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Summary: My second favourite Vonnegut!
Review: Although I have have only read three Vonnegut novels so far, this is my 2nd favourite out of all three. (Slaughterhouse-five being my favourite.) It's story tells of Dwayne Hoover, a car salesman who is slowly going insane, and of course Kilgore Trout, the science fiction writer whose on his way to Dwayne's home, Midland city, to an arts festival he's just been invited too. My favourite part is the ending. Now I won't spoil it for you, but when I finished the book I felt the ending to be quite dissapointing, but I thought about it for awhile and decided I loved afterwards. Vonnegut creates a beautiful portrait of insanity and humour in this brilliant piece of fiction!!!
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Summary: Eat This Book
Review: This book should be read for several reasons: First, it is an important lesson in American history. In the form of a fictional town, Vonnegut creates a brilliant (read "entertaining") satire of American life. With great agility he addresses race, sexuality, gender, freedom, nature, and much more. Although still largely applicable, this satire is dated (1972). Second, Vonnegut experiments with form; the narration occurs as an acummulation of loosely connected details. This makes the book fast and fun to read--we skip from one interesting thought to the next, and before we know it, a plot develops. The entire story is littered with profound ideas about life and art; Vonnegut is refreshingly honest and articulate concerning the great mysteries, including life's meaning and minimal art. Third, the author demonstrates his drawing talent (albeit it limited), with almost every other page hosting a small doodle. While these pictures add little to the content, it is apparent that Vonnegut took great satisfaction in making a text complete with illustrations. For this reason, I call it art. Fourth, this book might actually encourage you to measure your genitals. (So as to compare yourself with Dwayne, Kilgore, and the rest of the characters.) And, as a bonus, the author reveals his own measurements. In fairness, women are also reduced to their bust/waist/hips measurements.
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Summary: A relentless and brutally observant wit
Review: As successful suburbanite Dwayne Hoover steadily goes out of his mind (from natural causes) he comes to believe that he is the only self-aware being in the universe and that everyone else is a robot created to test him. He believes this because obscure sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout told him so-or so he believes-in a short story. Of course Trout was not speaking to Hoover exactly and nobody is really a robot out to test Dwayne. None the less, without knowing it, Hoover is about to meet what he believes is his creator, Kilgore Trout, while Vonnegut himself watches from a corner table behind dark sunglasses in a tacky motel bar. And Trout will subsequently meet Vonnegut, his own creator, in an alley late at night. Breakfast of Champions was Vonnegut's 50th birthday present to himself, and if Cat's Cradle is at the edge of control Breakfast of Champions gleefully abandons all pretense to take a wild ride through postwar Americana with the bruised and cynical Trout unknowingly cruising headlong into the unstable Hoover at an arts festival. Along the way Vonnegut skewers absolutely everything in a rant replete with his own drawings and doodles. There is a simple plot here but it's mostly a vehicle for Vonnegut. After all, there's a good reason his alter-ego Trout is the star of the show. Subtlety and shading are not strengths of this novel. A relentless and brutally observant wit are, and they play unrestrained in a sandbox as big as America and as demented as Dwayne's hallucinations. Normally, Vonnegut is as unapologetically humane as a writer gets but leavens it with sly, observant humor. This time he's all angry cynic with no leavening. This isn't humor for everyone, but for a look at yourself blackened with caustic wit it doesn't get any better or funnier. It's first rate stuff if you've got a taste for darker humor and something so unconventional that the author himself appears to the characters and not only interacts with them but messes with their heads. Maybe this should be seen with the monologues of humorists rather than as straight fiction. Either way it is an important work from one of our best authors and is very highly recommended.
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Summary: You never know what your going to read
Review: i thought that this book was one of the best books i had ever read. i loved how the book used so many different subjects such as: Flamingos, gangs, aliens, Chicken, and insanity to keep you on your toes when you where reading. this book was ment to entertain and i think that it did a very nice job of doing that.
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Summary: Satire Rules
Review: In the novel, Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, the author uses rising action to effectively tell the story of a brief, yet meaningful meeting between Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover. Dwayne Hoover, increasingly affected by 'bad chemicals', builds up to an explosion of madness. Knowing from the beginning that Dwayne is doomed to insanity amplifies the tension and holds the reader in suspense, waiting for the inevitable to happen. While the book uses rising action, it isn't in the sense of an action movie, but instead uses descriptions of a series of upcoming events that lead to the fateful meeting of Hoover and Trout. The book is strengthened by the way Vonnegut builds up to the climax.
To Vonnegut, 'what' is less important than 'why'. In first two-thirds of the book, he uses the rising action technique to relate why the events happen. He not only describes why they happen, but he expresses his opinions on the reasons why. In doing this, he slips in a mocking comment or two in order to keep the reader engaged. The book is enjoyable because he spends the first half discussing what's to come and why it's going to happen, all with a sardonic twist. He conveys many cynical views, and relates them to the characters. He even puts himself in the story, showing the power of the author as the creator of the universe within the novel. The way he describes the actions before they happen, and clarifies why they happen, makes the novel much more interesting.
However, some readers may see a downside to Vonnegut's work. While he does utilize an interesting way to tell the story, and to express his sarcastic observations, the lack of action may be viewed as somewhat boring. Readers interested in more dynamic suspense filled books may have trouble holding out until the end. He could appear to go on and on about the same topics, offering different view points on them, and it dragging out the novel. For readers accustomed to action adventures, the rising action may not seem to rise much, if at all.
Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions is overall an excellent book. Because of his use of rising action to convey his interesting perspectives on life, he is able to draw readers into to wanting to find out what happens to the characters. His sharp wit and mocking attitude can bring many laughs, accompanied by harsh truths. Breakfast of Champions easily warrants four and one-half stars, for it's excellence as a novel, as well as the satirical truths that are shown about the world.
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Summary: Dwayne Hoover is God
Review: Dude, this novel completes screws your mind! People are robots! The environment is collapsing! The author is a character who knows he's writing the novel he's in! Post-modern? You bet!
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Summary: Dare to be different!
Review: Vonnegut packs an unforgettable punch in The Breakfast of Champions. It's a punch that will knock you on your side and make you laugh, but also one that will knock you on your head and make you think. Vonnegut begs us to have awareness - "the unwavering band of light" that separates us from conformist "fully programmed robots" that comprise the mundane world around us. Through his wacky, fun, & always zany ride through Midland City, Vonnegut dares us to open our minds to an undiscovered world that few of us seldom visit. As Vonnegut's alter ego, The Creator of the Universe, so aptly states, "Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done."
Bravo!
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Summary: Could blow your mind if you let it
Review: Have you ever thought that you were the only sentient being on earth? That everyone else was an automaton designed to test your reactions? That history and events in faraway places were simply constructs intended to cause you puzzlement or momentarily pique your interest? That there were far too many coincidences in this life to ignore forever the workings of a omnipotent (and quite possibly insane) Creator & Instigator? Vonnegut wrote CHAMPIONS as a birthday present to himself and he takes the opportunity to meditate at length on what it means to "play God" during the act of writing. He pushes his characters around the middle American landscape of his mind, devises horrible, dull, or joyous fates for them, and salutes them as they endure all his torments and whimsy. This is one of those books that can change your life. I read it when I was 14 or 15, and then read it again 4 or 5 times. I suppose I wanted to make certain that I had soaked up every ounce of divine madness in the book. I had read SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE previously, but this book set me off on a Vonnegut rampage, I devoured everything he wrote in a matter of months. CHAMPIONS opened my mind to the idea of "writer as Creator."
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Summary: A Crazy,Wonderful Book
Review: This book is great in that although written 30 years ago,and Vonnegut was satirizing things from back then,it still holds up. At first,I found the narrative a bit pedantic but then it really started to work for me. "Hardly(anything) is sacred",Vonnegut writes in the foreward.,and while reading his pot-shots of all things (absurdly) American you realize he's right. One of the best satires that I've ever come across..
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Summary: A lyrical fugue on madness, modernity, art and love.
Review: Although not his most popular work, this is in my opinion Vonnegut's most brilliant novel. Superficially it seems childish, with it's inane illustrations (by the author) and rambling, seemingly unstructured text. But probe a little deeper and some truly profound insights emerge, and there is litle doubt that this is a work of carefully crafted, absolute genius. There are at least four main themes in this book, and the way Vonnegut weaves them together is both masterful and unorthodox. (In no particular order) the first theme is of madness - Dwayne Hoover has finally fallen victim to the chemicals in his brain, and much of the narrative unfolds around his descent into lunacy and violence. The second theme is that of the alienation of modern-day life, as a despairing Kilgore Trout makes his "Pilgrim's Progress" across small-town USA, and Wayne Hoobler spends the novel waiting pathetically for his dreams to come true while standing by a Holiday Inn dumpster. The third theme is on the meaning of all art, both in Rabo Karabekian's stunning exposition on modern painting, and on Vonnegut's own musings about the point of writing a novel (which occurs within the narrative). And the final theme, binding it all together, is that of love and connection. As is found in many of Vonnegut's works, he argues that the giving and receiving of love is the only thing that makes our otherwise meaningless lives valuable. Many people miss this point when they read Vonnegut, and hence come away feeling Vonnegut is a very bitter man. If you see this, you'll discover he is actually a deeply compassionate one. I have read this book many times, and each time come away with a new insight. Read it and treasure it.
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