Breakfast of Champions is set in an America stripped of physical and spiritual beauty. Before setting out on the darkly humorous journey to the heartland that takes him past various scenes of ecological and human destruction, Kilgore Trout cries out, "I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore." But when he arrives in Midland City, where antipersonnel bombs and body bags are manufactured, he is confronted by a garish array of fastfood restaurants and neon-lit motels divided by a vile stream called Sugar Creek.

The interspersed historical notes, which rewrite American history as a tale of racist sea pirates, place these observations in a larger context, reminding the reader of the dark and paradoxical nature of American capitalism. The contradiction between the ideal of American independence and the actual experience of Vonnegut's Americans is symbolized by Thomas...