No Help for That | Jackie Clark

Someone who is not small though is Kurt Vonnegut.

Of his 8 rules for writing a story, number 7 is as follows:

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

Perhaps this is the chill I’ve been feeling all these years.

Number 3 states:

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”

This is a good lesson for daily life, I think.

What appeals to me about Breakfast of Champions is that Vonnegut’s made-up world for the self is so openly acknowledged.  Some retreat further into it than others.  Some prefer not to retreat at all.    But that we always are existing amongst another conjuction feels pretty accurate to me.  A series of moments, yes.  But how to rectify the problem of fatalism.  I can reasonably believe and understand that “human beings [are] huge, rubbery test tubes […] with chemical reactions seething inside.”  Mechanics only seem to be a problem when certain functions are permanently disabled.  Defunct.  When things are disengaged.  I guess that is why people write new worlds and why they write themselves into them.  In mine, I can cause abnormal growth of things like antlers or tree branches on people at will.  I can make stand-alone miniature mouths, which do my biding invisibly.  I find solace in the solace Vonnegut finds in Kilgore Trout.