Breakfast of Champions: A Novel

by Robert Egan and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“Marvelous . . . [Vonnegut] wheels out all the complaints about America and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful and lovable.”—The New York Times

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 to see the truth.

“Free-wheeling, wild and great . . . uniquely Vonnegut.”—Publishers Weekly

• ISBN10: 0385334206
• ISBN13: 9780385334204
• Publish Date: 11 May 1999 (first published 15 March 1974)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
• Imprint: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385334204

Reviews

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Breakfast of Champions: or Goodbye Blue Monday by Kurt Vonnegut is a dark comedy on racism, war, consumerism and greed in America during the 70’s. The book follows two loners, an unknown Sci-Fi writer named Kilgore Trout and a car dealer owner Dwayne Hoover. Both their lives are intertwined by one of the books written by Trout and read by the already plagued with “bad chemicals”, Dwayne Hoover. The book, which Hoover believed was factual, sent him into a violent rampage. Vonnegut is a master satirist and always manages to write some unusual stories, though comparing this to Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions comes up short. It was enjoyable to read, weird in a lot of parts (I really didn’t need to know everyone characters penis size), but overall worth the read.