BTD: 20ish

Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions

Kilgore Trout, the fictional and vicarious author of Breakfast of Champions, also wrote another book. In Now It Can Be Told, the hero is the only real man on Earth; everybody else is a machine that participates in the great experiment of the one real man's free will. The one real man is eventually told by The Creator of the nasty trick andis transported to a new experiment, a paradise where he can jump into an icy mountain stream. While getting out of the stream, he would yell something crazy, a chilled ejaculation that The Creator found fascinating. "The Creator Never knew what he was going to yell . . . after a dip one day, for instance, The Man yelled this: 'Cheese!' Another time he yelled, 'Wouldn't you really rather own a Buick?'" (179).

Just as Kilgore Trout is a thinly veiled caricature of Vonnegut himself, Now It Can Be Told is a caricature of Breakfast of Champions. In both books, The Man yells random things, unpredictable, even by himself. "Asshole!" Vonnegut, says occasionally in the middle of the story, "Gilgongo! Drano!". Vonnegut, in Trout's voice, "let[s] others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order instead, which I think I have done" (215).

In doing so, Vonnegut has slyly revealed a beautiful truth. Now it Can Be Told is written in the second person; the reader, whomsoever he or she may be, is The Man, the one person who is not a machine. An ill-balanced man reads it; antics ensue. But Breakfast of Champions holds the same message. "At the core of each person who reads this book is a band of unwavering light" (231). That unwavering band of light is responsible for all our nonsensical ejaculations, all of our childishness and loves and battles, and is the most beautiful thing in existence.

Arrian: Anabasis (The Campaigns of Alexander)

I think of myself on occasion as the advance literary guard, a reconnaissance unit that reads everything and tells people whether there is anything worth finding there. Having now read four ancient historians, I take some pride in telling people to read Suetonius and Plutarch and to skip Tacitus and Arrian. The book had great moments, and I enjoy the intellectual security of having a reputable grasp of Alexander's life. The battles of Issus and Gaugamela, Peucestas' bravery, Porus' nobility and Alexander's love for Hephaestion all make nice flourishes on the decorative platter of my consciousness. I especially intend to remember what Arrian says about Alexander: "To think was to act: without further hesitation, he made his leap" (6:10). I have often said the same of my Father, whose middle name happens to be Alexander.

But for all of that, Plutarch gives nearly as much pleasure in his account of Alexander's life, but only takes 40 pages to do so, as compared to Arrian's 400. I liked Arrian's account, but I don't know that I 400 pages liked it. Unless you are a complete book nerd, read Plutarch instead.

William Trevor: The Children of Dynmouth

Of the three books by Trevor I have now read this year, this is narrowly my favorite. I can see why Philip Ward recommends it in his Lifetime of Reading (http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtward.html which, in case I have neglected to mention, is something I will be doing for the next fifty years), as opposed to the less inventive Death in Summer. Trevor returns to the familiar theme of the destructive individual who stands outside of and ungoverned by society. Unlike Septimus Tuam of The Love Department, however, Timothy Gedge starts as a thoroughly sympathetic character. The reader cannot help but feel for him. this is partly accomplished through Trevor's remarkable facility with dialogue. as in Death in Summer ("How was he spelling that, then?", for example), Timothy's diction, tone, introductory "only" and other verbal traits give him a flavor that enables the reader to actually hear his voice, as though it were an audio recording; Trevor's gift is that magical.

As with the other books, however, I was so intoxicated with Trevor's inventiveness that I braced myself for an equally inventive ending. No such luck. Perhaps I am too fond of perfect, tidy endings. I have a similar complaint with Toni Morrison--in fact, I have a lot of the same praises for Trevor that I do for her. But the ending always feels like that of Breakfast of Champions: a simple and literal "etc." For Vonnegut, it works and ties his book into a mind-blowing literary package. For Trevor, as for Morrison, not so much.