Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kurt VonnegutEdition: Paperback
Published: 1999-05-11
ISBN: 0385334206
Number of pages: 303
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Book Reviews of Breakfast of Champions
Book Review: Breakfast Of Champions
Summary: 5 Stars
Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut *****
Breakfast Of Champions is satire at it's all time best, and Breakfast of Champions is Kurt Vonnegut's all time best, the only other novel of his to even come close is Slaughterhouse-Five. Which is a must read. But as I was saying, BoC is a not so subtle comment on the social structure of America in the early 1970's, but what is so amazing, much like with Orwel's Nineteen Eighty Four, and Huxleys Brave New World, is that this is more relevant now then it was thirty-forty years ago. His take on war, racism, and politics strips them of their importance and breaks them to their core and makes you realize how much energy and time we spend on these things. He does the same with Sex, and success, and material goods as well.
As for the story itself, it is a strange one, and one that is at sometimes hard to follow, or it would be at least if it weren't for the excellent drawings depicting what is currently happening in the story. Yes this has pictures but it is in no way a graphic novel in the technical since. As Killgore Trout a novelist makes his way to a arts rally across the country he finds himself face to face with a man named Dwayne who believes his storys are true and has become a psychopath because of it. It only gets weirder from there.
The book is not tired or a strain to read ever, it is one of the most enjoyable reads I have ever had, and I would go so far as to say that Breakfast Of Champions is one of my top five books of all time.
Summary of Breakfast of Champions
"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.
Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.
A Midwestern automobile salesman with a troubled marriage meets an illustrious writer in Vonnegut?s savage satire of middle America. Made into a 1998 Bruce Willis movie.
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