Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast Of Champions

Reviews
 

Breakfast of Champions was Vonnegut's self-described "fiftieth birthday present to himself", and it's a more self-indulgent and loosely constructed book than his earlier novels. Nonetheless, it's well worth reading, not least because it's the least sentimental thing he ever wrote. It's also a form of disguised autobiography of Vonnegut the writer, seen through the lens of his nightmarish counterpart, the failed science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut is the funniest, most playful and light-handed of all of the postmodernist American authors (with the possible exception of Richard Brautigan, a lesser figure), and this approachability has harmed him among critics who think that difficulty and seriousness must be foregrounded at all times. Breakfast is an 'easy read' only in the sense that it is composed in accessible prose and is essentially comic in tone: the reader who thinks that Vonnegut's folksy manner and frequent recourse to visual and textual jokes conceal shallowness needs to read more carefully.

I find Vonnegut ethically serious in a way that contemporary postmodernists - like John Barth, for example - are not. What makes Breakfast work is precisely that Vonnegut keeps dragging the reader back from the verbal and structural games to contemplate the role of randomness, chance and the determined in human lives. The underlying vision is exceptionally dark: in some ways Vonnegut is an American Celine or Voltaire, absolutely sceptical of the value of human reason and good intentions in the face of human cruelty and stupidity. The result is a violent oscillation between comic situations and tragic implications. Vonnegut also exposes the bad faith frequently underlying the use of metafictional tropes - the author as character in his own book, for example - as no other author does. Vonnegut's fundamental suspicion of the value of fiction has never been clearer than it is here.

Breakfast of Champions is the last in the ten-year run of books that made the author's reputation. Four stars only because Slaughterhouse-5, Mother Night and Cat's Cradle are better controlled.

Paul Bowes

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I bought this as a present for my dad. My Dad and myself both love Kurt Vonnegut's work, and I'm sure this book will live up to our expectations.
Rosie

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Meine Schweiz.: Ein Lesebuch for the USA. It's surreal, it's short, and it's a thoroughly enjoyable account of Americana from a true master. I can still see Vonnegut's books being publicly burned in many a place in the US, not for being wrong or for their sarcasm, the vivd imagination and the outlandish ideas, but about being so right and the truth being, well, so unpleasant.

In my opinion a literary masterpiece and the drawings inside are priceless too :)
AK

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My first Vonnegut but leading to many more. Seeming simple but not, really. I love the way he's dispensed with all the tedious parts of novel writing and just cut to the interesting bits. A story told in fragments and bullet points yet.. aw heck, it's great, buy it. :)
P. Nagle

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Reading some of the blandly negative reviews on the site, I felt I should say something about the book - which is a great one, from what I can tell. One especially zealous reviewer suggested that Vonnegut inserts himself in the book to add an autobiographical element to the proceedings - but this is really not the case. I don't want to go on, suffice to say that the overarching theme of the novel is that of free will, and specifically how much of this is actually desirable. The narrator is an example of absolute free will. Vonnegut (not necessarily the same person as the narrator) allows his narrator tell the story in as ridiculous, digressive, anarchic a style as possible. This perhaps illustrates the idea that total free will is not necessary or indeed beneficial to rational happiness. This sort of thing is evident throughout the novel, with the story of the robot pimp etc. To be honest, 'Breakfast...' is just a totally interestng, thoughtful and lovely book. Everyone should at least give it a try. Just look closely, that's all.
Ryan R. Ashe

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