Librarian living in Northern California.
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Comments for Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast of Champions: 06/11/11
When I read Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut at the start of 2010, I had approximately forty reviews I needed to review and post and another forty I had written but not yet posted. Here I am nearly a year later and I'm up to nearly two hundred reviews to write and another hundred and fifty that are written but not posted. If I were to walk away from reading I would still have nearly two year's worth of material for my blog. It's both a scary and an exhilarating thought.
Had I gotten this book reviewed in time, I would count Breakfast of Champions on my ten best "odd ball" books. Formally the book is a satire that pokes fun at American mores but it's presented as a metafiction and is a good companion piece to Blue Food Revolution (another book I was reading at the time).
The novel's plot, such that it is, follows parallel characters: Kilgore Trout, an impoverished science fiction author who has no idea of his success, and Dwayne Hoover, a Pontiac salesman convinced that Trout's words are true and the word of God.
One of Kilgore's stories involves petroleum consuming aliens who have convinced humanity to make vehicles in their image, thus creating the automobile. My first thought was "Oh, now Cars makes sense." There are many other glimpses of Trout's stories throughout the book and they are one method for Vonnegut for his satire.
Four stars