The preamble:

My paternal grandparents’ basement was a cultural goldmine. They raised nine(!) kids in a small house (I think any house is a small house when there’s 9 kids in it), and all the books and records that the kids didn’t take when they moved out, wound up mixed up in the basement — two full walls of books, floor-to-ceiling, and hundreds of records. There was an old upright piano there too. Just the kind of place for a teenager to disappear to when the adults were talking about boring stuff. A cultural gold mine spanning four decades — from my dad’s teenage years starting in the late 1950s, through his youngest brother Peter’s early 20’s in the early 80’s. I don’t know what happened to that stuff, but I would pay good money to go back there.

I spent hundreds of hours in that basement, and it probably influenced my adult taste more than anywhere else. I read Future Shock there, I read Leonard Cohen’s poetry there, I listened to the Stompin’ Tom and Johnny Cash Stones and Cream there. I found Vonnegut there. 

I think that most people who love Vonnegut think that his best book is the first one they read. This is me: I found this in that basement and I flipped through it and when I saw the drawings, I knew it was something unique. I read it in one night, and then read it again the next day. My 15-year-old mind was blown. I couldn’t believe that you could write like that! 

I still have that copy of the book, I think it first belonged to my uncle (and my godfather) Peter. I’ve read it a hundred times, and will read it another hundred if my kid doesn’t swipe in when they move out. 

The actual review:

Breakfast of Champions is the perfect Vonnegut gateway drug. It’s an easy read, it’s bizarre, cynical, angry, vulgar, hilarious and certainly not for everyone. 

In the past couple of years I’ve been rereading his books in order, and while this clearly draws from techniques and ideas from his earlier books,  this is much closer to the stream-of-consciousness writing that’s common in his later work. It’s not one big idea as with Player Piano or Slaughterhouse Five. It’s playful, the work of a writer who can afford to take risks. 

It’s classic. Quotable lines that will roll around in your head for days after reading, drawings that you’ll want to buy prints of, and a lot of ‘yikes’ moments where he toes the line between satire and offence. 

It’s my favourite. It’s surely not Vonnegut’s best work, by literary standards, but for 15-year-old me, learning that you could write a book with serious ideas and also a cartoon drawing of an asshole, it was life-changing, unforgettable, and maybe the most influential bit of media in my reading life.