Wait, what?

Breakfast of Champions  - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Dell, 1973)

Last night, the Stanford Prison Experiment came up in conversation, which led me to the Milgram experiment, the Third Wave, and the blue eyed/brown eyed exercise.  These all dated to the 1960s and early 1970s, which led me to wonder what exactly was going on in the air those days.

(I mean, I sort of know the answer, but seriously...)

Which leads me to Vonnegut. It's been a long time since I've read him, and I guess maybe I had forgotten how eccentric his writing could be.

The novel is the lead up to a momentous meeting between a crazy old science fiction writer and a prosperous businessman that ends with the businessman going postal and eventually (after the action of the novel) the author achieving acclaim and winning a Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Oh, and a huge supporting cast. Including Vonnegut himself, in town to watch his creations on their collision course.

The important part: every character matters and has a real story. No minor character should be treated as minor. In fact, "so many Americans [were] treated by their government as though their lives were disposable [...] because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales." None of this for Vonnegut. Which makes for a whole lot of story. And also illustrations, and commentary, and a matter-of-fact telling of some of the less attractive parts of American culture and history, the way someone in hundreds of years might explain it to a child, or to an alien visitor.

Seems a reasonable way to ring out 2013, I suppose.