Breakfast of Champions: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Kilgore is still in the Galaxie moving closer to Midland City, and four miles away, Dwayne sits in the cocktail lounge of the Holiday Inn. Bunny sits playing the piano, but the two men do not acknowledge each other. Outside, Wayne Hoobler continues to loiter around Dwayne’s Pontiac dealership.

Wayne Hoobler watches as the traffic passes. The sun is setting and many people in Midland City are heading home from work. Wayne supposes he may die of exposure if he sleeps outdoors tonight. Wayne doesn’t have much experience being outside since he has spent most of his life locked up. Wayne “misses the clash of steel doors” and “the bread and stew and the pitchers of milk and coffee.” He watches as a milk truck passes on the interstate.

Even though Wayne is not happy, he smiles to “show off his teeth.” The Adult Correctional Institution at Shepherdstown has a wonderful dental program. Since ex-convicts have trouble finding employment “because of their appearance,” the prison offers state-of-the-art dental care. The “theory” is that “good looks begin with good teeth,” so Midland City is crawling with ex-cons who have beautiful dental work. Whenever anyone is arrested with particularly dazzling teeth, the police ask: “All right, boy—how many years you spend in Shepherdstown?”

Back in the bar, a man enters wearing a pair of sunglasses. “I have come to the Arts Festival incognito,” Vonnegut writes, “to watch a confrontation between two human beings I have created: Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout.” The lenses of Vonnegut’s glasses are “silvered” and appear as “mirrors” to anyone looking at him. “Where other people in the cocktail lounge have eyes,” Vonnegut says, “I have two holes into another universe. I have leaks.”

“This is a very bad book you’re writing,” Vonnegut says to himself. “I know,” he answers. “You’re afraid you’ll kill yourself the way your mother did,” he says. “I know,” Vonnegut answers.

Sitting alone in the dark behind his leaks, Vonnegut silently mouths the word “schizophrenia.” Vonnegut is “fascinated” with this word. “I do not know for certain that I have this disease,” Vonnegut says, but he had been “making himself hideously uncomfortable” by “refusing to believe what [his] neighbors believe.” He is not quite as “uncomfortable” as he used to be. “I am better now,” Vonnegut writes. “Word of honor: I am better now.”

Bonnie MacMahon, a “white cocktail waitress,” walks by with a drink in her hand. She is about to serve it to Dwayne, whom she knows well. Bonnie and her husband have bought several Pontiacs from Dwayne over the years, but after Bonnie’s husband lost their life savings opening a car wash in Shepherdstown, she was forced to take a job waiting tables. “Breakfast of Champions,” Bonnie says as she places a martini in front of Dwayne. 

Dwayne has come to the lounge hoping to find some “distinguished artists” to talk to. He wants to “discover whether they have truths about life which he has never heard before.” He hopes that these “truths” will make his life worth living again and keep him out of the mental institution. Dwayne is deep in thought, and he doesn’t notice when two artists, Beatrice Keedsler, a Gothic novelist, and Rabo Karabekian, a minimalist painter, enter the bar. “This has to be the asshole of the Universe,” Rabo says to Beatrice as he looks around.

Back on the interstate, traffic has come to a stop and Kilgore gets out of the car to investigate. He realizes that the Holiday Inn is just up the road, so he decides to walk. Up the interstate a bit, Kilgore discovers that a car has collided with a milk truck. The driver and passenger of the car lay dead in Sugar Creek, where milk and blood begin to flow into the water, adding “to the composition of the sinking ping-pong balls which are being manufactured in the bowels of the Sacred Miracle Cave.”