Four stars because it kinda got boring a few pages past the middle. The beginning was very strong and funny. The ending was ok.

Kilgore Trout is an interesting character. I liked the description of his novels, especially their ideas and how the author, who is the narrator, integrates it into the story.

The framing of the story is the first time I've encountered. The story is narrated by the author who is also a character in the novel. The problem is that the narrator is omniscient and omnipotent, so he can do whatever he wants to the characters. Does this detract from the 'reality' of the characters?

It is a short novel, and the drawings provide an additional source of humor. The language is plain. The book is very quotable.

Some quotes from the novel:

"The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head. I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can’t live without a culture anymore."

“Bill, Bill—” he said, “listen, I’m leaving the cage, but I’m coming back. I’m going out there to show them what nobody has ever seen at an arts festival before: a representative of all the thousands of artists who devoted their entire lives to a search for truth and beauty—and didn’t find doodley-squat!”

"Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done."

And so on.