"Breakfast of Champions" or "Goodbye Blue Monday" - a Review

So many moons have passed since I've devoted an entire entry on here to a book review, but the book that I have just read demands such attention. This book, which is labelled by both of the titles listed above, is written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of America's most famous satirists, and was written later in his life, as opposed to his earlier novel Slaughterhouse Five, which deals with the bombing of Dresden, Germany and for which he is praised the most.
As far as the synopsis of the book goes, it centers around the pivotal meeting of its two main characters, Dwayne Hoover (who is a "fabulously well-to-do" Buick salesman) and Kilgore Trout (who is a poor science fiction writer with an "iron will to live"). At the time of their meeting, Hoover is well into a mysterious madness, inflicted by "bad chemicals" in his brain - as is explained by the author, Hoover's meeting with Trout and visual ingestion of one of his books provide him with the "bad ideas" that, mingling with the chemicals, provoke Hoover to go completely off of his rocker. The entire book builds up to this point, and discusses the consequences many times (no, there is no vague foreshadowing at all in this book).
Through the development of Trout's character (and through the synopses of the character's published works), Vonnegut takes satirical stabs at the degradation of America and the world through industrialization, pollution, and human greed. In the very first chapter of the book, Vonnegut discusses the "dying planet" on which Trout and Hoover live. At one point in the book, Trout crosses a river by foot, which has been polluted by runoff from a nearby factory - as he steps from the water, an odd type of plastic substance solidifies on his feet.
Vonnegut also uses Trout to convey that ideas can be very dangerous, the example in the book being the idea expressed in one of Trout's stories that all human beings are really "fully-automated robots," which is the idea that eventually sends Hoover over the edge and into his madman frenzy.
It is an interesting and very valid theory, particularly because it applies to why I read the book in the first place.
My mother's friend, who recommended the book to me, falsely informed me that Conor Oberst, a singer from a band that I used to love (and still like, but not with as much. . .intensity), played the character of Bunny Hoover, Dwayne Hoover's son, in the film adaption of the novel. Intrigued, I walked over to the computer and watched the Youtube video of the trailer that he had pulled up for my viewing entertainment. Luckily for him, the image of Bunny was so fleeting that I was fooled into thinking that it actually was Conor Oberst. Vaguely interested by the outline of the plot presented in the commercial, I picked up the book, sat down, opened it, and finished it in two days - which is a record for me. It wasn't until the day after I finished the book that I discovered that my mom's friend had lied - so I suppose that if it hadn't been for Conor Oberst, I would never have read the book in the first place!
Though the two main characters are what would be ordained polar opposites in normal terms, I think that the author tries to unite them in their "Awareness" of the world and in their perception of the roles that they play. Trout, for example, is the victim of poverty and scorn - his books are mangled by the publishers to the point that they almost never sell - and he is very aware of the tragic state of the world that he lives in. At one point, talking to his pet parakeet, Bill, Trout inquires about his purpose, about how he wonders if he were put onto the Earth as some sort of test of Man's endurance. Then there is Dwayne Hoover who, despite being fabulously well-to-do, has gone insane. His wife has committed suicide, his son detests him, and he is constantly paranoid that those around him are intent on manipulating him for his money (which happens a few times in the book). In turn, Hoover relates to his mistress, Francine Pefko, an anecdote about his trip to a car factory - and the room entirely devoted to the "destructive testing" of automobiles - and he also wonders aloud if his purpose on Earth is for God to see how much a man can take before he breaks.
As for the development of minor characters, Vonnegut utilizes a very interesting, innovative degrees-of-separation technique, where he will digress from the main plot to fill in the personalities of surrounding, supposedly-minor characters, like the waitress, Fanny (I think that's her name) at Burger Chef, who is only in the plot long enough to wait on Dwayne, and who yet has her entire life story told for the enlightenment of the reader. In this manner, Vonnegut makes the fictional town of Midland City that much more plausible because of the roundness of all of its inhabitants as characters.
Now, for my favorite thing about the book: its form of narration. The perspective is third-person omniscient, though while most books told in the third-person omniscient have narrators which aren't characters, Vonnegut uses this perspective to serve his role as his own deus ex machina in the climax of the book. Though he implies frequently that there is a Creator of the Universe higher than him, he takes full credit for being the Creator of the literary universe of Midland City, which is a really neat concept. For almost half of the book, it is like any other third-person omniscient narrative, but then it changes drastically as the action escalates - Vonnegut places himself, disguised, in the same room as his characters as they are about to come together, to witness the event that he had decided in advance would occur. In the end, he confronts one of his characters (won't say which one) to inform him of what is happening. I can't get over how awesome this is.
Like most film adaptions of things, the film was awful, with the exclusion of one ridiculous line that made it quite hilarious: "I think my daddy loves me!" - I won't describe the circumstances of the quote - read the book and watch the movie for yourself! Taylor Lautner is in it! (Just kidding)
So in any case, out of five stars, I'd give this book 12 - if they are for nothing else, they are for the innovation of the narration and character development, though I love the plot also and how trivial it might have been, had it been written by anyone other than the master of satire himself.