Rating: 
Summary: Insanity!
Review: This book is crazy. The main character, Dwayne Hoover, is an auto-dealer that suffers a mental break down because of a short story he read that Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's alter ego, wrote. Then, after losing his mind, Dwayne goes on a shooting rampage. The narrative jumps between different time periods, but the story of Dwayne is still told effectively. There are many funny things going on in this book, like the career of Kilgore Trout, whose work only appears in dirty magazines albeit being about science fiction and dealing only with strange topics.Vonnegut inserts himself into the book as God. He also describes the genitals of characters and gave himself the world's widest how do you do. Other types of insanity can be found in this book and it's worth reading just to encounter it. Vonnegut's style is simplistic and lucid, which means that this is a book that one can finish quickly. There's no need to buy it because it can be found at your library. The one I frequent, for example, has three copies of this book and two shelves dedicated entirely to Vonnegut.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: After reading Cat's Cradle, I was very excited to read another Vonnegut title. After reading the many rave reviews of Breakfast of Champions I decided this would be an interesting choice. I was very disappointed. The only reason I even finished it was because it was an easy, short read plus I wanted to be able to write a review taking the whole book into consideration. First, it is not funny. I am befuddled as to how so many people found it funny. It just isn't. Sure, there are a couple of somewhat funny comments but these are very few and far between. Basically all he does is criticize our American society which I do not find offensive but he does it in such a direct, in-your-face style that it doesn't resonate with any humor. It is like he just put down on paper some random thoughts and complaints about our society without putting any effort toward creating a cohesive theme. The storyline itself is so fragmented and superficial and pock-marked with useless anecdotes and comments that after the first 50 pages I really lost all interest.
Now for the pictures. He decided to draw pictures of everyday things that we all are familiar with such as a cow and a hamburger. Now at first these were a bit humerous but after the first dozen or so they were very tedious and useless. I found myself thinking "Yes Kurt, I know what a cow looks like". I understand that he is pretending to be writing this commentary on our society to someone who is not familiar with our world in order to highlight it's contradictions, ironies and hypocrosies which are often times right under our noses but the pictures just got to be too much. I finally concluded he used them just for filler for his very thin story.
There was also a lot of derogatory comments about African-Americans which obviously offended some readers but he also has other vulgar comments as well and these, I believe, were all included to do just that: be offensive and vulgar for no other real purpose because it sure didn't add anything to the story such as it is.
I have not given up on Vonnegut however. I plan on reading a few more of his novels but if they are anything like this one then I'm through with him. Cat's Cradle was so much more funny, smart, well-conceived and subtle yet strong in it's message that I can't believe the same person wrote both but hey, I guess you can't hit a homerun every time and with Breakfast of Champions he certainly strikes out as far as I am concerned. Of note, the author himself states in the book that it is a bad book so there you have it.
Rating:
Summary: "My favorite from Vonnegut"
Review: Purely and simply by far the funniest book I have ever read, however be prepared for some pretty extreme racism. But don't worry there are plenty of little treats in this one for everybody. I promise you will "laugh out load" at least five times. At least. It was the softer side to this story that I was not expecting, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless and turned the book into a true masterpiece. What caught my eye is when Vonnegut places himself into the story and talks about his suicidal mother, and his farewell to Kilgore Trout at the end which is surprisingly emotional, but wickedly fun. Here is a sneak preview of a passage I want to share with you that grabbed me when I read it.(which is thrown in very unexpectedly I might add)
"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself behind my leaks.(glasses) "I know," I said. "You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said. "I know," I said.
This is Vonnegut letting loose some pretty dark demons in his life at the time. He wrote this book as a gift to himself for his 50th birthday. And for all the great fiction he has written over the years that we have grown to love, that passage was his heart and soul, not fiction. I guess he needed to get that off his chest.
I'm glad he did.
And so on.
Anyway, this is without a doubt a great book on many different levels (if you can get by the racism) from beginning to end. I loved it. Oh, I almost forgot, the pictures are great too.
Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking...
Review: Breakfast of Champions reads as a fresh work, considering today's political climate. It is a very anti-American novel and, depending how you voted in the last election, you will either love it or hate it. The plot concerns a science fiction author, Kilgore Trout (a pun on real-life author Theodore Sturgeon), and a car dealer named Dwayne Hoover. Hoover is going out of his mind and - after reading one of Trout's books - comes to believe that he is the only person in the world who isn't a robot.
This is an experimental novel. Vonnegut writes himself into the book and fills it with crude illustrations. It is funny, biased, and thought-provoking look on American society. It doesn't have a traditional "beginning, middle, and end." Vonnegut expressly states that he disdains traditional fiction writing because it makes people believe that they should act like characters in books. It is difficult to imagine agreeing with Breakfast of Champions one-hundred-percent, but it will give you plenty to think about.
Rating: 
Summary: Forgettable yet entertaining
Review: This is the third Vonnegut I have read and I still can't figure out if I like the guy or not.
It is a story(or is it?) about two insane lunatics who eventually cross paths. One of these men is a science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout who can only get his work published as filler for pornography magazines. The other is a wealthy widower who goes on a rampage because of Trout at the end of the story. I'm not giving anything away by telling you this because Vonnegut tells you himself at the begining of the book.
The book is quick and simple to read, vulgar and laugh-out-loud funny. It features crude drawings by Vonnegut and introduces many of its male characters by revealing the length and width of their penises. It certainly is entertaining in a Farlly brothers kind of way but is it literature as many regard it? I guess it could be a judgement on our culture but I certainly don't think he deserves the same respect as Thomas Hardy or Mark Twain. His books really don't stay with me like Hardy's or Twain's do. The only time I really recall them is when I see them sitting on my book shelf and think,
Rating:
Summary: You Owe Yourself This Great Read!
Review: Breakast of Champions was a book that Kurt Vonnegut wrote for hlmself as a 50 year old birthday present. Having reached half a century of this life, he had decided that it was time to let all of his 'repeat' characters - characters that showed up in several different novels of his - finally go. It's also the story of Dwayne Hoover and how the chemicals in his brain made him believe he was the only living human on the planet, a test by God, and that everyone else was a robot, a machine. And it talks a lot about beavers and penis size.
If you have never read this novel before, I can honestly say this is something you have never seen the likes of. Vonnegut's novel comes replete with drawings, absurd non-sequirors, and a good dose of both laughter and heartbreak. His often simplified language reveals myraids of information - when it comes to less meaning more, Vonnegut is a true artist. He can fit more emotion (both good and bad) into one sentence than most modern novelists can manage in an entire chapter.
The story itself tells the tale of two men, destined to meet, and change each other's lives forever. Why? Because the author wanted them to. How do I know this? He himself appears in the penultimate scene in which they meet; he realizes they are both just staring at him, and then rememebers that's because they're waiting for him to give them something to do or say. The two men, Dwayne Hoover (the man with the bad chemicals in his brain that make him slowly go crazy) and Kilgore Trout (the most frequently used character in Vonnegut's previous ouevre) meet at The Festival of the Arts in Midland City, where the incredibly wealthy Dwayne Hoover lives and runs a car dealership. (There is also a Wayne Hoobler in the story, but that's not important right now.) Trout is the author of the book Now It Can Be Told! that, upon reading, makes Dwayne Hoover crazy. Trout's book takes the form of a letter from the Creator of the Universe addressed to the reader, assuring him that he/she is the only real human on the planet, and that everyone else is a machine designed to test him. Their are loving machines and hating machines and sports machines and war machines and lying machines, etc. The reader is the only one with true freedom and choice and feeling. To many readers of such a book, they would think it clever and perhaps even funny. For Dwayne Hoover it becomes the Gospel truth.
The book is about many other things as well, and to give too much away would be criminal. But I can tell you that, no matter how hard you try not to, you will laugh at some point at this book, and you will feel incredible sadness at others. And you won't know exactly how or why Vonnegut is able to achieve this. Therein lies his magic. Read it and see for yourself! Another quick Amazon pick I'd like to recommend is The Losers' Club by Richard Perez -- another exceptional book, truly wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: farting and tap dancing
Review: This was an odd book. The author introduces himself as a character in his book about 2/3 of the way through and gives away the ending to his own story. Bizarre to say the least, and at first glance, I was inclined to think of it as a cheap narrative device, particularly after reading Cat's Cradle, which was a fantastic story. However, I came to realise that the author *was* a part of the story, offering his views and emotions on subjects as widely-varying as American intervention in wars overseas (he might as well have been writing about Iraq), death of family members, insanity, one's mortality, sex. And so on. The author is himself a part of the story with much to add on these topics, but he relegates himself to a secondary role behind Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover.
The most notable character to me, though, was Zog, the farting and tap dancing space alien. WTF?
Rating:
Summary: America Is...
Review: Breakfast of Champions is a celebration of having found something valuable in an immense heap of trash, and a lamentation of lost opportunity and injustice confused with superior morals. The search theme overwhelms the narrative; the narrator, Vonnegut in his own voice, carefully examines what he sees and tries his best to make sense of it. This process is a bit subtle; take a look, for example, at all the mirrorings (Hoover and Hoobler, for example), and all the reflections of vulgarity and immanence (where taking a leak means stealing a mirror). Vonnegut holds up to the reader the most repulsive aspects of human life, and American life, and insists the reader look at it and recognize it for what it is.
Is it trash? Are we machines? Bands of light? Are storytellers responsible for the trouble we find ourselves in, or ourselves repeating stupid stories we're supposed to believe in? Vonnegut alternately pleads with you to answer these questions, and confronts you with them.
Very few stories look good after this. The stories that justify racism, sexism, homophobia, corporate environmental plunder, crappy art, the excesses of capitalist exploitation and warfare and hunger and virtually any kind of abuse Vonnegut throws out the window. The trouble is that they land right in the drinking water (pollution of Sugar Creek). Even Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gets a thumb in the eye, and folks who (in V's view) undermine humanity by thinking of human bodies as machines.
It's a great piece of folk art, folks, as relevant to US culture now as it was in 1973.
Rating:
Summary: Trout... better here then in Fish and Stream
Review: If you're an advit Vonnegut reader you know damn well who Kilgoure Trout. So it's no suprise you want to find a little bit more about him. This book is the definitive Kilgoure Trout book I believe, and has the same effect on this character that the Enacapatian Proclamantion would have had on Kunto Kenta. Vonnegut frees his character in this book, Which I found to be something no other author could pull off.
Plus Bill, Trout's bird is quite possibly the greatest Bird in a book sense Robinson Crusoe's Parrot.
It's worth your time - if not for the cross dressing Harry LaSabre alone.
* <--- and you will never look at that the same.
Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Air
Review: Breakfast of Champions was a book that Kurt Vonnegut wrote for himself as a present for his 50th birthday. Having reached half a century of this life, he had decided that it was time to let all of his repeated characters (characters that showed up in several different novels of his) finally go. Vonnegut combines satire, insanity, chaos, and literature into an amazingly fast-moving book that is hilarious, disturbing, wild, and undeniably true. It depicts modern life from a distance, as if explaining it to an extraterrestrial. Through this viewpoint, the reader can realize how many of the things people do are ridiculouse.
The book follows the odyssey of an oddball science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. The reader follows Kilgore from his melancholy childhood in Bermuda to the sleazy underside of New York City, and eventually to a dangerous encounter with a Midwestern car dealer called Dwayne Hoover, a man on the brink of going insane. Vonnegut weaves through the lives of various characters, yet still to bring more focus onto Hoover and Trout and the path that follows. The descriptions and backgrounds that hover around each character give "Breakfast of Champions" an unexpectedly smooth plot where everything comes together in the end. That effect causes an explosive, satisfying moment of thought after the reader finishes the last page of the novel. There is clearly a message, but the exact message is not clear; it's definitely open to interpretation.
Being a profane, naughty, yet profoundly spiritual book, "Breakfast of Champions" is a good recommendation to anybody searching for something new and original. The writing style is sleek, quick, and sarcastic. Vonnegut writes the entire book as though he were somebody seeing something for the first time, and rather than explaining the feelings to the reader, as most would, he simply states what he sees, leaving the reader to associate their own feelings into the story. For anybody tired of ridiculous modern literature, Breakfast of Champions is much like a breath of fresh air.
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