I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions”. It’s great for me because its written in short choppy bits that lend themselves to bathroom reading. At the beginning of Chapter 7, our hero Kilgore Trout finds himself in the men’s bathroom of a massage parlour called The Sultant’s Harem. Someone has posted the question “What is the purpose of life?” in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. Personally, I’m not sure that pencil would work on tiles but this is a work of fiction so let’s just let that slide. Trout has nothing to write with, “not even a burnt match” but if he did here’s what he’d have written:
“To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.”
I fucking love that. The whole thing. It makes me laugh out loud. Ha! Maybe that’s why Vonnegut was one of the greatest American writers of our time and I own a deli and write a blog that 5 people read. I thought there were 7 but it appears my salty language pissed a couple of them off. Assholes.
