Breakfast of Champions

— no relation to any cereal product implied.

I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's breakfast of champions. I think it influenced a couple of my recent posts. It's written with the pacing of instructional children's book, and it'd be a good one at that if it weren't ham-handed with regard to race and too subtle about the martinis and olives. The sex it gets more or less okay.

(I'm sure the racism was intentionally ham-handed, but unlike other blunt parts of the books, the black characters seemed too flat, and I couldn't find any knowing wink from the author indicating that the flatness in particular was a parody of stereotypes.)

The book has an interesting layout, in that it reminded me of some of the best and most cleanly designed web pages, which is nice coming from a book that predated HTTP. The prose also shows the power of simplicity.

I hope it is, as the author has admitted, one of his worst books. It wasn't very good, and I certainly enjoyed reading it.

The favicon from the author's web site comes from one of the hand-drawn pictures in the book: .

It is a depiction of the author's anus.