num_pages: 295
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 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.
language: English
title: Breakfast of Champions
titlecomplete: Breakfast of Champions
characters: Bunny Hoover, Bonnie MacMahon, Wayne Hoobler, Kilgore Trout, Francine Pefko, Kazak, Beatrice Keedlser, Rabo Karabekian, Celia Hoover, Cyprian Ukwende, Harry LeSabre, Eliot Rosewater, Dwayne Hoover
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, American, Humor, Literature, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 254635
places: Midwest, New York (State), The United States of America, Cohoes, New York, Ohio