Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut | Martini, Please...

books:

Breakfast of Champ...

	Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut Dial Press Trade Paperback, 1999 - 303 pages average customer review:based on 255 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Great Satire

I usually take forever to finish books (I'll start another one in the middle of one or just lose interest) but I read this one straight through cover to cover. Vonnegut is a brilliant satirist and this book had me laughing throughout. This book inspired me to buy Slaughterhouse Five which I hope to get around to reading soon.

Martini, Please...

This was my first Vonnegut experience, and I have to say I wasn't disappointed...I've got a lot of the book marked with parts I especially loved. I'm going to read plenty more of his stuff now too. This is probably one of the best books I've ever read, and I've read literally thousands of books. It's easy to read, but the story and the premise are a little unusual. That's one of my favorite things about it. If you've never read Vonnegut, this is a good place to start.

for more information click here

Vonnegut Takes Out The Trash

Breakfast Of Champions seems to stand alone in the Vonnegut canon. It is a bizarre piece of product that never really settles into, or onto anything. It's a depressed, cynical, psychedelic mishmash that offers KV's pithy comments on the state of the globe-flinging sarcastic barbs at issues like heredity, free will, racism, schizophrenia, corporatism, nationalism, alcoholism, war, the penal system, suicide, homosexuality, modern art, and the nature of writing itself. And so on.

It's entirely possible that this kitchen-sink fiction was Kurt's attempt to say everything he wanted to say in an epigrammatic fashion without having to tie it too tightly to a meaningful story. It's also entirely plausible that he was suffering from depression and near-madness when he produced this; it is not a friendly or happy book, though it is quite funny.

I'd not be foolish enough to compare this to greatness. But it's a perfect entryway into a different perspective on what is happening on this bizarre ball of green and blue. All half-bright teenagers should read this book; all still-bright adults should return to it and find that things haven't changed since 1973 and we could use a good snicker about the way the world is ordered.

Everyone who knows Vonnegut knows he can write a good novel. If you want to see that writer take a curette to his brain and basically explode from all the hatred and inhumanity and senselessness he sees, then Breakfast Of Champions is where it's at.

for more information click here

My first Vonnegut experience

Breakfast of Champions is my first experience with Mr. Vonnegut, whom many of my friends think is one of the best writers ever. I chose Breakfast of Champions because I liked the title - I liked it even more when I learned that it was in reference to martinis. Vonnegut has a unique sense of humor and a style of writing that seems as candid as if he were writing it as a stream of consciousness or sitting in the same room with you telling the story. And it works, it works wondefully and I can't wait to read more of his works. Breakfast of Champions is about two men (a car salesman and a pulp fiction writer) who eventually cross paths in a cocktail lounge. The side characters aren't trivial - they each contribute in some way to each other and to the main characters. Vonnugut illustrates the book with simple and comical drawings that he did himself. While at times I wondered where in the story I was and what he was telling me about at the moment might (or might not) lead to, I stuck with it simply to keep enjoying his style and writing. The book seemed to be laughing at the planet and the people on it, breaking humans down into robots who are programmed to do this and that. Humans, in this novel, did not seem to enjoy the life they were living or take much pride in the world they lived in. The narrator (Vonnegut himself) often compares his characters penis size or the women's body measurements - otherwise nothing personal or individualistic about them. I looked up reviews and notes of the book after I finished reading hoping that they might offer something that I missed or a subplot that I didn't pick up on. I didn't find much, which told me that the book just has to be read to be enjoyed.

for more information click here

A review looks like this:

If you enjoy bawdy, ludicrous theories, and can deal with the Vonnegut's roller-coaster mental track, this may be an interesting read.

Initially I found it to be too chaotic in organization, subjecting the reader to Vonnegut's tangential attention span. But one could argue, as most of Vonnegut's cult-like followers do, that this within itself offers an original style in American literature. After 100 pages I put the book down out of a lack of interest (and out of respect to the author since I didn't want to end his last book on my booklist on a sour note) only to pick it back up when the characters, as well as Vonnegut's style, beckoned my subconscious.

You either hate it or love it, there is no in-between and sometimes its a combination of both. Not recommended as in introduction to Vonnegut, but definitely a must for those inclined to visit his innovative universe.

for more information click here