Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Why I Read It: Like Blue Sword it was on the Harvard Book List and I purchased it off Amazon.
Plot: Kilgore Trout writes science fiction stories. Other guy reads them…chaos ensuses.
Style: Rambling. No honestly it felt like the entire novel had been written in one sitting. Vonnegut writes like he is explaining the world to an alien which makes for the occasionally interesting idea but mostly it was just distracting. At times Vonnegut will randomly address the reader. Additionally there are cartoon pictures to illustrate points that don't need illustration. For instance one chapter has pictures of a Holiday Inn sign, a do not disturb sign, a sanitary strap (from a hotel toilet) and a lamb.
Thoughts: I was pretty disappointed in this book. I love Vonnegut's short stories and I enjoyed "Slaughterhouse 5". I thought this would be an easy and enjoyable read but I stopped at 27%. The style was too weird and the story was frankly boring. Additionally there were a lot of off-color references to body parts, pornography, and the like. In the end I gave up.
Quotables:
" The gun was loaded and cocked. There were neat little metal packages containing charcoal, potassium nitrate and sulpher only inches from his brains. He had only to trip a lever, and the powder would turn to gas. The gas would blow a chuck of lead down a tube and through Dwayne's brains. "
"Sparky could not wag his tail--because of an automobile accident many years ago, so he had no way of telling other dogs how friendly he was. He had to fight all the time"
"Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. "
Recommendation: Read Slaughterhouse 5, or anything else...
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