"Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

Here was the core of the bad ideas which Trout gave to Dwayne: Everybody on Earth
was a robot, with one exceptionтАФDwayne Hoover.
Of all the creatures in the Universe, only Dwayne was thinking and feeling and worrying
and planning and so on. Nobody else knew what pain was. Nobody else had any
choices to make. Everybody else was a fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to
stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the
Only Dwayne Hoover had free will.


Trout did not expect to be believed. He put the bad ideas into a science-fiction novel,
and that was where Dwayne found them. The book wasn't addressed to Dwayne alone.
Trout had never heard of Dwayne when he wrote it. It was addressed to anybody who
happened to open it up. It said to simply anybody, in effect, "HeyтАФ guess what: You're
the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?" And so on.
It was a tour de force. It was a jeu d'esprit.
But it was mind poison to Dwayne.


It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the worldтАФin the form of
bad ideas. And, after Dwayne was carted off to a lunatic asylum in a canvas camisole,
Trout became a fanatic on the importance of ideas as causes and cures for diseases.
But nobody would listen to him. He was a dirty old man in the wilderness, crying out
among the trees and underbrush, "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease!"
| Kilgore Trout became a pioneer in the field of mental health. He advanced his theories
disguised as science-fiction. He died in 1981, almost twenty years after he made
Dwayne Hoover so sick.
He was by then recognized as a great artist and scientist. The American Academy of
Arts and Sciences caused a monument to be erected over his ashes. Carved in its
face was a quotation from his last novel, his two-hundred-and-ninth novel, which was
unfinished when he died. The monument looked like this:
Chapter 2

Dwayne was a widower. He lived alone at night in a dream house in Fairchild
Heights, which was the most desirable residential area in the city. Every house there
cost at least one hundred thousand dollars to build. Every house was on at least four
acres of land.
Dwayne's only companion at night was a Labrador retriever named Sparky. Sparky
could not wag his tailтАФ because of an automobile accident many years ago, so he had
no way of telling other dogs how friendly he was. He had to fight all the time. His ears
were in tatters. He was lumpy with scars.


Dwayne had a black servant named Lottie Davis. She cleaned his house every day.
Then she cooked his supper for him and served it. Then she went home. She was de-
scended from slaves.
Lottie Davis and Dwayne didn't talk much, even though they liked each other a lot.
Dwayne reserved most of his conversation for the dog. He would get down on the floor
and roll around with Sparky, and he would say things like, "You and me, Spark," and
"How's my old buddy?" and so on.
And that routine went on unrevised, even after Dwayne started to go crazy, so Lottie