Breakfast of Champions
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Breakfast of Champions
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Narrated by:
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John Malkovich
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By:
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Kurt Vonnegut
About this listen
Audie Award Finalist, Best Male Narrator, 2016
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
The core of the novel is Kilgore Trout, a familiar character very deliberately modeled on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985), a fact which Vonnegut conceded frequently in interviews and which was based upon his own occasional relationship with Sturgeon. Here Kilgore Trout is an itinerant wandering from one science fiction convention to another; he intersects with the protagonist, Dwayne Hoover (one of Vonnegut's typically boosterish, lost, and stupid mid-American characters), and their intersection is the excuse for the evocation of many others, familiar and unfamiliar, dredged from Vonnegut's gallery. The central issue is concerned with intersecting and apposite views of reality, and much of the narrative is filtered through Trout, who is neither certifiably insane nor a visionary writer but can pass for either depending upon Dwayne Hoover's (and Vonnegut's) view of the situation.
America, when this novel was published, was in the throes of Nixon, Watergate, and the unraveling of our intervention in Vietnam; the nation was beginning to fragment ideologically and geographically, and Vonnegut sought to cram all of this dysfunction (and a goofy, desperate kind of hope, the irrational comfort given through the genre of science fiction) into a sprawling narrative whose sense, if any, is situational, not conceptual. Reviews were polarized; the novel was celebrated for its bizarre aspects and became the basis of a Bruce Willis movie adaptation whose reviews were not nearly so polarized. (Most critics hated it.)
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©1973 Kurt Vonnegut (P)2015 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about Breakfast of Champions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mark Avey
- 18-11-21
I've no idea what that was, but I loved it
WTH did I just read? I'm baffled, amused, shocked and totally confused. I'm really not quite sure what that was, but this could well be my new favourite book (although I haven't yet read all Vonnegut's).
And absolutely the best narration of any audio book I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. I wish Malkovich could read all of my books for me.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Isobel Birkinshaw
- 09-08-20
bizzare
very interesting. makes you think about novels and how they are formed. I love how he is a character in his own book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ronan
- 12-06-17
fantastic voice acting
excellent book, brilliantly read. I love Vonnegut's sad, funny, intelligent observations about the absurd human race.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 10-12-23
Original, and Malkovich is excellent
Must listen! A serpentine tale of self reflection and surrealism. I’m just writing words to get beyond the 15 word minimum criteria for submission. Don’t listen to me, but rather give this book a listening to! Sláinte
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jez Late
- 19-08-16
One of a kind
One of a kind story. All connects madly and meaningfully. Malkovich performance is perfectly suited.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- D. Carver
- 01-02-16
Malkovich - oh dear
I've been a fan of Vonnegut for an exceedingly long time and am currently revisiting his work. This is no Slaughterhouse 5 but still a real entertainment. I loved Vonnegut's imperfectly and inconsistently offbeat view of the world and this is a good example, not so much a story as slow unravelling of a tale, a character and the author.
The only real question mark for me is John Malkovich. I've always loved the man and the voice but here it doesn't quite work. None more so than at the beginning of the book where he struggles with sentences and timing. Still the author and narrator share that curious alien in our world charm and altogether it works.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Jay Bee
- 08-10-20
Malkovich is incredible
I'm bias because I love the man but his narration was great. As for the book itself, it had its moments, it was humorous and critical, but I couldn't help but feel it was a little jumbled at times and I was losing interest by the end.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Peter Kettle
- 20-09-17
A perfect marriage of author and narrator
What made the experience of listening to Breakfast of Champions the most enjoyable?
Two iconoclastic talents unite - John Malkovitch is bewitchingly right to read this great writer's most curmudgeonly book. I want this pairing to be used again.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Breakfast of Champions?
It is invidious to pick out a section because all of it is pitch perfect. However, just try the opening dedication if you want to see if this is for you.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Cliff Moyce
- 11-07-20
Great performance
A funny and clever post-modernist novel that spears many of the attitudes and behaviours of 60’s / 70’s America. Enhanced by a great performance from John Malkovich.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Blondie
- 06-10-18
A great ride!
Don't expect a conventional narrative or narrator but the language and ideas are a delight, exciting, funny and original. I loved John Malkovic's performance, it suited the book perfectly, although I missed out seeing the drawings.
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