ie They are NOT coming from overseas !!
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
Or .. Goodbye Blue Monday
- By Kurt Vonnegut, Junior -
Illustrated
ISBN: 0224008889
Publisher: Jonathan cape Ltd, London, UK
Published: 1973
Binding: HARDcover with Dustajcket 295 pages
Condition: UNread & displayed condition! HERE in MELBOURNE! A retired display
copy as illustrated!
Edition: FIRST EDITION: 1st printing 1973
TIGHT, SCARCE HARDCOVER WITH DUSTAJACKET ~ IN MELBOURNE ...
WHY do ebayers buy from US?
Because you KNOW what you're getting. My
close up photos are of the actual item!!
Remains UNread - it was the display copy instore . It is Tight
- neat, no inscriptions or marks within. Appears as in my photos - this is the exact copy!!
A nicely preserved copy - superb!
No discernible shelf
wear to the brown cloth boards, the interior is tight and spotlessly clean with pages. THIS copy is the FIRST EDITION: First printing from 1973 - the UK publishing by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.
There are many black and white illustrations by the author.
SCARCE title - this is an UNread copy!!
In original brown cloth boards with gold spine titles HARDcover binding, housed in the publisher's original dustjacket - author portrait to back panel which are in excellent condition generally a subtle moisture mark to top section in parts.
(Stored with 2021!)
Measures approx. 8 x 5 inches or 22 x 14cms
SYNOPSIS
....
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows 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 the Author
Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.
After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.
His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.
Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Very Entertaining and Interesting read!
Reviews
“in nonsense is strength” …. Nothing is sacred in : Breakfast of Champions. The narrator/Philboyd Studge/Vonnegut makes his appearance as the Creator of the Universe (or at least the creators of the characters in his novel) as he delivers what amounts to a searing meta-critique of American culture. "The big show is inside my head," he tells a waitress as he watches his main protagonists, and decides what they will do next. After his brief appearance in Slaughterhouse-Five, it was fun to see Kilgore Trout, the failed science fiction writer, take centre stage. Of course, Vonnegut makes it clear that he as the narrator is the one pulling the strings and arranging, of all things, a Nobel Prize in Medicine for the confused Trout. Fun, interesting and bizarre!
This is one of my earliest favorites …. and I have gone back to revisit several times over the years.
In high school I was both amazed and hooked by Vonnegut's wry humor and devilish mid-western charm. I have since caught on to the more serious metaphors and themes into which he delves. But the humor drew me in initially and makes me think of Vonnegut today.
Insanity explained as a chemical imbalance and dysfunctional families, relationships and communities described as matter of factly as a still life portrait. The novel within a novel, and the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, further leaves the reader with a depth of appreciation for this classic.
*** 2019 Re-read
I'm adding this to my all time favorites list.
When I think about Vonnegut and his writing, I am most often thinking of this book, his playful yet thoughtful way of describing his universe. And here it is demonstrably his universe as he the author, the creator, makes a guest appearance in Midland City to see all the goings on firsthand. And perhaps other creators, he does not control his handiworks by rigid cable and reign, but rather loosely and as with dry rubber bands.
Throughout this wonderful book we find drawings made by Vonnegut himself, illustrating his concepts and ideas. I smiled throughout the book, as I always do, and laughed out loud many times and many times because of his felt tip pen doodle.
Funny as he is, and charming too hen he wants to be, Vonnegut also tackles some heavy subjects as well, such as economics, fairness and institutional racism. This book is about the fabulously well to do as well as for those who do not have diddlysquat.
The scene with Rabo Karabekian (the protagonist of Vonnegut’s later book Bluebeard) where he describes his minimalist painting is one of Vonnegut’s finest. Trout's visit to the Midland City Arts Festival by way of Sugar Creek is also one of my favorites.
A joy.
What is life we live from day to day? … What do we eat at breakfast? How do we cope with our problems and what are we doing for fun? What dreams do we dream and what ideas do we have in our heads?
The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Under the close scrutiny of Kurt Vonnegut our quotidian life turns into the most preposterous occupation in the world.
He spoke of his wife and son again, acknowledged that white robots were just like black robots, essentially, in that they were programmed to be whatever they were, to do whatever they did.
Some obey God, some obey government, some obey voices in their heads and some obey no one.
"As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen." … Me too, Mr. Vonnegut. Me too. I'm not quite approaching my fiftieth, but yeh, me too.
In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut writes as an author writing an author and their hapless creations. He uses satire to poke fun at things like:
Capitalism:
"The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were."
Stereotypes:
"If a person stopped living up to expectations ... everybody went on imagining that the person was living up to expectations anyway."
White-washed American history:
"1492 -- The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them."
"Group mentality:
"They trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
Vonnegut also uses this book to question whether any of us has free will. Are we at the mercy of some creator, our stories already written? Are we at the mercy of our brain chemistry, which dictates what we do and when we do it?
I generally love satire and Vonnegut does it well. There were several "chuckle moments" in this book. There were also a few parts where it dragged but for the most part, I enjoyed it.
I will note that the "N" word is used extensively. It's offensive (I hope) to modern ears, but it gets our attention and forces white people to reflect on our own ugliness and complicity in racism. It shoves a mirror right up in our faces.
Vonnegut uses stereotypes of Black people in order to speak against racism, which is a prevalent theme throughout the book. The stereotyping of his characters was used to portray the idiocy of seeing people with preconceived ideas based on one aspect of who they are.
I appreciate that Mr. Vonnegut placed the problem of racism firmly on the heads of white people. When his characters filled a stereotype, it was because white people had given them no other choice.
For example, Black characters were sometimes criminals and drug dealers, but that was because white people either wouldn't hire them or, when they did, wouldn't pay them a living wage. The characters were left with little choice but to engage in criminal behavior in order to support their families.
White people often create stereotypes for minorities, force them into filling it, and then blame the minority for fitting the stereotype instead of placing the blame where it truly belongs.
It infuriates me when I hear white people talk about crime in inner cities, usually to turn the topic away from Black people being brutalized and murdered by police. They use the stereotype (news alert: most Black people are not criminals) in order to place the blame on the victims.
But we deserve the blame. We created the extreme poverty in which many Black and Latinx people live. We created the drug problem. We need to start accepting responsibility for the problems we created. Not Blacks, not Latinx. Us.
So don't give me that BS about drugs in the inner city and "black on black" crime (as though white people never kill other white people). It's a poor excuse and you know it.
(Not to mention that even if someone does engage in criminal activity, they never deserve to be murdered because of it.)
So anyway... back to the book.
The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the clever way in which Vonnegut used this book to speak against institutional racism.
Though this is a very serious subject and the book is philosophical at heart, it is written in a light-hearted way. It's a quick and easy read and I didn't even quite notice what Vonnegut was doing until I reflected on the book after having finished it.
There are many truths in this book and Vonnegut's use of satire to point them out was brilliant.
Good old Kurt (God rest his soul) .. has truly helped me understand what all this fuss is about "wide open beavers".
This is a quick and rewarding read (with funny drawings) that makes you think about the world in a totally new way. I love how Vonnegut writes about America as a civilization which died out long ago and is addressing an audience who knows nothing of it.
This book is hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time. It follows a sci-fi author (Trout) of Vonnegut's own creation who meets a Pontiac dealership owner (Hoover) in the 1970's. Their meeting puts Hoover over the edge of sanity through one of Trout's novels, making him believe he's the only person with free will in the universe, and that everyone else is a robot (a meat machine as Vonnegut puts it).
I needed this book!!! . You have no idea how much so. Vonnegut is just so hilarious. There is a certain sense of wisdom in perfect irony, and Vonnegut’s irony is anything but perfect. It boarders upon the outrageous and plain mad. His ideas are crazy yet strangely perceptive; it’s like he sees beyond the idiotic surface world of human culture, of life itself, and makes fun of it. He points at it and has a good old laugh. If you read his books, he’ll share it with you too! He's good like that.
“The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.”
His novels are so individual in their weirdness. He explores, and perhaps even defines, an anti-narrative style. The first chapter of the book, along with its many intertextual references to the real world, tells you how the plot is going to end. He tells you what’s going to happen to his wacky characters; he informs you that they will die, and even goes as far as to explicitly say when. This isn’t a spoiler: it’s on the first page of the book. But, that’s merely the surface level of Vonnegut’s brilliant writing.
Breakfast of Champions = Goodbye Blue Monday, Kurt Vonnegut .... Breakfast of Champions, is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut.
Vonnegut's seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author.
Breakfast of Champions has themes of free will, suicide, and race relations among others.
Marvellous Reading!
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