Breakfast of Champions: Preface–Chapter 3

by Kurt Vonnegut
As a fiftieth-birthday present to himself, a narrator who signs off as Philboyd Studge describes the lives of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and automobile dealer Dwayne Hoover, before and after they meet at a 1972 Arts Festival in Ohio.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Preface–Chapter 3, Chapters 4–11, Chapters 12–17, Chapters 18–22, Chapter 23–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. disparage
    express a negative opinion of
    The expression “Breakfast of Champions” is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc., for use on a breakfast cereal product. The use of the identical expression as the title for this book is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by General Mills, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products.
  2. defunct
    no longer in force or use; inactive
    She wrote a sane and funny advice-to-the-lovelorn column for the Indianapolis Times, a good paper which is now defunct.
  3. flourish
    make steady progress
    She wrote ads for the William H. Block Company, a department store which still flourishes in a building my father designed.
  4. ataxia
    inability to coordinate voluntary muscle movements
    As for the suspicion I express in this book, that human beings are robots, are machines: It should be noted that people, mostly men, suffering from the last stages of syphilis, from locomotor ataxia, were common spectacles in downtown Indianapolis and in circus crowds when I was a boy.
  5. goiter
    enlarged thyroid gland, often from iodine deficiency
    When I was a boy, I saw a lot of people with goiters. So did Dwayne Hoover, the Pontiac dealer who is the hero of this book. Those unhappy Earthlings had such swollen thyroid glands that they seemed to have zucchini squash growing from their throats.
  6. cumbersome
    not elegant or graceful in expression
    My friend Knox Burger said one time that a certain cumbersome novel “…read as though it had been written by Philboyd Studge.”
  7. balderdash
    trivial nonsense
    This was their national anthem, which was pure balderdash, like so much they were expected to take seriously...
  8. baroque
    relating to an elaborately ornamented style of art and music
    If they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it...
  9. truncated
    terminating abruptly by having an end or point cut off
    If they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it...
  10. listless
    lacking zest or vivacity
    They touched this seemingly listless powder with fire, and it turned violently into gas.
  11. incipient
    only partly in existence; imperfectly formed
    Dwayne’s incipient insanity was mainly a matter of chemicals, of course.
  12. emphysema
    a condition of decreased respiratory function of the lungs
    “How’s the old respiration, Bill?” he’d say, or, “Seems like you’ve got a touch of the old emphysema, Bill,” or, “We never discussed what kind of a funeral you want, Bill. You never even told me what your religion is.”
  13. eccentric
    conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual
    Trout did another thing which some people might have considered eccentric: he called mirrors leaks. It amused him to pretend that mirrors were holes between two universes.
  14. solemnity
    a trait of dignified seriousness
    If he saw a child near a mirror, he might wag his finger at a child warningly, and say with great solemnity, “Don’t get too near that leak. You wouldn’t want to wind up in the other universe, would you?”
  15. waggish
    witty or joking
    And Trout would reply waggishly, “Where I come from, that means you’re about to steal a mirror.”
  16. reputable
    held in high esteem and honor
    No reputable publisher had ever heard of him, for that matter, even though he had written one hundred and seventeen novels and two thousand short stories by the time he met Dwayne.
  17. salacious
    suggestive of or tending to moral looseness
    They used his stories, which usually didn’t even have women in them, to give bulk to books and magazines of salacious pictures.
  18. lurid
    glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism
    The publisher didn’t change the title, but he obliterated most of it and all of Trout’s name with a lurid banner...
  19. adversary
    someone who offers opposition
    They were determined to kill us, or at least to make our lives meaningless. They came close to success. They were cruel adversaries, which my little friends the beavers were not.
  20. arbitrary
    based on or subject to individual discretion or preference
    The monsters I will name never snoozed. They inhabited our heads. They were the arbitrary lusts for gold...
  21. wry
    humorously sarcastic or mocking
    He paused, and then he recited with wry mournfulness the beginning of a poem he had learned to scream in Bermuda, when he was a little boy.
  22. poignant
    arousing powerful emotions, especially pity or sadness
    The poem was all the more poignant, since it mentioned two nations which no longer existed as such.
  23. incidentally
    by the way (used to introduce a new topic)
    The words in the book, incidentally, were about life on a dying planet named Lingo-Three, whose inhabitants resembled American automobiles.
  24. enmity
    a state of deep-seated ill-will
    Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
  25. futility
    uselessness as a consequence of having no practical result
    They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’
  26. emboss
    raise in a relief
    They were embossed fantastically with varicose veins.
  27. reverent
    feeling or showing profound respect or veneration
    He was respectful, almost reverent about Kilgore Trout.
  28. beseech
    ask for or request earnestly
    He beseeched him to be one of several distinguished out-of-town participants in the Festival, which would last for five days.
  29. distinguished
    standing above others in character or attainment
    He beseeched him to be one of several distinguished out-of-town participants in the Festival, which would last for five days.
  30. honorarium
    a fee paid for a nominally free service
    Clipped to the letter was a check for one thousand dollars. Fred T. Barry explained that this was for travel expenses and an honorarium.
  31. haggard
    showing the wearing effects of overwork or care or suffering
    He put this question to his parakeet haggardly, and he rolled his eyes: “Why all this sudden interest in Kilgore Trout?”
  32. patina
    a thin or superficial layer on the surface of something
    It had a greenish patina of mold. Some of the growths it supported resembled patches of fine rabbit fur.
  33. abode
    housing that someone is living in
    Although Trout was in the storm window business, he had no storm windows on his own abode.
  34. tentatively
    in a hesitant manner
    “Bill,” said Trout tentatively, “some teenager named Rosewater got me this job. His parents must be friends of the Chairman of the Arts Festival, and they don’t know anything about books out that way. So when he said I was good, they believed him.”
  35. subtle
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    But he reread the invitation from time to time, got to know it by heart. And then one of the subtler messages on the paper got through to him.
Created on Tue Dec 19 15:27:05 EST 2023 (updated Wed Dec 20 10:24:27 EST 2023)

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