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bennings 's review for:
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
I didn't laugh once.
Is there really anything else to say? Yes, there's "characterization" and "themes", of course, but for a book that's trying very, very hard to be funny, that's quite the damning statement.
There feels an utter lack of wit about the jokes Vonnegut uses. Whether it's "mention every male character's penis dimensions for no reason" or "repeating the phrase "wide-open beavers" over and over again in the hopes it becomes funny through sheer absurdity", all of the humor resembles something Jay Cartwright would come up with age thirteen.
And it's a shame, because the protagonists Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover are well-realized and entertaining to follow. The sheer juxtaposition between a cynical sci-fi writer who can articulate virtually every flaw in American society and yet is too apathetic to do anything about it and a bombastic car salesman nominally living the American Dream slowly going insane as he comprehends how utterly empty consumerism is makes for a fantastic dynamic, even if they barely share a single scene between them.
I honestly don't have too much to say about this one; it's a satire of just about everything you can think of, and while its irrevanant tone keeps it well away from "we live in a society!" territory, it does eventually reach a point where the cynicism overwhelms and the point it's making feels no greater than "America SUCKS!" Yes, the depcition of crossdressers and homosexuals is probably about as good as you possibly hope for from the early seventies but all I honestly felt by the very end was a vague antipathy for everything. When black humor doesn't land it's merely depressing, and while I wouldn't say Breakfast of Champions ever got to the point where I didn't care what happened, it remains something that won't really stick with me for very long.
6/10, and I'm putting it in 21st place out of 52 of all the books I've read this year.
(PS: I got this as an audiobook before I knew there would be a lot of doodles by Vonnegut in it; strongly recommend anyone interested get the print version!)
Is there really anything else to say? Yes, there's "characterization" and "themes", of course, but for a book that's trying very, very hard to be funny, that's quite the damning statement.
There feels an utter lack of wit about the jokes Vonnegut uses. Whether it's "mention every male character's penis dimensions for no reason" or "repeating the phrase "wide-open beavers" over and over again in the hopes it becomes funny through sheer absurdity", all of the humor resembles something Jay Cartwright would come up with age thirteen.
And it's a shame, because the protagonists Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover are well-realized and entertaining to follow. The sheer juxtaposition between a cynical sci-fi writer who can articulate virtually every flaw in American society and yet is too apathetic to do anything about it and a bombastic car salesman nominally living the American Dream slowly going insane as he comprehends how utterly empty consumerism is makes for a fantastic dynamic, even if they barely share a single scene between them.
I honestly don't have too much to say about this one; it's a satire of just about everything you can think of, and while its irrevanant tone keeps it well away from "we live in a society!" territory, it does eventually reach a point where the cynicism overwhelms and the point it's making feels no greater than "America SUCKS!" Yes, the depcition of crossdressers and homosexuals is probably about as good as you possibly hope for from the early seventies but all I honestly felt by the very end was a vague antipathy for everything. When black humor doesn't land it's merely depressing, and while I wouldn't say Breakfast of Champions ever got to the point where I didn't care what happened, it remains something that won't really stick with me for very long.
6/10, and I'm putting it in 21st place out of 52 of all the books I've read this year.
(PS: I got this as an audiobook before I knew there would be a lot of doodles by Vonnegut in it; strongly recommend anyone interested get the print version!)