4.12.2007

How I Found Him.... and other writers

I found this version of Breakfast of Champions while wandering the boardwalk alone for the first time. I was 13, my sister had made me cry for the 5th time that morning, and my allowance of $10 was burning a hole in my pocket.
I was sneaking cigarettes and approaching the crazy art place, when I spotted a 3 ft. wide doorway lined with books. It looked to go back for miles, this visage of books. As I had just completed both my latest V.C. Andrews and Stephen King books, I was left with nothing new to read, and hence, I wandered in.
I leafed through a couple of titles I'd heard of – War & Peace for 75 cents, Kafka's The Stranger for a quarter – when my eye was caught by the look of a cereal box, limply pressed between gargantuan novels of no importance. The sea air was unkind to paperbacks, but I pulled Breakfast of Champions out in one piece. I scanned the back, flipped open to Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole (*), and my life was changed.
I continued to find amazing books, chosen for their covers, like Still Life with Woodpecker, which looked like a pack of Camels. That introduced me to Tom Robbins, who I hold up with Vonnegut as one of the greatest authors of our time.

1 comment:

Stephen said...

I loved this. Thanks for sharing it.

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