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Breakfast of Champions
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
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Breakfast of Champions
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Publisher's Summary
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 that Vonnegut conceded frequently in interviews and that 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.
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
- Phillip
- 22-07-2015
This is the breakfast of champions
Breakfast of Champions is by no means an easy book. It tumbled and meanders, always with one eye loosely tracking the central narrative while the others takes in the voluminous world that Kurt Vonnegut has created.
As a commentary on the failures of modern American capitalism - or capitalism and selfish individualism the world over - the novel challenges the reader to reconsider the price of the world we have created. How much of our planet will remain in years to come? How much of our soul can survive the onslaught of meaninglessness, the constant uncertainty of our place in and of this life?
Vonnegut is always a surprise. His novels are never what I expect and yet they still floor me with expertly crafted imagery and seemingly trite remarks that cut to the very core of what human existence is like.
This is a novel worth anyone's time. It is expertly read by John Malkovich with the kind of indifferent murmuring that it is easy to imagine Vonnegut himself adopting for the bleak truisms that his characters endure. Malkovich is enchanting with his croaking delivery, his voice echoing the uncertainty that Vonnegut's words encourage in mind of his reader.
This is a beautiful and tragic novel - equal parts humorous, shocking, and revealing.
Absolutely worth your time.
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 28-02-2017
Malkovich reads one of Vonneguts (almost) greats.
What made the experience of listening to Breakfast of Champions the most enjoyable?
I'd read this book many times myself, but its been years. As an older, and more disappointing person I appreciated its themes of nostalgia and lost opportunities far more, and the astounding reading of Malkovich ratcheted the experience up many notches.
Who was your favorite character and why?
You have to love Kilgore Trout - the pseudo-profound almost-was that is a very thinly veiled personification of Vonneguts own fearful self-projection.
What about John Malkovich’s performance did you like?
His voice, my god - there is a thoughtful, learned, refined edge to his voice that makes it one of the best voices in existence in my estimation.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The opening of the book, with it's dedication to a lost friend and lost cultural values is playful, deeply mournful, and has wonderful impact despite being very self deprecating.
Any additional comments?
If you appreciate Vonnegut (and no, this isnt Cats Cradle, or Slaughterhouse 5, his masterpieces) and love the voice of Malkovich, this audiobook will push all your buttons. Vonneguts often unadorned prose doesnt always lend itself to reading aloud, but Malkovich rings every last drop from this one with his inflection and style.
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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
- Andrew
- 28-09-2023
John Malkovich breathed life into this yarn
What can I say amazing narration by John M on this take of breakfast of champions
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 04-12-2019
John Malkovich
John Malkovich, accompanying PDF? What more can I say? Brilliant. A more personal entry in Vonnegurt's body of work, something both highly metacritical of both fiction and Vonnegurt himself.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Tom
- 13-12-2015
Hella monotone.
Could stand listening to John Malkovichs voice for more than 5 minutes at a time.
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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
- Adam M. Burnett
- 20-01-2018
awesome
awesome book. Malcovich is amazing. would thoroughly recommend. listened to it while exploring Amsterdam in a fog of narcotics
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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
- Jason Starling
- 30-12-2019
Brilliant!!!!
John Malcovich was amazing narrating this truly modern classic. The audio gave me a different perspective of the story. Absolutely fantastic
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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
- dean
- 24-07-2015
best vonnegut in my opinion
funny, beautiful and inspiring. . . . . . . . . . . . . ect !
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- alan
- 14-08-2017
malkovich is an actor
an actor who reads in a monotone almost all the way . not much acting going on .
shame
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