This is a strange book--classic Vonnegut (example: it begins with an illustration of various meanings of the word "beaver"). But it's bitingly funny. If you're new to Vonnegut, don't start with this (as I did)--start with Cat's Cradle or Slaughter-house Five; if you enjoyed those, put this on your list.

There are well over eight thousand reviews of this 1973 novel posted here, many of them quite intelligently constructed and well thought out, and many not so much. And so on. The most famous review of it isn't here, the one offered by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. to The New York Times (as recounted by Harlan Ellison in his Again, Dangerous Visions anthology), in which he said it was a piece of shit. (Perhaps he was referring to an earlier version of the manuscript.) Anyway, it's poor form and in bad taste to argue with a review, especially with one proffered by someone closer to and with more knowledge of the work, but in this instance I must disagree. Besides, Vonnegut is no longer with us and so I presume he can't be offended. And so on. I thought it was very good and worthwhile book, a nice blend of the absurd and ironic, a tragically hip satire that examines racism, sexism, greed, ecological responsibility (and so on), all decades before Critical Race Theory became a well-known phrase or topic. It also has some bizarre aspects, such as a lot of felt-tip illustrations from the author to show the reader what items mentioned in the text look like, such as light switches, cows, women's underpants, birds, trucks, etc. He also lists the length and width of the genitalia of the male characters and the measurements of the females, leaving the reader to wonder what they're to do with or think about that information. Some of the text is rough reading, as there are frequent satiric uses of racial slurs, mentions of rape and various abuses, disparagement of mental problems, etc. And so on. The plot itself is absurd (an unsuccessful science fiction writer encounters a car dealer who goes crazy) and seems to me to be more of platter on which to present questions such as: "What kind of a man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor?" and to generally provoke thoughtful analysis of society and our place in it. It's one of those depressing yet amusing stories that makes you ashamed to find humor in the hopelessness of it all. As it says on page 253: "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." And so on.

Why Kurt Vonnegut is a genius:

As for the story itself, it was entitled "The Dancing Fool." Like so many Trout stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate.

Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap dancing.

Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golfclub.

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 in perfect irony and obscurity, only to die unsung and unloved, UNLIKE Kilgore Trout.

This kind of unflinching gorgeous tribute (in perfect irony) to SF authors, in general, makes me weep. It stabs me in the heart.

Oh, other than that, this novel is PACKED with damn funny lines, ideas for SF novels, scathing satires of our entire way of life... including all the many racial and sexual horrorshows that we call our culture. Someone has probably counted all the myriad other preoccupations and nonsense. I did not. But it's overflowing. And funny.

And what's almost as good...? Idea after idea after idea of great SF novels meant to hold up a mirror to us and make us ashamed.

EAT YOUR WHEATIES!

Oddly enough, I was fully prepared to hate this book and Vonnegut in general because he's popular and so many people who would sneer at SF would swear by him. Unfortunately for me, he's WEIRD and screwball and a delight to read. Damn it!

"Breakfast of Champions" is not Kurt Vonnegut's best work, but it still has one enviable trait, and that is the unmistaken Vonnegut voice. Mr. Vonnegut has one of the most unique voices in American literature and he uses it to full effect here. Although I rarely agree with his political and religious views, I still return to him because he writes in one of the most conversational tones I have ever come across. You feel like you and Vonnegut are conversing. It is this quality that allows you to forget some of the novel's more inane aspects.
"BOC" has no plot to speak of, and I would be hard-pressed to narrow it down to only a few themes. Vonnegut tackles several possible thematic tracks half heartedly throughout the novel. These range from digressions on the relationship of the creator and his creation, the intrusion of an authorial persona throughout the text, and the nature of free will. Vonnegut also hearkens back to earlier gems such as the importance of minor life and details, the inequalities of capitalism, etc. And at times, he delivers some biting satire and thought provoking lines (and even paragraphs) on these topics. But alas, that is all he delivers. An occasional spark does not a fire make, and a witty or interesting point scattered here or there does not a novel make.
This novel lacks cohesion...and that was Vonnegut's goal. I get it. I just don't like it.
I have read a lot of Vonnegut, and I find this to be his weakest work by far. You may disagree, and I think that is the point.

I’m struggling to review this. Not because I didn’t like it, on the contrary, I really loved this book. Vonnegut’s dark humor, sharp wit, insight and candor have never made me happier than in “Breakfast of Champions”. But how does one summarize this messy, hysterical, heart-breaking book?

Kilgore Trout wrote a silly sci-fi novel, in which humans have been replaced by robots. Dwayne Hoover is a successful car-dealership owner who’s sanity is slowly slipping away, and when he reads this book, he starts to believe that he is the only human left in a world populated by robots. That’s about as much straight-forward plot as there is in this book: the rest is a non-linear arrangements of anecdotes, convoluted sub-plots, strange factoids, and deadpan explanations for complex idea that will make readers laugh, cringe and think.

You can take it at the first degree, and read it as a bizarre farce, or you can dig a little deeper and see that dear old Mr. Vonnegut is trying to reconcile himself with the fact that the world is a mess, that we have a hard time perceiving other people are anything else than automatons and that if we are confused and outraged and feeling lost, it’s not because we are insane: it’s because the human culture doesn’t make a lick of sense.

This satire of modern life doesn’t feel dated, even if it was originally published in the 70’s. I love how Vonnegut’s rather bleak outlook and opinions didn’t stop him from having a sense of humor about it – even when said sense of humor is a bit juvenile. Some people find his tone arrogant, but I find him at his whimsical best in “Breakfast”: the only way to keep some sense of sanity in the incredibly fucked up world we live in is being able to laugh at it and enjoy it in spite of its utter ridiculousness. One of my favorite TV shows is “Rick and Morty” and as I read this book, I realized that Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland must be huge, huge Vonnegut fans. “Breakfast of Champions” is offbeat, coarse, crushingly tender and utterly brilliant. My favorite work of his so far!

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 Vonnegut? Well, this guy is damned depressing.

There may yet be great value in considering things that are damned depressing, though. From time to time. And you can trust Vonnegut to make it worth your while. Although repetitive, he provides a lot of grist for the mill, philosophically speaking.

3.5 stars out of 5. "Not my favorite Vonnegut" still means it's a really good book. But it is too blunt to be a charmer and too bleak to be a comfort.

ونه گات نوسینده خوبی است از او تا به حال چند تا از بهترین اثارش (سلاخ خانه شماره پنج،شب مادر،گهواره کربه)را خوانده بودم ولی صبحانه قهرمانان چنان دلپذیر بود که ناگهان ونه گات از نگاه من از نویسنده خوب به نویسنده ای خیلی خیلی خوب ارتقا پیدا کرد.کتاب داستان دو نفر در دونقطه مختلف است که قرار است در پایان کتاب به هم برخورد کنند و نویسنده با بازیگوشی زندگی این دو نفر را در طول کتاب تصویر میکند.کتاب به شدت بدون فرم و ساختار مشخص است. برای همین توسط بسیاری از مخاطبین (به خصوص خوانندگان رمان کلاسیک)پس زده خواهد شد.رمان بسیار هجو امیز و در بسیاری از بخشها اروتیک است و مترجم ناکزیر به سانسور این بخشهای کتاب شده است که این سانسور به کتاب تا حدی ضربه وارد ساخته است.ولی متن اصلی بسیار ساده نوشته شده است و مقایسه ای بین متن اصلی و متن ترجمه میتواند در یافتن بخشهای سانسور شده راهگشا باشد .این کتاب .یک ی از بهترین اثار خوانده شده اینجانب در این چند وقت اخیر بوده است

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, massive infodumps, pages of philosophical ramblings etc. I can not cope with such artistry, and I usually give up by page 50 or so.

Breakfast of Champions is certainly an unconventional narrative. While the main story arc moves forward in a linear fashion, Kurt Vonnegut makes so many tangential subplots, flashbacks, and anecdotes that I often forget where I was in the storyline; not to mention those lovely cartoonish drawings of his that appear every few pages. It is a chaotic mess of a narrative. The strangest thing is, I don’t mind, it never occurred to me to give up on the book. Only Vonnegut can get away with this kind of thing.

The main story arc is to do with a very successful businessman called Dwayne Hoover slowly losing his mind and eventually runs amok after reading a sci-fi book by Kilgore Trout called “Now It Can Be Told”. Trout is an obscure* sci-fi author who shows up in many Vonnegut books. The plotline is mostly unpredictable in spite of a “climax” which is clearly telegraphed from the beginning of the book, but the side stories, vignettes, and those wonderful drawings all come out of the left field.

Breakfast of Champions is completely bonkers, though. While it is decidedly not sci-fi it includes quite a few wacky synopses of Kilgore Trout’s sci-fi stories and novels. The most important one is, of course, “Now It Can Be Told”, which is about a man who is the only real person in the world while everybody else is a robot. This book pushed the already unstable Dwayne Hoover over the edge, Breakfast of Champions nearly had the same effect on me (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

When Vonnegut is not describing weird sci-fi plots, he would give you measurements of various characters’ penis, wacky factoid about alcohol (“yeast excrement”), and show you his drawing of a cow
, or underpants
  , a bucket of KFC’s fried chicken etc; often with the refrain of “and so on” at the end of passages. If your mind starts to wander he will cleverly bring you back with “Listen:”. Not content with stuffing the book with eccentric characters, Vonnegut also wrote himself into the novel, doing some very surreal things as the creator of the book’s universe.

Breakfast of Champions is a beautiful mess of a novel, even Vonnegut acknowledges it in his preface:
“I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there— the assholes, the flags, the underpants. Yes— there is a picture in this book of underpants. I’m throwing out characters from my other books, too. I’m not going to put on any more puppet shows.”

There is a method to his madness, of course, the book is sharply satirical of life in the US (or the world in general), the destruction of the environment, poverty, social inequality etc. There are also surprisingly grim vignettes that come out of nowhere (well, almost everything comes out of nowhere in this book).

Breakfast of Champions is often very funny and always eccentric. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I liked this mess of a book until after I finished it, then I thought “yeah, it’s pretty cool”. And so on.

’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.’

This book is from the point of view of God Himself. I didn't think Vonnegut could get crazier the more of his books I read but I keep being proven wrong and I'm glad.

Like every one of his books, Vonnegut picks topics that are tough and difficult to talk about and adds humour without making fun of certain topics. Suicide and mental illness although not a main focus are both mentioned in this so I definitely would warn anyone who has certain triggers to be aware. The writing and formatting Vonnegut cleverly uses is hilarious and the amount of times in public I've had to try and quiet down to avoid stares have been many. Especially because of the drawings - oh my God some of them are hysterical!

The ending was my favourite part of the book and I'll admit the middle dragged on a little bit which I guess makes sense since it's all meant to lead up to a chaotic ending but I slightly lost interest there. It's conclusion very much brought it back together though.

Also I think I'm too young to understand some of the references, that may have been a part of it.

It's absolutely worth a read for a good time, but if you haven't read a Vonnegut book just yet pick up Slaughterhouse-Five for an introduction to his crazy storytelling first so then you won't be as scared to try this one. Go!

Loved it!

я знала, що воннегут мій, і я просто захожу в нього не з тої книги! з третьої спроби вийшло.

отже — дотепно, гостро, страшно смішно і сумно. знаю тепер, хто впливав на паланіка.

ідея писати про американську сучасність, як про далеке минуле зруйнованої планети свіжа й дозволяє подивитися на звичні нібито речі по-новому. усе від прапора сша до kfc крізь таку оптику стає абсурдом:

"Курка була нелітаючим птахом, який виглядав ось так: /ілюстрація/
Ідея полягала в тому, щоб вищипати все пір'я, відрізати голову й лапи і вирвати всі внутрішні органи — а тоді порубати її на шматочки і обсмажити їх, і поскладати шматочки у відерце з провощеного паперу з покришкою, щоб вона виглядала ось так: /ілюстрація/"

сила, коротше. буду ще.
"Ви зморені і зломлені, — читав Двейн. — А чому б і ні? Звісно, це виснажує, потреба вест час розумувати у Всесвіті, який за своєю природою не розумний"

"Двейн стримувався в ім'я елеґантності радше, ніж безпеки"

оформлення просто розйоб, звісно. ще й ця ксероксна чи що стилістика дуже відповідає тексту

4+ просто тому, що мене не вставляють посилання на толстоєвських

etc.