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Kurt Vonnegut

Thursday, Oct 5, 2000 11:15 PM UTC

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"Breakfast of Champions"

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The writing of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is a genre unto itself, a unique perspective on human folly that combines elements of science fiction, satire and fable. “Breakfast of Champions” is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

“Kurt Vonnegut is a science fiction writer in that he writes of societies different from ours, of technological capacities we don’t yet have, of universes whose rulers are other than those of ours. Kurt Vonnegut is also a satirist, a keen observer of the follies of mankind and of the hypocrasies of its leaders. The combination is a powerful one.” -Isaac Asimov

Listen to this excerpt from “Breakfast of Champions”, taken from the Harper Audio/Caedmon release of “The Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Audio Collection.” Read by Vonnegut himself in his unmistakably ironic drone, it represents the author at his existential best.

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