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Guests | December 7, 2009

The Cornucopia of Home Science

1 comment By Theodore Gray

Reading old books of science experiments for children, it's easy to become nostalgic for the days when you could buy jugs of sulfur and mercury at... Continue »

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1. 
   $20.96 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

   Theodore Gray

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TheGreatDane, May 12, 2009

For those who eat, sleep and breathe literature, Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions certainly lives up to its name. It is a brilliant piece of social commentary on modern America that continues to be relevant in the new millennium. He explores racism, pollution, and sexuality in a way that is both simple and telling. While his modern style may contain some interesting quirks, readers should not let this allow them to put the book back on the shelf.
Breakfast of Champions is a darkly humorous tale about the brief meeting of two men: the elderly science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the successful Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover. The novel covers Trout’s journey from New York City to Midland City to attend the opening of the Mildred Barry Memorial Center for the Arts in hopes of inspiring shock and disgust in the other attendees. Meanwhile, the reader gets to dip into the life of the “fabulously well-to-do” Dwayne Hoover, a resident of Midland City, as he goes completely insane. Vonnegut exposes the readers not only to the oddities of these two men, but also indulges in explaining the details of other seemingly minor characters such as Dwayne’s son George “Bunny” Hoover, a waitress named Patty Keene, and a young doctor named Cyprian Ukwende. In the end, all of these characters are linked by Hoover’s insanity-driven attack. Despite its fractured appearance, the novel’s structure actually helps to explain the themes and ideas of the novel.
While the novel appears to be full of random tangents and Sharpie doodles, Vonnegut actually uses these to highlight the ridiculous and shallow aspects of American society. For instance, “A Pyramid was a sort of huge stone tomb which Egyptians had built thousands and thousands of years before…” (112) followed by a simple, two-toned drawing of three pyramids. While this may seem both irrelevant and unnecessary, it is actually very clever in context. The drawing is in reference to a shipping truck with “Pyramid” written on the side simply because the owner “liked the sound of it”. The cartoon helps show how people do not pay attention to context or details; they act on impulse and without logic. The doodle is not only telling, its simplicity adds humor to the situation instead of being outright critical of American culture.
Vonnegut also covers a number of modern social issues in the novel, one being racism. Vonnegut plainly points out racial discrimination and preconceptions without worrying about what is politically correct. For example, “Dwayne asked a white workman how many horsepower drove the machine. All the workers were white. ‘We call it The Hundred Nigger Machine,’ said the workman. This had reference to a time when black men had done most of the heavy digging in Midland City” (150). Here, Vonnegut does not hesitate to use a potentially offensive word like “nigger” to illustrate the workmen’s feelings of superiority. Instead of trying to cover up an embarrassing part of American history or pretending that racism is gone, Vonnegut exposes it plainly and without frills. His honesty leaves the reader unable to avoid racism and forces them to examine whether or not it is present today.
Another social issue Vonnegut points out is pollution. People’s careless attitude is extraordinarily obvious in Breakfast of Champions. It is very matter-of-factly stated that “Trout marveled at how recently white men had arrived in West Virginia, and how quickly they had demolished it – for heat. Now the heat was all gone, too – into outer space, Trout supposed” (125). In the novel, commenting of the condition of West Virginia feels irrelevant but is very telling of the attitude Vonnegut perceives society to have. Just as Kilgore Trout is not troubled by walking through a polluted stream that covers his feet in plastic, few people stop to think about what has been done to the land. The carelessness of society is exposed leaving the readers to decide for themselves how to feel about it and what to do.
While Breakfast of Champions is an extremely entertaining satire, it is certainly not for people who are conservative or easily offended. For instance, Vonnegut points out America’s preoccupation with sex by going on tangents about the penis size of various male characters as well as the body measurements of the female characters. He even goes so far as to briefly discuss the presence of “wide open beavers” in pornographic novels, complete with a sketch to illustrate the difference between the animal and the body part. The pervasiveness of sex in American thought and media is made abundantly clear, but for a reader that cannot look past this type of content to see the commentary, this is not the book for them.
Breakfast of Champions is a smart and interesting read that comments on many different aspects of modern American society. While its content may not appeal to more conservative readers, it is the perfect choice for any person that enjoys dark comedy and great satire.

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