Published in 1973, Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye, Blue Monday! was Kurt Vonnegut's 50th birthday present to himself. It also marked the end of a period of depression that had followed his 1969 publication of Slaughterhouse-Five.
Breakfast of Champions tells the story of Kilgore Trout, an elderly science-fiction author and one of Vonnegut's recurring characters, and Dwayne Hoover, an insane but wealthy Pontiac dealer who interprets Trout's work literally. When the two finally meet in a bar, Hoover becomes violent, attacking bystanders and biting off Trout's finger.
Vonnegut experiments with structure, most obviously when it comes to the inclusion of his own childlike sketches. The...
