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The ArtiFact Podcast is a long-form show on books, culture, painting, and music hosted by Alex Sheremet, Joel Parrish, and a revolving door of co-hosts and guests. Each subject is covered in depth and at length, with past shows featuring the Epic of Gilgamesh, Charles Johnson's "Oxherding Tale", Leonard Shlain’s "Art & Physics", John Williams's "Stoner", and more. Opinionated, controversial, and prone to making enemies and friends of friends and enemies, ArtiFact delivers new perspectives on the arts by artists of talent.
Episodes
Tuesday Jul 13, 2021
Tuesday Jul 13, 2021
Taking up Mark Twain's mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1972's Breakfast of Champions, a novel Kurt Vonnegut had abandoned several times, even as it remains a clever examination of America’s money-obsession, corporatism, sexual dynamics, artistic fraud, and more. Imparted by a (potentially) unreliable narrator, these lessons come to a twist ending in the book's last few scenes of philosophical slapstick.
You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/InsbL7cxJ_Q
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Timestamps:
0:23 – Kurt Vonnegut + Breakfast of Champions in context
23:00 – Joel makes sense of Kurt Vonnegut’s plotting
27:42 – Is Philboyd Studge an unreliable narrator?
36:45 – Kurt Vonnegut describes great writing with a metaphor
41:40 – Ch. 1: political preoccupations in Breakfast of Champions
01:01:24 – Ch. 2: sexual dynamics & Wide Open Beavers
01:10:02 – Is Kurt Vonnegut an anti-humanist?
01:17:02 – Ch. 8: what the Pluto Gang says about white liberalism
01:26:24 – Ch. 10, 11, & 12: Nelson Rockefeller vs. a truck driver’s free will
01:44:45 – Joel on Kurt Vonnegut's use of ellipses
01:47:40 – Kilgore Trout turns beautiful language into a liability
01:54:45 – Ch. 15: a bottleneck in Breakfast of Champions
02:00:00 – The Reindeer Problem: how Kurt Vonnegut tackles race relations
02:08:46 – Joel tries to escape his artistic responsibilities to watch a soccer game
02:09:12 – The narrator meets his (alleged) creations
02:13:55 – Is Kurt Vonnegut criticizing Abstract Expressionism?
02:24:06 – The last chapter, epilogue, & terrible criticism from "the failing New York Times"
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