Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut, 1973
★ 4.06 from 287.4k ratings on Goodreads
A little-read science-fiction hack, a car dealer coming apart, and a narrator who walks into his own book to tell them both the truth. The writing is sharp and satirical, balancing dark humor with a pervasive sense of societal unease.
Feels like humor, melancholy and unease. About society, art and identity.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy inventive stories that use humor to critique modern American life. However, be prepared for its bleakness and moments of frustration, as the satire can feel repetitive or deeply uncomfortable.
Why read it
This book offers a satirical look at the absurdity of modern existence while challenging you to see the world through a fractured lens.
A page from the book
What happens to a country that mistakes itself for a story.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? What readers say
Readers often find the novel funny, inventive, and sharply satirical, though many also describe discomfort, frustration, and bleakness; some are delighted by its absurdity while others find it repetitive or off-putting.
Kurt Vonnegut.Vonnegut drew the novel's illustrations himself, including the simple asterisk he uses throughout the book to stand in for an anus.
Books that feel like this
More by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
Vonnegut survived the Dresden firebombing and spent twenty-three years failing to write it straight — so he wrote it as science fiction, jokes and all.
Jailbird
Kurt Vonnegut, 1979
A Watergate-era ex-con drifts through American labor history and family failure, looking for a decent way to live.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Breakfast of Champions for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy inventive stories that use humor to critique modern American life. However, be prepared for its bleakness and moments of frustration, as the satire can feel repetitive or deeply uncomfortable.
- What is Breakfast of Champions like?
- The writing is sharp and satirical, balancing dark humor with a pervasive sense of societal unease. Feels like humor, melancholy and unease. About society, art and identity.
- What should I read after Breakfast of Champions?
- If you liked Breakfast of Champions, try A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) and Ulysses (James Joyce).
A taste of the feed
A man reframes his self-interest as an act of atonement.
Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report. This was his plan of amends—of atonement—for inheriting their father’s estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
Pride and Prejudice · Jane Austen
A dog on a beach is not looking for anything it can name.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.
Ulysses · James Joyce
A creation story for anyone who suspects it was a mistake.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy · Douglas Adams
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