Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a normal-looking but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer and Burger Chef franchise owner who becomes obsessed with the writings of the other man, Kilgore Trout, taking them for literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fictionwriter who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout journeys toward Midland City to appear at a convention where he is destined to meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.
We can only understand the 1970s as a decade of disillusion, cynicism, bitterness, and anger by examining it in the context of the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate and the Cold War. The American people were increasingly disillusioned with the government and their democratic institutions in the 1970s. The Cold War, the Vietnam War, and Watergate damaged Americans' faith in their government and their leaders. Burdened with this political disillusionment, American society in the 1970s was also underseige by economic decline and declining standards of living. For many Americans, the 1970s became a decade of transition--marked by confusion, frustration, and an overwhelming feeling that America had lost its direction, as if the very future of the "American experiment" and the "American Dream" might be in question. In the 1970s, Americans were faced with unresolved conflict and problems that challenged the very heart of the post-war liberal consensus; they faced economic stagnation and recession, increasing poverty, decline in their standards of living, fears that the American Dream was becoming harder and harder to achieve, and bitter divisions over America's fundamental cultural values.
Let's look for a moment at some of the major problems that Americans faced in the 1970s. Many of these problems already existed before the 1970s, but seemed to many Americans to now be getting worse and more intractable. In the 1970s, we saw increasing divorce rates, with up to one in two marriages ending in divorce. We see a rise in female-headed households caused by these divorces, which forces single women to work to support their families. We see increasing numbers of women working, both to support their families and try to make up for their family's declining standard of living.. We see the increasing breakdown of the family, and a rise in juvenile delinquency. We see the increase in drug-use throughout all levels of society. We see increasing rise in crime and violent crime. We see the growth of equality and opportunities for both women and blacks. We see a rise in premarital sex and couples living together outside of marriage. We see the increasing presence of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in American society. We see the increasing use of sex to sell products to all levels of society. We see the liberal, white middle-class increasingly abandoning their churches and religions. We see working-class and conservative Americans returning to religion, and particularly the rise of TV ministries. We see the increasing loss of millions and millions of high-paying factory jobs. We see seventy percent of all new jobs created in the 1970s in low-paying service jobs. We see increasing numbers of women and children in poverty. We see ten to fifteen percent inflation per year in the 1970s. We see the real income of American workers fall on average two percent a year each year from 1973 to 1981. As a result of many of these changes, many Americans were losing their faith in the American Dream, their society, their government, and their future.
The real tragedy of the 1970s was that because Americans had increasingly lost their faith in their government, they did not trust or believe that their government could solve these problems. As the decade wore on and Americans perceived many of these problems to be getting worse, they only became even more disillusioned with their government. Many asked why their government didn't try to do something about what many saw as the decline of the American culture, society, and economy. Didn't the government care about the needs of the American people? Wasn't the government to help Americans overcome these problems?
There are some Trends pointed out in American Society in the 1970s relating the context : Higher Divorce rates,Increased Pre-marital Sex,Fewer women having children, Increase in Couples living together, Increased Recognition of Homosexual lifestyle,Rise in female-headed households,Rise in Drug use,Rising crime rates,10 to 15 percent annual inflation rate,Increasing costs of energy. Energy Crisis,
Growing concern about an environmental crisis,Increasing concern about carcinogens in foodand water,Declining standard of living,Increasing number of women working,More equality for Women and Blacks,
Increasing use of sex to sell products,Decline in mainstream, mainline Christian-- Protestant and Catholic--church attendance among the white, American middle-class,
Growth of fundamentalist, evangelical churches--Baptist and Methodist--and television ministries among Southern whites and American working-class.
We can only understand the 1970s as a decade of disillusion, cynicism, bitterness, and anger by examining it in the context of the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate and the Cold War. The American people were increasingly disillusioned with the government and their democratic institutions in the 1970s. The Cold War, the Vietnam War, and Watergate damaged Americans' faith in their government and their leaders. Burdened with this political disillusionment, American society in the 1970s was also underseige by economic decline and declining standards of living. For many Americans, the 1970s became a decade of transition--marked by confusion, frustration, and an overwhelming feeling that America had lost its direction, as if the very future of the "American experiment" and the "American Dream" might be in question. In the 1970s, Americans were faced with unresolved conflict and problems that challenged the very heart of the post-war liberal consensus; they faced economic stagnation and recession, increasing poverty, decline in their standards of living, fears that the American Dream was becoming harder and harder to achieve, and bitter divisions over America's fundamental cultural values.
Let's look for a moment at some of the major problems that Americans faced in the 1970s. Many of these problems already existed before the 1970s, but seemed to many Americans to now be getting worse and more intractable. In the 1970s, we saw increasing divorce rates, with up to one in two marriages ending in divorce. We see a rise in female-headed households caused by these divorces, which forces single women to work to support their families. We see increasing numbers of women working, both to support their families and try to make up for their family's declining standard of living.. We see the increasing breakdown of the family, and a rise in juvenile delinquency. We see the increase in drug-use throughout all levels of society. We see increasing rise in crime and violent crime. We see the growth of equality and opportunities for both women and blacks. We see a rise in premarital sex and couples living together outside of marriage. We see the increasing presence of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in American society. We see the increasing use of sex to sell products to all levels of society. We see the liberal, white middle-class increasingly abandoning their churches and religions. We see working-class and conservative Americans returning to religion, and particularly the rise of TV ministries. We see the increasing loss of millions and millions of high-paying factory jobs. We see seventy percent of all new jobs created in the 1970s in low-paying service jobs. We see increasing numbers of women and children in poverty. We see ten to fifteen percent inflation per year in the 1970s. We see the real income of American workers fall on average two percent a year each year from 1973 to 1981. As a result of many of these changes, many Americans were losing their faith in the American Dream, their society, their government, and their future.
The real tragedy of the 1970s was that because Americans had increasingly lost their faith in their government, they did not trust or believe that their government could solve these problems. As the decade wore on and Americans perceived many of these problems to be getting worse, they only became even more disillusioned with their government. Many asked why their government didn't try to do something about what many saw as the decline of the American culture, society, and economy. Didn't the government care about the needs of the American people? Wasn't the government to help Americans overcome these problems?
There are some Trends pointed out in American Society in the 1970s relating the context : Higher Divorce rates,Increased Pre-marital Sex,Fewer women having children, Increase in Couples living together, Increased Recognition of Homosexual lifestyle,Rise in female-headed households,Rise in Drug use,Rising crime rates,10 to 15 percent annual inflation rate,Increasing costs of energy. Energy Crisis,
Growing concern about an environmental crisis,Increasing concern about carcinogens in foodand water,Declining standard of living,Increasing number of women working,More equality for Women and Blacks,
Increasing use of sex to sell products,Decline in mainstream, mainline Christian-- Protestant and Catholic--church attendance among the white, American middle-class,
Growth of fundamentalist, evangelical churches--Baptist and Methodist--and television ministries among Southern whites and American working-class.
In the preface, Vonnegut states that as he reached his fiftieth birthday he felt a need to "clear his head of all the junk in there"—which includes the various subjects of his drawings, and the characters from his past novels and stories. To this end, he sprinkles plot descriptions for Trout's stories throughout the novel, illustrates the book with his own simple felt-tip pen drawings, and includes a number of characters from his other novels and short stories.
In many places in the book, Vonnegut provides simplistic descriptions of troubling themes in U.S. history. The result is passages explaining what things like racism, oppression and general inequality are without the contextual explanations that are often used to excuse these trends.
His drawings, intending to illustrate various aspects of life on Earth, are sometimes pertinent to the story line and sometimes tangential. They include renderings of an anus, flags, the date 1492, a beaver, a vulva, a flamingo, little girls' underpants, a torch, headstones, the yin-yang symbol, guns, trucks, cows and the hamburgers that are made from them, chickens and the Kentucky Fried Chicken that is made from them, an electric chair, the letters ETC, Christmas cards, a right hand that has a severed ring finger, the chemical structure of a plastic molecule, an apple, pi, zero, infinity, and the sunglasses the author himself wears as he enters the storyline.
In addition to Kilgore Trout, characters from other Vonnegut books which appear here include Eliot Rosewater and Rabo Karabekian. Rosewater was the main character in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and a minor character in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), while Karabekian later became the main character in Bluebeard (1988). Hoover's secretary, Francine Pefko, previously appeared in Cat's Cradle (1963), where she performed secretarial duties at General Forge and Foundry, in Ilium, New York. (Pefko also appears in "Fubar," a story released posthumously in Look at the Birdie.) Vonnegut uses the name "Khashdrahr Miasma" for a minor character, in reference to a character inPlayer Piano. The vicious guard dog, Kazak, was Winston Niles Rumfoord's pet in The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Selena MacIntosh's guide dog in Galápagos (1985). Many of Midland City's inhabitants reappear in Deadeye Dick (1982), which locates the city in Ohio.
The title, taken from the well-known slogan for Wheaties breakfast cereal, crops up in a key scene late in the novel when a waitress, apparently ironically, says "Breakfast of Champions" each time she serves a customer a martini. Vonnegut, in his typical ironic manner, mocks the legal and copyright systems as he notes meticulously that Breakfast of Champions is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc. for its breakfast cereal products, and that his use of the term is not "intended to disparage their fine products."
Vonnegut refers to himself as "Philboyd Studge" in the preface, a name which he claims his friend Knox Burger associated with cumbersome writing. The name appears to have been borrowed from a short story by Edwardian satirist Saki. ("Filboid Studge, the Story of the Mouse that Helped", describes the success of the eponymous breakfast food through bizarrely counter-intuitive advertising.)
The novel also describes a fictional extinct giant sea eagle called the Bermuda Ern. This allegorical species was later described in Vonnegut's book Timequake (1997) as apelagic raptor, a "great blue bird", the looming extinction of whose population was being caused by its female members "kicking the eggs from the nest" prior to their hatching, rather than kicking the young fledglings from the nest at the appropriate time. In Breakfast of Champions their extinction is said to have been caused by a fungus, brought to the island by men (in the form of athlete's foot), which attacked the birds' eyes and brains.
