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Book Reviews > Breakfast
of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut book Description
Welcome to the Breakfast
of Champions Description page:
"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.
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