc. I found these sketches very amusing and refreshing. This way of writing would have been quite an experiment at the time the novel was published. I learnt from a friend that the novel "A curious incident of the dog in the midnight time" by Mark Haddon and the Thamizh novel "Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural" by Jeyamohan also have the same style of writing.

About his characters in the novel, many of Kurt Vonnegut's characters from other novels can be found in this novel such as Eliot Rosewater. Eliot Rosewater was a minor character in Slaughterhouse 5 and Francine Pefko appeared in Cat's Cradle. I have read these novels. I gathered that Eliot Rosewater was the main character in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Rabo Karabekian was the main character in Bluebeard, Kazak, the guard dog, appeared in The Sirens of Titan and Galapagos.

A very interesting part comes when the scene is setup for Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover to meet. Kurt Vonnegut could not resist leaving himself out of the scene. He wears dark glasses with silvered lenses to avoid recognition and takes a seat close to Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. I found it amusing, to read the novelist as a character in his own novel. Particularly so, when he knows that they are his creations. It was delightful to read, when he sits at his table and controls his characters, like a master of puppets. At one point, he assumes the role of a fortune teller and offers to predict the future of the waitress in the cocktail lounge.

Another interesting part is when Kurt Vonnegut meets Kilgore Trout, his creation, to tell him that Trout is indeed his creation and that he is free to go, that he is not bound by his Creator's whims and fansies anymore. I know how Trout would have felt - shocked and in shambles - to come to know that he is afterall in a novel and worst still, his creator has taken away all his youth before freeing him. He cries to his creator, as Kurt Vonnegut vanishes in a fantastic manner typical of any science fiction movie. This is how he vanishes:

"I somersaulted lazily and pleasantly through the void, which is my hiding place when I dematerialize."

This is what Kilgore Trout cried:

"Make me young, make me young, make me young, make me young!"

Kilgore Trout is the only character who comes to know that he has been freed. As mentioned in the novel, the author wishes to set free his literary characters, in the same manner as Tolstoi or Thomas Jefferson freed their serfs.

In a way, I felt that it was an explicit dig at slavery, when he tries to set free his characters.

Kurt Vonnegut wants to throw a lot of junk from from his head, too. I must mention that he has thrown all the "junk" in a delightful play of words. This is one of those novels where you read, enjoy and would want to keep reading.

Trivia -

Breakfast of Champions is also known as Goodbye Blue Monday. Goodbye Blue Monday is the slogan of the new automatic washing machine, which the Robo-Magic corporation, tried to design and manufacture. This is fiction.

The expression "Breakfast of Champions" is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc., for use on a breakfast cereal product. As mentioned in the novel.

Breakfast of Champions had been adopted as a movie in 1999 starring Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte and Omar Epps. I have not yet had the opportunity to watch the movie but I found some mixed reviews of the movie on the IMDB website.

You can find the reviews on the movie, here.

Turn the page

I love to read. I love books. I read almost everyday. It depends on when do I want to go to bed and how tired I am at the end of the day.

I finished reading "Jailbird" by Kurt Vonnegut last week. Simple and fluently sarcastic. Wonderfuly enjoyable to read. No, I am not talking about Jailbird, I am talking about all Kurt Vonnegut's works that I have read. I am not writing about him anyway. Not now.

I was pondering about the way I read books. I jump books. I start reading a book but more often than not, I start reading another book too. Is it not tough?

Start reading a newspaper and before finishing a piece of complete news, turn the page. That is not the end of it, go back to the same page after reading a few other pages and continue reading from where you left. Very tough.

Currently, I am reading two books - "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut and "A Bend in the River" by VS Naipaul. I am enjoying both the books.

Not a good way to read, I know. Habit. No, I don't try and do it. It just happens.

The number of unread books I have, have no bearing on the number of new books I buy. My memory lets me down. I have a big heap of unread books in my bedroom. Do I plan to read all those books and many more that would join them? Ofcourse yes. When? I do not know.

I would love to change, love to have more concentration, more focus than what I have now and be a lot more consistent at it. I would like not to turn the page until I finish it.

What?...Oh yes, I am done. Turn the page.

Da

I watched the movie a couple of days back. It was a DVD copy from a friend's original. A wonderfully knit script based on a man's imagination.

The movie was made in 1988, starring Martin Sheen and Barnard Hughes. Directed by Matt Clark and Julie Corman.

"Da" is the Irish equivalent of "father". So I learnt from a friend. The movie itself is a autobiographical drama about playwright Hugh Leonard's relationship with his father. So I learnt from the internet.

Charlie gets the news of his father's death and travels to take care of the funeral. What follows is Charlie's imagination involving his father, to a large extent his mother and to a small extent his pet dog. He relives many of his childhood moments.

As I sat watching this movie, I was reminded very much of my father and mother. How they would care, be angry one moment and melt with love the very next. How they would try to put me off a topic when I, as a child, keep pestering them for answers that a child cannot understand. How I used to think that I am being weighed down by all the love and care they show. I did grow up and realized that I was wrong to feel so.

The sequence where a middle-aged Charlie transforms into a kid Charlie and asks his father, why he had lied to him about his mother, is lovely.

"It was not a lie. I would never lie. It was a maky-up", was his father's reply. I smiled.

Was it because I was thinking of my own father, that I smiled the way I usually do when I watch kids play their games, when I watched the movie? True.

It was the wonderful chemistry between Martin Sheen (Charlie) and Barnard Hughes (Da) that made me see a father and son relationship, as it would normally be in real life. They were amazing in their roles.

"I love you, Da"
"Ofcourse, you do. Why wouldn't you?"

Now, I smiled again.