Breakfast of Champions Review

Breakfast of Champions Description

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Having read almost all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, Breakfast of Champions is defininely one of the best. I frequently found myself laughing hysterically at Vonnegut's satire and black humor.

However, Breakfast of Champions is different than the rest of Vonneguts books, as it is actually told from Vonnegut's narrative (a present to himself for his 50th birthday). Doubtlessly, our favorite characters make an appearance, including Kilgore Trout, and Kazak the dog, and even Eliot Rosewater. Breakfast of Champions has handdrawn pictures by Vonnegut himself dispersed throughout the novel.

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 remembers 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 Vonnegut's magic. So pick up a copy of Breakfast of Champions now!

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