The Sirens of Titan

I am a Kurt Vonnegut fan! I re-read that audio book of Breakfast of Champions. A second reading was worth it.My first reading was close to the publication and I mostly enjoyed his almost despair about war and life in general. What had attracted me to his work was the book Cat's Cradle, which described a science indifferent to the harm it could do and people unable to stop themselves from ending the world....yet a foolish religion, based on lies, helped.Breakfast of Champions is more experimental. The author is present in the text with the power to lead his characters into suffering and participate in the consequences. The book is full of drawings, which the reader in the audio book ably describes. It is also full of explanations of very common things and slogans from advertising. The hint of Pop Art emerges.The N. word, which today is worse that any other swearing sexual or otherwise, is used frequently. This is jarring....but probably reflects to time of the story. The problems of racism, insanity, planet destruction, misuse of jails, even a gay son for a central character are all a part of the mix. Except for the N. word.....it remains timely.The climax of the story happens in a restaurant where the author's heart is opened by a speech by an avante garde artist whose peculiar looking expensive artwork......is really about human dignity. That's what's great about Kurt Vonnegut books. In the mess of the world, he understands and expresses the reality of grace and human dignity. Hope without a lot of evidence. I like it!

I really don't feel that I am qualified enough to review Vonnegut, but this has long been one of my favorite of his books. This is by far the most entertaining, with the most laugh out loud moments and...you can love him or hate him for his agenda...or you can read him because he is an entertaining man.When it comes to fiction, that should really be the only litmus test: "was it entertaining" and for better or for worse reading Vonnegut's and Hoover's break down into the realm of mental insanity was beautifully entertaining.Never mind the critics and the stuffy academic thesis's of scholars. Read it because it's funny and entertaining.

I first read this book about 15 years ago and remembered thinking it was hilarious...turns out it still is. It is almost impossible to describe this book but I think everybody should read some Vonnegut and this is as good of a place to start as any. This book will make you laugh out loud but also leave notions in your head to contemplate long after you have finished reading it.

This book stars Dwight Hoover, who is locally rich and famous in an Ohio town.This book also stars Kilgore Trout, who before being honored by Eliot Rosewater is nowhere famous.Actually, Trout is famous because the writer who created him, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut is famous, and he wrote this book. Vonnegut is also a character in the book, and he knows that he is writing it.Vonnegut makes Hoover, Trout, and Rosewater his puppets. It is a fun breaking of third and fourth walls, almost metafictive, and it doesn’t make you feel like Vonnegut is trying to say “Look how clever I am” because he really is clever. In an understated way. All the characters come together for a thing that happens. I won’t spoil it for you.I first read this when I was in my early 20s. I lay on full-sized mattress as the springs poked me through the cheap foam pad, and I was deep in Vonnegut’s world. The time passed too fast. I read it again this weekend, after a dozen years or so. The only difference is that I sat up for the most part, on a comfortable couch I own. That, and I appreciated the drawings differently (There are a number of drawings). The younger version of me liked them because they were a bit risqué. Older me wanted each new drawing to be a new tattoo.

Easily not one of Vonnegut's best works. Despite uncompelling protagonists and no real plotline, you get many of Vonnegut's amusing observations and abstractions. The chrono-synclastic infundilium, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, and a Tralfamadorian cameo.

Somewhere, somewhen, somebody up there likes you. Such is the message of Kurt Vonnegut's fantastic, early novel, The Sirens of Titan. I first read this beautiful literary achievement when I was a mere prat of 13. It sat in my then off to college, older brother's bookshelf. It was the cover of the Dell (if I recall correctly) paperback, showing a stylized reproduction of (Titian's?) "VENUS On A Half-Shell." I was just beginning puberty and had no idea of what sexual arousal was, but I knew how to resolve it by myself. I was hoping to read something about the woman on the cover.There wasn't a word about her in the text, but, looking back, I was off on one of the most influential adventures of my life. Some would say this novel is cynical; I disagree. At the time of that first read, I didn't think I'd understood much of it, but I took some really spiffy words to school. "Chrono-synclastic infundibulum," "Tralfamador," to name two. I believed they made me seem mysterious and (in the vernacular of northeastern Massachusetts) "wicked smart".As it turned out,as if by osmosis, I absorbed much of the underlying existential philosophy, the satirical attitude, the humor and the HOPE. Thus began my love affair with Vonnegut, adult sci-do and words. Read it, read it again and experience true American genius. The only question for me now is, how many descendants does Mark Twain have?