Breakfast of Champions

Rating:
Summary: A Medley of Vonnegut
Review: Breakfast of Champions is a gift Vonnegut gave to himself, granting him power over his characters and the ability to spit out some of his views by way of ultra-analysis. Vonnegut's style is dripping throughout the pages, an irreverant showcase of wit and perspective.
Some of the work IS dated, but the clever viewpoints and wit still remains. His style of explaining things, such as fried chicken, completely and honestly, is amazingly addictive. If this novel were better editted (with Vonnegut's style, some things fail) it would earn from me that fifth star.

Better than Slaughterhouse-Five in my oppinion. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: everyone is a robot--except for you.
Review: kurt vonnegut, jr. is a brilliant man. having said that now, this book is a work of genius. it is perhaps the funniest thing i have ever read in my life. but more than that, it is a horrible insult to me. that only works to make the book more effective as a piece of entertainment, as well as a work of philosophy. read this book because that is what you were created to do.

Rating:
Summary: Vonnegut has no subtlety
Review: I'll admit I only got about 50 pages into this book, so I can't offer the most informed opinion. But from what I read, this book is little more than garbage. I read "Cats Cradle" and enjoyed it. I didn't agree with everything in it but it was very clever and subtle. This on the other hand, has no subtlety. It reads like the lyrics to a rage against the machine song. Just pure liberal ranting about how everything established in America is wrong. Also, his drawings seem like a cop out, an excuse not to describe something. If you want to read good satire, read Heller, or John Kennedy Toole. This book is a lemon.

Rating:
Summary: vonnegut is king
Review: this book is not only easy to read but also a lot of fun. the characters are about a wimsical as you cna get. i look forward to reading all of vonnegut's books. this book is incredibly irreverant as well as it deals with psychological illness in a less than traditional fashion.

Rating:
Summary: Vonnegut doesn't play the race card well
Review: I wrote a review of this book a few weeks ago, and it still hasn't shown up on amazon, so I thought that I'd have another go at it.

The gist of my first review was that I thought that this book was entertaining and added much depth into the character of Kilgore Trout. The story was amusing and the pictures were interesting, yet sometimes seemed to be used just to take up space.

But there was one main bad part of this novel: it overplayed the race card. I'm not saying that Vonnegut is himself racist, and do believe that he was using the issue in a satrical way, but it just went overboard. The N-bomb was dropped way too many times and all of the black characters in the novel were sterotypical. The novel's attempted humor is not akin to the type used in, say, Blazing Saddles; instead, it just seemed like bigotry.

As a white man, I think the novel assumes a racist attitude. There are countless other books that deal with race much better, including Native Son, Invisible Man, and even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which really does not seem very similar to this book.

I liked the book, but it is just whimisical. If it actually seemed that Vonnegut was trying to make a clear cutting point about race relations, then I wouldn't be so hard on him. Unfortunately though, this theme never seems to precipitate, and the novel ends without making any dominant statement. The book is interesting, but ultimately shouldn't be classified as the "great literature" that some believe it to be.

Rating:
Summary: A Great American Classic
Review: Vonnegut is an American treasure, and Breakfast of Champions is a litterary gem. I can unquestionably say that this book change the way that I view novels as a whole and writers in general. Vonnegut is the captain of the crazy ship of joy and he's taking us along for the ride.

Rating:
Summary: Revised review: Some trippy Vonnegut
Review: I reviewed this book about a year ago but over that time have turned the story over in my mind enough to warrant another look. The story, I stated previously, is sub-par compared to Vonnegut's other works (Slaughterhouse, Cradle) and ultimately is a mess. Though I maintain that this is indeed an accurate description, I must submit to the possibility that such was in actuality intentional and that indeed many of the ideas presented outright in the novel merely constitute the very surface of what the author may truly be attempting to express.

If the works of Kurt Vonnegut have taught me anything at all, they have taught me this... If one fails as an artist to communicate any given idea or experience, their next goal by default as one who aspires to bring any meaning into existence is to communicate or express the tale of that failure. As much as I hate to admit it, this lends some logic to the Roman Catholic outlook on existence... Perhaps then, in the artistic realm, confession indeed purifies the soul. If one cannot skillfully tell the story that God or the divine does or does not exist, perhaps then the story of their failure will lend some important insight on the complexity of that particular riddle.

In light of this, and because nearly all of Vonnegut's works touch on this idea, the concept that "Breakfast of Champions" is not what it appears to be can be considered valid. What then is this story about? I have my own theories, but perhaps they are incorrect.

This then is the tale of the destiny of a fictional character when presented with the role of communicating a singularity of meandering ideals, philosophies, and perspectives born of a society which amid it's evolution into chaos has grown inhumane, presented by an artist unwilling to chain everything into a working model of the divine or profound because of the equally terrifying possibilities of inhumanity and insanity. THIS then is the story of "KILGORE TROUT".

As I have stated perhaps I am wrong. If you read it however, consider for a moment everything Vonnegut brings up in his chaotic dictation on America and humanity. How could all of these ideas ever come together? Remember too that the story begins with a line from the biblical story of Job, a human born to suffer the torture of God to prove a point to Lucifer. Could you do the same to poor Job? What would it mean about humanity? What would it mean about God?

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: It has been awhile since I've read this book so I don't recall many of the details of the book, but I suddenly found the urge to write a short review for it. In short, this book changed my life. It made me see things from a more intelligent perspective. I recommend this book to every person who is coming of age. This book will change the way you think.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Book of All Time
Review: I read this book the night I quit my first university. I was in a funk since I had decided that being an english major was pointless and the future seemed bleak and uncertain.

I stayed up all night reading this novel, utterly amazed at the manner that Vonneggutt wrote and constructed the story. It was a liberating experience and it taught me that one can write in any manner one chooses.

The almost grade school descriptions of activities do such a marvelous job of baring the reality of how we really are.

This is a wonderfully instructive novel that will open your mind and help to sweep out the debris that may have gathered there.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Vonnegut
Review: Kurt Vonnegut, in the Preface to this book, says "This book is my fiftieth birthday present to myself." The result is a novel which is a little lighter, a little less focused, and a little more witty than his other novels. One of the main characters of this novel is Kilgore Trout, a struggling (in fact, failed) writer who can only get his stories and novels published as filler for pornographic magazines and books. Anyone who has read Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut will recognize Trout's name--the main character of that novel, Billy Pilgrim, spends some time in a hospital next to a man (Eliot Rosewater) who is Trout's ONLY fan, and who has a private collection of Trout's work which is larger than the one Trout himself has.

Trout makes his appearance in this book when he departs for an arts festival in a small town called Midland City. There his path crosses with Dwayne Hoover, a car dealer who is already a little off his rocker and is soon to be made completely insane by Trout's writings, which he takes seriously. Though this was not my favorite of Vonnegut's novels, and though I did not enjoy the story as much as some of his other works, I could not help enjoying this book. Vonnegut is a superb writer, a true master of his craft. The drawings he includes are funny and add to the overall satirical effect of the book. Vonnegut perhaps included that part about the book being a birthday present so it wouldn't be taken as seriously as some of his other novels. I think the best part of this book is that it seems like Vonnegut wrote it just for the sake of writing, and that he didn't care what anyone would think of it. Breakfast of Champions certainly is not the masterpiece that Slaughterhouse Five or Cat's Cradle are, but it is nevertheless a very entertaining read.