The Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love

This is the second major autobiographical work Delany published, detailing his experiences as part of the rock group/commune Heavenly Breakfast during 1967, and falling directly after the events of his Motion of Light in Water. Delany's rich prose does an outstanding job of illuminating the conditions the commune lived in: the four-to-a-bed, communal baths, kitchen arrangements for 15 or so, scrounging for food and dollars, personal hygiene, arguments, discussions, lover arrangements, drugs, and occasionally some working sessions for the band. For those who reached their maturity around this time, who felt the siren call of the counter-culture, every line of this book will resonate, will force memories of and the feel of that time. The character portraits he paints reek of authenticity; the dialogue is real; nothing is left out, no matter how filthy, degrading, lovely, exhalting, boring, unusual or commonplace. Pieces of this experience clearly were incorporated in his massive Dhalgren, and this book and the earlier Motion of Light in Water will help illuminate much of the frequently obscure situations of that book. Between the two books, Delany reveals himself as a man of great and diverse talents: songwriter/singer/guitar player, actor, author, poet (though he doesn't think much of his own work, preferring that of his then wife, Marilyn Hacker), critic, organizer, peace-maker. Rather oddly, though, Delany himself doesn't seem to be the forefront character of this piece, but more of an observer of the scene. Heavenly Breakfast, perhaps because it is so short and covers only a single year of his life, is not as rich as Motion, but is still full of his intense images and great prose: "In the other room, the woman-voice wound its obstacle course through consonant-studded invectives." Not many would describe an argument that way. A great trip down memory lane; a sure portrait of a time and place that may never come again.

I read this book first in 1995 when I was 24 and re-read it on december 2001.The first time, this book had a great impact on me. Among one it describes the social aspects of a group of people living in a small space. It also depicts the influence it has on the perspective of one of them in a touchy scene where one of the people enters a shoe-store to buy new shoes for a job she gets.As with other more personal work of Delany he somehow stays out of the picture himself most of the time. (Read "Mad Man", "Triton", "Dhalgren" and "Grains of sand" for instance, and then take the rich inner world of the lead person in "Babel 17" as contrast.)"Heavenly breakfast" is set in a somewhat later time frame then "Motion of light and water"The beauty of this book is the (mostly) non-judging way Delany percieves the world in that period.

Having read about a dozen of Samuel R. Delany's 30-odd books, it must be said that Heavenly Breakfast is his most straight-forward. Those used to--in love with--his convolute cogitations simply will not find them here (with the exception of about a half dozen paragraphs). The narrative is like ground glass crunching beneath your feet; you're aware of every step you take in this late '60s, East Village cul-de-sac. Indeed, the strength of this book is the fact that Delany shows us three different styles of communal living (Heavenly Breakfast being one) and while he evinces preferences, he settles you on each level so you can get the feel for yourself. Ever-present is Delany's gift to put you in the room with these people (Grendahl, Dave, Little Dave, Reema, Electric Baby among others) who bathe in a big enamel tub in the kitchen, squat to let nature takes its course in sight of each other, sleep at least four to a bed and "ball" next to one another. The problem with this book is that it's just too short. I could have spent weeks--rather than mere days--drifting through the Age of Aquarius with a struggling rock band (also named Heavenly Breakfast and the galvinizing force behind the commune). The characters are--as with most with most Delany characters--a mythical impossible millimeter from stepping off the page and offering you a toke of the joint they're passing around. For fans of Dhalgren, this is a MUST, exposing many of the real-life roots of that monolithic work. For anyone else, imagine a place that "combines the best points of a jail, a mental hospital, a brothel"... "without any of their disadvantages."