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March 14, 2012

Breakfast of Champions

Where have I been?  I don't know why I haven't been blogging.  Just not much to say I suppose.

But hey, I finished another book for the TBR Double Dare!  At some point Amazon had a daily deal on this book for the Kindle so I picked it up cheap a while back but hadn't gotten around to it.  I'm glad I did because I was totally in the mood for it's dark, absurdist wackiness.

It's not one of his top tier books, like Slaughterhouse Five or Cat's Cradle but it's a little lighter and funnier than those, so it works well.  It's about a failed science fiction author, Kilgore Trout, making his way to an arts festival in the Midwest while a local car dealer and business owner of the town slowly comes unhinged.  When they meet in the climax, Trout is horrified to find that one of his works of fiction becomes the thing that causes the car dealer to finally lose it and go on a violent rampage.

Okay, so it doesn't sound that funny but trust me, Vonnegut uses a light touch and part of what makes it funny is that he tell you up front everything that will eventually happen so you're not wondering about that but instead enjoying the ride he takes you on in a weird Virgil-like trip through 70s America with comments on it's culture, racism, sexism, consumerism, etc.  He is not above poking you and letting you know he thinks of these characters as versions of himself and if you don't get that, then he goes on to stick himself right there in the ending of the book as a sunglasses-wearing observer of the climax of the so-called plot.

He fills the book with silly little pen and ink drawing of random things.  Probably one of the unintentionally funniest is the fact that, to me at least, his drawing of an asshole (don't ask why he draws this) kept reminding me of the new Wal-Mart icon:

And so on.