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Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

4.07 · Rating details · 241,094 ratings · 8,188 reviews

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how ...more

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Paperback, 303 pages

Published May 1999 by Dell Publishing (first published July 12th 1973)

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Jul 24, 2008 Honey rated it liked it

I am about to finish Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. I checked out the book from the Multnomah County Library four weeks ago. I've never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before. The book looks like this:

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I'm enjoying the book because it feels easy to read. I'm not enjoying the book because parts of it induce discomfort. There are many things in the universe that make me feel the opposite of discomfort. One of those things is a lava lamp.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

A lava lamp emi ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Barry Pierce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Manic depressives and Drāno enthusiasts

Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-2017

A novel is a dead tree with words on it. Breakfast of Champions is a great dead tree with words on it.

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Jul 26, 2016 Emily May rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, classics

I have a little inner book snob that desperately wants to like Vonnegut. In the very unlikely event that I should find myself at a convention of bookish intellectuals, I feel like I'd fit right in if I sipped my champagne and said "Oh yes, indeed, I simply adore what Vonnegut has to say about the absence of free will..."

This is the kind of bollocks that runs through my mind on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, I just don't find him that funny most of the time. Perhaps jokes about open beavers are fu ...more

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Jul 21, 2015 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, humor, united-states, classics, 20th-century, literature

Breakfast of Champions = Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions, is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut.

His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author.

Breakfast of Champions has themes of free will, suicide, and race relations among Breakfast of Champions = Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions, is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut.

His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author.

Breakfast of Champions has themes of free will, suicide, and race relations among others.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوم از ماه ژانویه سال 2017میلادی

عنوان: صبحانه قهرمانان؛ نویسنده: کورت ونه گات؛ مترجم: راضیه رحمانی؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1393، در 312ص، مصور، شابک9786002781147؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده ی 20م

صبحانه قهرمانان، رمانی طنزآمیز است؛ دغدغه‌ های ذهن نويسنده، درباره ی دو پیرمرد سفیدپوست لاغر اندام است، که روی سیاره‌ ای در حال مرگ زندگی میکنند؛ «کیلگور تراوت»، نویسنده‌ ای پرکار، و در عین حال، ناکام است، که به جز یک خوانشگر، هیچ‌کس انبوه کتاب‌ها، و داستان‌های او را، نخوانده‌ است؛ روزی با اعمال نفوذ همین تنها خوانشگرش، به جشنواره ی هنر شهر کوچک «میدلند سیتی» دعوت می‌شود؛ او که از این دعوت شوکه شده، تصمیم می‌گیرد تا به آنجا برود؛ حضور «تراوت» در آن شهر، رخدادی است، که زندگی چندین شخص را دگرگون می‌کند؛ یکی از این اشخاص «دواین هوور» است، که فروشنده ی ماشین‌های «پونتیاک»، و از ثروتمندترین شهروندان «میدلند سیتی»، هست؛ «ونه گات» در واقع، شخصیت‌هایی آفریده، که با آن‌ها خود را متحول می‌کند، و به این نتیجه می‌رسد، که انسان‌ها دو بعد «ماشینی» و «مقدس» دارند؛ تا زمانیکه یک انسان، ماشین‌وار عمل کند، وضعیتش پیچیده، تراژیک و خنده دار خواهد بود؛ اما در درون همه ی موجودات، به طور یکسان، ماهیت مقدسی نیز، وجود دارد، که نویسنده آن را «نوار لغزش ‌ناپذیری از نور» می‌نامد؛ این ماهیت، در وجود تک‌ تک این موجودات، شعله می‌کشد؛ «ونه گات» در این رمان، از تکنیک‌های بسیاری سود برده، تا اصول سنتی داستان نویسی را، در هم بریزد؛ وی از همان آغاز داستان، درباره ی چگونگی، و پایان آن سخن می‌گوید، اما رخدادهای پیش بینی نشده، در این میان، خود حدیث دیگری هستند

نقل از متن: (سرآغاز کلام: «صبحانه قهرمانان» نام انحصاری نوعی برشتوک صبحانه از شرکت «جنرال میلز» است؛ هر گونه استفاده از این عبارت در سراسر کتاب، و برای عنوان آن، نه مبنی بر ارتباط با شرکت «جنرال میلز» و بهره مندی از حمایت ایشان است و نه به منظور بی اعتبار ساختن محصولات خوبشان؛ «فیبی هرتی»، که کتاب به او هدیه شده، به گفتاری آشنا، دیگر دستش از دنیا کوتاه است؛ «فیبی» بیوه ای اهل «ایندیاناپولیس» بود، که در پایان دوره ی «رکود بزرگ» با او آشنا شدم؛ آن زمان، «فیبی» حدوداً پنجاه ساله بود، و من شانزده ساله بودم، یا در همین حول و حوش؛ «فیبی» مایه دار بود، منتها چون در تمام دوران جوانی اش هفت روز هفته، سر کار رفته بود، دیگر برایش عادت شده بود، و دست از کار نمیکشید؛ او نکته های منطقی و گیرایی در ستون «توصیه هایی به عاشقان دلخسته» مینوشت، در روزنامه «ایندیاناپولیس تایمز»، روزنامه ای که زمانی معتبر به حساب میآمد، ولی حالا دیگر منسوخ شده؛ منسوخ؛ او برای فروشگاه زنجیره ای «ویلیام اچ بلاک» آگهی مینوشت، کسب و کار این فروشگاه هنوز هم، در ساختمانی که پدرم طراحی کرده، رونق دارد؛ «فیبی» برای حراج تابستانه ی کلاه حصیری، آگهی زیر را نوشت: «این کلاههای حصیری اونقده مُفته که میتونید بخریدشون واسه سایبون گلهای رُز باغچه تون، یا حتی رو هم بچینیدشون تا اسبتون بپره از روشون!»؛ «فیبی هرتی» مرا استخدام کرد، تا از روی آگهیهایی که برای تبلیغ لباس نوجوانان مینوشت، رونویسی کنم؛ بخشی از کارم پوشیدن لباسهایی بود، که ازشان تعریف و تمجید میکردم؛ با هر دو پسرش که هم سن و سالم بودند، رفیق شدم، و تمام وقت خانه آنها پلاس بودم؛ «فیبی» در صحبت با ما و دوست دخترهایمان، اصلاً عفتِ کلام نداشت، و حرفهای رکیک میزد؛ از این گذشته، شوخ طبع بود و کاری به کارمان نداشت؛ از «فیبی» یاد گرفتیم که نه تنها وقت حرف زدن از امور خصوصی، بلکه در صحبت از مدرسه، تاریخ «آمریکا»، قهرمانان سرشناس، نحوه توزیع ثروت در جامعه، و خلاصه هر موضوعی بی ادب و جسور باشیم؛ من خودم تا به حال از صدقه ی سر همین بی نزاکتی، توانسته ام لقمه نانی به دست بیاورم، اما هنوز در این مقوله خیلی ناشی ام، و مانده تا به «فیبی هرتی» برسم؛ مدام سعی میکنم از بی ادبی «فیبی هرتی»، که بسیار برازنده اش بود، تقلید کنم؛ به نظر من، آن زمان، به خاطر حال و هوای رکود اقتصادی، داشتن جذابیت برای «فیبی» بسیار آسانتر بود تا الآنِ من، چون او به همان چیزی اعتقاد داشت که اکثر «آمریکایی»های آن زمان بهش معتقد بودند: این که وقتی رفاه اقتصادی از راه برسد، مردم خوشبخت و منطقی و منصف خواهند شد؛ دیگر هیچ وقت این کلمه را نشنیدم؛ منظورم «رفاه» است؛ این کلمه قبلاً مترادف با بهشت بود، و «فیبی هرتی» معتقد بود آداب گریزی ای که به همه توصیه میکرد کمک میکند تا بهشت «آمریکایی» محقق شود؛ هنوز راه و رسم آداب گریزیِ «فیبی» مُد است، اما دیگر هیچکس بهشت «آمریکا»یی را باور ندارد؛ البته هیچ کس، الا «فیبی هرتی»؛ در این کتاب، از تصوراتم درباره ماشین وار بودنِ آدمها خواهم گفت؛ این دیدگاه در دوران کودکی ام شکل گرفت، زمانی که مبتلایان به مراحل پیشرفته سیفلیس و اختلال حرکتی ــ به ویژه مبتلایان مرد ــ مضحکه تماشاگران سیرکها و مردم پایین شهرِ «ایندیاناپولیس» میشدند؛ سیفلیسیها اسیر موجوداتی فنری شکل و گوشتخوار بودند، موجوداتی آن قدر ریز که فقط با میکروسکوپ میشد مشاهده شان کرد؛ این میکروبها، وقتی از گوشتِ بین مهره های ستون فقرات قربانیان عبور میکردند، باعث به هم چسبیدن مهره ها میشدند و، در نتیجه، مبتلایان به شکل ترسناکی باوقار و شق و رق به نظر میرسیدند، گویی چشمانشان دارد از حدقه میزند بیرون؛ یکبار، در تقاطع خیابانهای مِریدیِن و واشینگتن، فردی مبتلا به سیفلیس دیدم؛ زیر ساعتی ایستاده بود که پدرم طراحی کرده بود؛ مردم محل به آنجا میگفتند «تقاطع آمریکا»؛ مرد سیفلیسی سخت به فکر فرو رفته بود که چگونه با پاهای رنجورش روی خط کشی خیابان قدم بردارد، و خود را به آنطرف خیابان «واشینگتن» برساند؛ تنش رعشه خفیفی داشت؛ انگار درون بدنش موتوری کوچک کار گذاشته بودند که درجا کار میکرد؛ مشکل از اینجا ناشی میشد: مغزش که بایست به پاها فرمان حرکت میداد دیگر کار نمیکرد، چون موجودات ریز، زنده زنده خورده بودندش؛ رشته های عصبی و اتصالاتی که بایست دستورالعملها را منتقل میکردند هم یا دیگر عایق بندی نبودند یا همان موجودات ریز کاملاً جویده بودندشان؛ کلیدهایی هم که در مسیر اتصالات قرار داشتند یا مسدود شده بودند یا کاملاً به هم جوش خورده بودند؛ او حدوداً سی ساله بود، اما بسیار پیرتر به نظر میآمد؛ فکر میکرد و فکر میکرد؛ آنوقت، مثل زنان گروه همسرایان، دوبار پشت سر هم پایش را به جلو پرتاب میکرد.؛ آن زمان، که بچه سال بودم، او درست مثل ماشین به نظرم میرسید؛ در آن دوران فکر میکردم آدمها تیوبهای پلاستیکی ای هستند که درونشان واکنشهای شیمیایی در حال فعل و انفعال است؛ وقتی بچه بودم، افراد زیادی را دیدم که گواتر داشتند؛ دووِین هووِر، فروشنده پونتیاکی که قهرمان این کتاب است، هم چنین کسانی را به چشم خود دیده؛ این ساکنان بدبختِ زمین غدّه های تیروییدشان چنان ورم میکرد که انگار در گلویشان کدوخورشتی پرورش داده اند؛ همانطور که بعدها ثابت شد، تنها کاری که مبتلایان به گواتر بایست انجام میدادند مصرف روزانه یک سرِ سوزن ید بود و بس؛ آنوقت میتوانستند زندگی آرامی داشته باشند؛ مادرم مغزش را با داروهای شیمیایی درب و داغان کرد، داروهایی که مثلاً قرار بود باعث شوند راحت بخوابد)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 05/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 11/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Lyn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-most-favorite-books

This is one of my earliest favorites and I have gone back to revisit several times over the years.

In high school I was both amazed and hooked by Vonnegut's wry humor and devilish mid-western charm. I have since caught on to the more serious metaphors and themes into which he delves. But the humor drew me in initially and makes me think of Vonnegut today.

Insanity explained as a chemical imbalance and dysfunctional families, relationships and communities described as matter of factly as a still l ...more

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Dec 24, 2015 J.L. Sutton rated it really liked it

Nothing is sacred in Breakfast of Champions. The narrator/Philboyd Studge/Vonnegut makes his appearance as the Creator of the Universe (or at least the creators of the characters in his novel) as he delivers what amounts to a searing meta-critique of American culture. "The big show is inside my head," he tells a waitress as he watches his main protagonists, and decides what they will do next. After his brief appearance in Slaughterhouse-Five, it was fun to see Kilgore Trout, the failed science f ...more

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May 22, 2018 Adina rated it liked it

Shelves: kindle-nou, 1001, us

“Like most science-fiction writers, he knew almost nothing about science.”

Breakfast of Champions is not my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel and I have a bit of difficulty to understand why. Maybe because it was crazier than the others that I’ve read, with long passages without any sense. There weren’t one or two deeper themes that I had to dig between the irony and the absurd. It was more of a collection of crazy talk (or talk by crazy men) mingled with the author’s ideas about the world. I enjoyed “Like most science-fiction writers, he knew almost nothing about science.”

Breakfast of Champions is not my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel and I have a bit of difficulty to understand why. Maybe because it was crazier than the others that I’ve read, with long passages without any sense. There weren’t one or two deeper themes that I had to dig between the irony and the absurd. It was more of a collection of crazy talk (or talk by crazy men) mingled with the author’s ideas about the world. I enjoyed the latter parts more than the former, I laughed out loud many times but it wasn’t enough.

For the whole novel we are prepared for a momentous meeting between our main characters, the still undiscovered, aging, soon to become monumental, SF writer, Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover, a successful Midwest car dealer. Dwayne, due to bad chemicals in his brain, is slowly going crazy and the meeting with the SF writer will make him derail irrecoverably. The story switches between Kilgore’s trip to reach an Art festival in Midwest to Dwayne’s increasingly weird mind. At some point we also get to meet the author, which was an interesting feature.

The plot offers Vonnegut the opportunity to launch in a bleak satire on race, politics, social standards, sexism, etc. I don’t know how Vonnegut can be pessimistic and funny at the same time.

“As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tis-sues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales”

For more than half of the book, I listened to the brilliant narration of John Malkovich. I believe the actor’s voice and Vonnegut’s work go perfectly together. However, I do not usually listen to audiobooks so it might have altered my reading experience somewhat.

I enjoyed the novel, it’s Vonnegut duh, but I felt he crammed a bit too much inside the pages. I also don’t believe it is the place to start if you are a newbie to his work. Slaughterhouse 5 would still my first choice. By the way, Kilgore Trout is a character in that novel as well. There are many characters, themes and places that appear in more than one novel of the author and that is a prize for his fandom, of which I am still part of.

“Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.”
“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
...more

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Feb 09, 2021 Julie G (time traveling for a week) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 70-from-the-70s, that-70s-show

This past December I was flung to the earth by the force of gravity, which never relaxed for a second.

This resulted in an bad ankle injury which has required an ortho boot, limited activity, and physical therapy.

(I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for—to find out how much a [person] could take without breaking).

Two weeks ago, I received a shoulder shrug from the doctor and his advice: “You need an MRI if this doesn't improve soon.”

Almost all the messages which were se ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: monster-mash-of-a-mess, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

The Emperor’s New Clothes,

As retold by Kurt Vonnegut, taking a leak (view spoiler) in front of Humanity to mirror their fictionalized realities!

(Vonnegut was apparently capable of prophetically foreshadowing what would happen to America in the 21st century, when leaks are indeed mirrors of the country's general condition! America is really taking the piss, and he KNEW it would happen.)

Once upon a time, there was ...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What is life we live from day to day? What do we eat at breakfast? How do we cope with our problems and what are we doing for fun? What dreams do we dream and what ideas do we have in our heads?

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.

Under the close scrutiny of Kurt Vonnegut our quotidian life turns into the most prepo ...more

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Jul 09, 2008 Tim P rated it did not like it

God, what a terrible book of nonsense.

The two main characters are just overly weird and bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. And I mean really really bizarre. (I suspect many people say they like Vonnegut because he is so damn weird, but theres gotta be a purpose to it. You can't just have completely random ridiculous thoughts that do not have any purpose towards the message of the story. When you do that, its like the intellectual version of VH1 reality; people love it for shock value, while ...more

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Jul 01, 2020 Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ rated it really liked it

Shelves: satire, classic-of-the-month, fiction, classics

"As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen."

Me too, Mr. Vonnegut. Me too. I'm not quite approaching my fiftieth, but yeh, me too.

In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut writes as an author writing an author and their hapless creations. He uses satire to poke fun at things like:

Capitalism:
"The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Fergus rated it really liked it

You’ll have to forgive me for saying this, but having spent a violent youth under somewhat violent circumstances, this innocent bystander’s bird’s eye view of a total fracas hit the Golden Buzzer for Vonnegut in my young eyes.

He could henceforth do no wrong for my jejune and confused self because he Was that innocent bystander.

Vonnegut’s Nom de Guerre, in case you missed his point, is Kilgore Trout.

Yes, Trout is Kurt’s alter ego.

He was a shell-shocked recluse of a great SF writer (Vonnegut’s b ...more

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May 29, 2022 Kevin Ansbro rated it really liked it

Shelves: wry-humour, immorality, morality, human-kindness, human-psyche

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose."
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle's famous quote came to mind as I was reading this boisterous book: it was as if Vonnegut had decided to empty his cluttered attic of kooky ideas in order to share them with the rest of the world. In many ways, it reminded me of the underground magazines I helped to publish as a student; all printed on stiff sheets of A4 paper a ...more

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Jul 05, 2007 Joe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People with bad chemicals in their heads

Good old Kurt (God rest his soul) has truly helped me understand what all this fuss is about "wide open beavers".
This is a quick and rewarding read (with funny drawings) that makes you think about the world in a totally new way. I love how Vonnegut writes about America as a civilization which died out long ago and is addressing an audience who knows nothing of it.
This book is hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time. It follows a sci-fi author (Trout) of Vonnegut's own creation who meets a ...more

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Apr 06, 2016 Sean Barrs rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 5-star-reads

I needed this book. You have no idea how much so. Vonnegut is just so hilarious. There is a certain sense of wisdom in perfect irony, and Vonnegut’s irony is anything but perfect. It boarders upon the outrageous and plain mad. His ideas are crazy yet strangely perceptive; it’s like he sees beyond the idiotic surface world of human culture, of life itself, and makes fun of it. He points at it and has a good old laugh. If you read his books, he’ll share it with you too! He's good like that.

“The t I needed this book. You have no idea how much so. Vonnegut is just so hilarious. There is a certain sense of wisdom in perfect irony, and Vonnegut’s irony is anything but perfect. It boarders upon the outrageous and plain mad. His ideas are crazy yet strangely perceptive; it’s like he sees beyond the idiotic surface world of human culture, of life itself, and makes fun of it. He points at it and has a good old laugh. If you read his books, he’ll share it with you too! He's good like that.

“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.”

His novels are so individual in their weirdness. He explores, and perhaps even defines, an anti-narrative style. The first chapter of the book, along with its many intertextual references to the real world, tells you how the plot is going to end. He tells you what’s going to happen to his wacky characters; he informs you that they will die, and even goes as far as to explicitly say when. This isn’t a spoiler: it’s on the first page of the book. But, that’s merely the surface level of Vonnegut’s brilliant writing.

He also uses self-reflective addresses in the middle of a narrative sequence: his own personal voice comes through, the voice of the individual, and acknowledges the fact that this is actually a book. This may not sound like much, but it’s very unusual. How many books randomly point out the fact that they are actually a book? In the middle of chapters there are so many interruptions; they’re semi-autobiographical statements because Vonnegut, oddly, stops and explains his characterisation of Killgore Trout. He stops and informs you of the choices he has made. This is wonderfully comic. It may even sound like an interruption of the story, but it’s not. Vonnegut is part of the story. Without the use of such an inventive and transgressive mode of writing, this book would be comparable to one of Trout’s failed science fiction novels.

“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”

description

If you’ve made it this far into my review, you may wonder what I’m actually talking about. If you’ve not read anything by Vonnegut, then my review may come off as a little strange, but Vonnegut is strange. Superbly so. He is witty in his bizarrely written narrative. You have to read his books to understand. I’m having a certain degree of trouble to actually express what I mean here. Vonnegut is just unique. Trust me: he’s worth your time.

There were moments in his book that produced within me real gut wrenching laughter. Not a simple chuckle or a casual outburst, but real laughter. The type that brightens your day and make other people think that you, too, have gone slightly mad. But who cares? I’ve not laughed like that in a long time. Perhaps since the last Vonnegut book I read. The persona that narrates this novel is a real oddity; it’s almost like Vonnegut has written a story about his imaginary friends, and about imaginary parts of himself. I’m not entirely sure how he manages to pull it off. Few others could.

Postscript- I gave this book five stars because I enjoyed it immensely, but it wasn’t as good as Slaughter House 5. I wonder if any of his other books actually will be. Also the image in my review is one of many ridiculous images Vonnegut includes within the story. Because why the hell not? ...more

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Apr 17, 2014 Anthony Vacca rated it it was amazing

Back before I nicked a diploma and put that particular time and place in the rearview, there were only two authors that nearly all of my fellow Liberal Arts College English majors blabbered-on about unendingly: Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut. (Lucky for us all that the Second Coming of Christ didn’t happen just once but twice!) Even though I had read and liked Slaughterhouse Five as a young, emotionally-stunted and delusional fifteen year-old, I had also dutifully read through six of Chucky’s Back before I nicked a diploma and put that particular time and place in the rearview, there were only two authors that nearly all of my fellow Liberal Arts College English majors blabbered-on about unendingly: Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut. (Lucky for us all that the Second Coming of Christ didn’t happen just once but twice!) Even though I had read and liked Slaughterhouse Five as a young, emotionally-stunted and delusional fifteen year-old, I had also dutifully read through six of Chucky’s stinkers by the time I got to college. Add to the equation the variable that most of these hep cats thought Shakespeare and Hemingway (two of me best mates at the time) were talentless hacks, and what you get the other side of that equal sign is an Anthony that is going to take his chances and steer clear of the Vonnegut circle jerk sessions.

With that introductory diatribe out of the way, I can now say that, yes, I was wrong about Vonnegut, and so now we can all move right on along to my review.

Breakfast of Champions is a sad and gloomy slice of metafiction that still manages to find a sense of humor about what an awful fucking nightmare it is to exist in this sad sorry sack of shit of an excuse for a world. If read aloud, every sentence in this book should end with a sigh and a defeated glance out the window at nothing but a bleak view of nothing.

Vonnegut writes this book, as he does with most of his books, through the 1st-person-POV guise of being a weary misanthropic novelist named Kurt Vonnegut, whose thankless job it is to write another goddamned book about all of these horrible (but also (sometimes (very seldom) ) wonderful) people we’re stuck with in this life. BoC goes about this in a conversational, vernacular-heavy, cliché-ridden prose style that still manages to be quite charming and clever. The focus of this book is the hours leading up to a chance meeting between Kilgore Trout, a loser who writes off-beat science fiction novels that nobody reads, and Dwayne Hoover, a successful car salesman who is starting to lose his shit in a major way. Along the way there is plenty of time for digressions full of deadpan takedowns of American culture as well as for dozens of endearing little doodles from our author.

The end result is a novel that reads like something an off-beat science fiction novelist would write if given the task of explaining the United States in the 1970’s to an alien species. Vonnegut makes it clear that there is so much in this world that makes him angry, and getting older does nothing to ease his resentment. But even in the face of murder, hate, racism and greed, Vonnegut can’t help but care about people and sympathize for what it must be like for not just his characters but for every last one of us who goes about chug-chugging along through this nightmare we all share together. And it’s that big god-damned heart of Vonnegut’s that’s the real treasure of this wonderful novel.
...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: re-read, read-2016, reviews-5-stars, reviews, vonnegut

Breakfast of Champignons

Now It Can Be Told, Thank God

So I finished reading this novel soon after I arrived at my hotel, and I thought I’d better write a review while it was still fresh in my mind. But, first, I decided to go down to the cocktail lounge for a drink. All the seats at the bar were taken, so I had to sit by myself at a table for four.

The waitress took my order. A dry martini. When she returned, she placed it before me and said, “Here it is. The breakfast of champions!”

I sucked on t ...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017

“in nonsense is strength”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

description

Sometimes, I think of Breakfast of Champions as top shelf Vonnegut (five stars). Sometimes I think of it as second shelf Vonnegut (four stars). I think it could exist easily on both shelves. Since I own a couple copies, and have read it a couple times, I will forever physically keep it on two shelves (Library of America on one, Laurel Mass-Market Paperback on a lower shelf). The Laurel Mass-Market is also the one I try to bribe and ...more

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Apr 12, 2017 Justin rated it really liked it

So this guy, Dwayne Hoover, is a rich owner of stuff, primarily a Pontiac dealership, and he has these bad chemicals in his brain. Kilgore Trout is this completely unknown science fiction writer whose stories are printed in adult magazines and such. Anyway, Dwayne reads one of Trout's novels and he thinks it's real which really messes with those bad chemicals in his brain.

The book is this collision course of these two meeting each other with all kinds of distractions and subplots and observatio ...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Manny rated it it was ok

When I read this novel as a teenager, I remember finding the following paragraph strikingly witty:

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Though since then, the point has ...more

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May 29, 2021 Jean-Luke rated it really liked it

So I may have decided to read this because of a passage detailing the penis sizes of various characters. Many of them are white and a few of them are black, and Dwayne Hoover believes they're all robots. I think all books should include such a passage. And if that doesn't peak your interest, perhaps the drawings of an asshole * or of a wide open beaver () will.
•••
I promise that there's more depth and heart to this book than I'm making it sound. It's a strange one--aren't they all?--but a good on ...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: comedy, fiction, humor

Phew, it has been a LOOONG time since I've read Vonnegut. I mean "classic" Vonnegut. It feels good to be back!

I mean no offense to his most recent work, but it just doesn't compare with what he put out from about the '60s through to the '80s. It's all good stuff. I mean, I've read about a dozen books of his and I don't recall a true stinker in the lot. But if I'm going to recommend "a Vonnegut" to the interested and uninitiated, it's going to be something like Breakfast of Champions from 1973.

T ...more

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May 13, 2016 Apatt rated it really liked it

Shelves: mainstream

Listen:
What the hell was that?
I finished reading Breakfast of Champions, closed the book, went to Goodreads, stared at that big empty review box, ate a cookie, stared at the screen some more, hands hovering over the keyboard, not moving.
And so on.

Now, if you are thinking “what is that stupid paragraph above?” Don’t worry about it.

My Achilles heel as a reader of modern fiction is that I don’t cope well with unconventional narrative styles. Streams of consciousness, omitted quotation marks, massiv ...more

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Dec 27, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: merkins, novels, art-or-illustrated

The House of Trouts:

Kilgore Trout’s latest book, World’s Funniest Thermonuclear Accidents, was forthcoming from Michael O’Mara. He shared a bathroom with Kilgore Trout, whose latest book, Complications in the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum, had forthcome from Yale Press. The two Trouts co-rented a kitchen with Kilgore Trout, whose book I Was a Teenage Obergruppenführer, had not found a publisher. All three Trouts did not read each other’s books and did not discuss literary matters at all. When o ...more

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Jul 28, 2018 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-shelf, sci-fi, satire

It's really indecent how much I like this book. It's nearly as indecent as how Vonnegut treated his character Kilgore Trout.

Mind you, he doesn't rob, cheat or abuse the character in the traditional sense. In fact, the author shows up, treats the damn guy to success, wealth and fame, tells him he's gonna win some fancy awards in the future, and he does it only because he can.

What a damn jerk.

I mean, look at all these other SF authors other than Kilgore Trout who spend their lives writing stories ...more

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Jun 12, 2014 Tom Quinn rated it liked it · review of another edition

In spite of a few funny one-liners and a humdinger of a premise, I don't like this book half as much as Vonnegut's earlier work. It isn't just the fact that it's irritatingly repetitive, which it is, or that it grossly overuses the N-word, which it does. It's this: Vonnegut seems tired, winded. His spirits are flagging. There is wistfulness but little warmth, as though a chill has settled on him. My favorite Vonnegut puts on a brave face and holds out hope, speaks from a place of optimism. This ...more

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Mar 13, 2022 Michael || TheNeverendingTBR rated it it was amazing

This is the second book I've read by Kurt Vonnegut, the first one was the masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Breakfast of Champions is right up there alongside it, another masterpiece.

This one tells the story of Kilgore Trout, an unpopular science fiction writer who travels to Midland City to speak at a convention. Before the convention, a car salesman named Dwayne Hoover goes insane after reading Trout's book written from the perspective of the Creator of the Universe. Hoover goes on a killing ...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it

Shelves: lit, lit-fic, sci-fi, sci-fi-lit

A cheerful & cynical work. It’s the best novel in the English language.
Why?
It has its footnotes in the main text.

Here’s a Two-bite Brownie:

1.
“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,” said the driver.
“I won’t know myself until I find out whether life is serious or not,” said Trout. “It’s dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s serious, too.”

2.
“You know what truth is?” said Karabekian. “It’s some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Brett C rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kurt-vonnegut

This was an interesting book. It was layered with black humor only the way Kurt Vonnegut could write. There really is no plot, but the reading is very unique and paints a picture for the reader. The structuring is simple: simple sentences, simple syntax, and simple dialogue that gives way to big ideas. I found myself thinking about it even when I wasn't reading: in the car on the way to work, in the evening. The illustrations that highlight the narrator's ideas are common sketches found on the c ...more

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About Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.

He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journali ...more

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“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.” — 535 likes

“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.” — 463 likes

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