Breakfast of Champions - Hardcover

Kurt Vonnegut

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385280890 ISBN 13: 9780385280891

Publisher: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1973

Synopsis

The author questions the condition of modern man in this novel depicting a science-fiction writer's struggle to find peace and sanity in the world

About this title

Review:

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.

From the Publisher:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0385280890
• ISBN 13: 9780385280891
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 302
• Illustrator: Kurt Vonnegut