num_pages: 270
description: "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 vs sickness, humanity vs inhumanity - both sets of ideas bounce thru this challenging, 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 thru (sick? inhumane?) America c. 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 &amp; all of his other pet topics - you know, the only ones that really count.
language: English
title: Breakfast of Champions
titlecomplete: Breakfast of Champions
characters: Wayne Hoobler, Dwayne Hoover, Beatrice Keedlser, Cyprian Ukwende, Kilgore Trout, Kazak, Bonnie MacMahon, Bunny Hoover, Eliot Rosewater, Celia Hoover, Rabo Karabekian, Francine Pefko, Harry LeSabre
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Humor, Classics, Fiction, Science Fiction, Audiobook, American
ratings_count: 254685
places: Midwest, New York (State), Cohoes, New York, The United States of America, Ohio
publisher: Granada Books