The Vagabond's Breakfast

by Richard Gwyn

In 2006, Richard Gwyn was given a year to live without a liver transplant. A novelist and poet, he lost nine years of his life as a vagrant alcoholic roaming the Mediterranean. This memoir is an account of his "lost" of addiction and reckless travel, serial hospitalizations, living under sentence of death, the life-saving gift of a hepatic graft, recovery, and at last, redemption via friendship, imagination, intellect, love, and fatherhood.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2011

About the author

Richard Gwyn was born and grew up in south Wales. While studying anthropology at the London School of Economics, he became interested in the threatened cultures, languages and music of peripheral communities. He also harboured ambitions as a poet and made several luminary appearances at punk gigs in the late 1970s, including a memorable support act to The Cure. Turning his back on beckoning stardom, a confusing period followed, during which he lived in London and worked as a milkman and sawyer. Then, after sustaining an injury in an industrial accident, he moved to Crete and bought a six-metre fishing boat, describing himself as a refugee from Thatcherism. For the next nine years he travelled on and around the Mediterranean forming enduring links with people, places and wooden boats. The prospect of permanent self-imposed exile seemed likely. However, after a long, revelatory walk across northern Spain, he decided to return to Wales. He settled in Cardiff, where he married Rose Pallot, and their two daughters were born. In 1993 he began a study of illness, language and the body, an interest which he pursued professionally until 2003, resulting in the publication of two books, Communicating Health and Illness (Sage, 2002) and Discourse, the Body, and Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). He teaches at Cardiff University, where he is Director of the MA in Creative Writing.

Richard Gwyn’s poetry includes One Night in Icarus Street, Stone dog, flower red/Gos de pedra flor vermella (both 1995), Walking on Bones (2000) and Being in Water (2001). He is also the editor of an anthology of new poetry from Wales titled The Pterodactyl’s Wing: Welsh World Poetry, launched at the Hay Festival in 2003. He has published poetry in translation from Spanish, Catalan and Lithuanian, has read his work at many venues internationally, and has collaborated extensively with visual artists in Britain, Spain and France. He is a regular columnist for Poetry Wales, reviews books for The Independent and has discussed his work on TV and radio. His first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (2005), set in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, is published by Parthian in the UK, Doubleday in the USA, and has been translated into many languages. His second novel, Deep Hanging Out (2007) is published by Snowbooks. His most recent books are Sad Giraffe Café (2010), a collection of prose poems, and The Vagabond’s Breakfast (2011) a memoir.

Reviews

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up not finishing this -- I was curious about it, since I was taught by Richard Gwyn during my undergrad, but even having waited to read it until there's little chance of him teaching me again, reading it felt inappropriate. It's a very personal account of his life and all the things he's done, most of them not things that would make anyone look up to him as a lecturer. It's an interesting account of illness and some degree of recovery, among many other things -- his thoughts on chronic illness are worth reading.

Unfortunately, I never got on with Richard's writing style (and he probably never got on with mine either), which just leaves me cold.

[Debret Viana · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnificent. moving drunk memoirs.

[Carolina Garrido Cepeda · Rating 2 out of 5]

No es un mal libro. Tiene momentos e ideas muy destacables pero a mí no me entusiasmó.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Held me spellbound for a long meditative journey (spread over 12 months, this book travelled well, as it should). I didn't want it to end, although I shared his goal to reach a healing conclusion, so I read (parts) again.
It's a long time since I abused a book so badly, if ever, turning down corners, underlining, stars in margins... I think you must, in some sense at least, have been on your own journey to the land of the lost to sup and share this bottle of distilled life, and want more. Les Tres Riches Heures de Ricardo Blanco!

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can read my review of this book here: http://charleslambert.wordpress.com/2...

[Hari Raelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and painful read. Gwyn discusses his experiences of alcoholism and chronic illness with a frank mix of grief and humour. As someone who has also lived with prolonged experiences with mental ill-health, I found the rawness of the text difficult and uncomfortable at times, but at others entirely life-affirming and comforting. The honesty with which Gwyn discusses his experiences, his emotions and his fears is awe-inspiring.

I have seen some reviews on here suggesting that some of the experiences Gywn recounts make him hard to like and harder to admire, but honestly I feel entirely the opposite - anyone who is willing to lay themselves bare with that degree of honesty and vulnerability, to paint themselves as a human who is fallible and healing, deserves not just respect but admiration.

[Nasim Marie Jafry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review is from 2011: The author is undeniably amiable and erudite, someone you'd want to have coffee with, but I found at times there was a lack of narrative drive, he seems to endlessly hang out with a ragtag of bohemian drunks in exotic, interchangeable locations, and you almost get the feeling he is putting this all down not for us but for himself. Still, all in all, a pleasurable read and his tone is always calm and poised even though he's often describing chaos and darkness. You almost forget he is ill he has so many (other) interesting things to say. Towards the end he discusses our need for narrative both as writers and human beings, the endless retelling of stories we go through:

'...This eternal recounting, this need to tell and tell, is there not something appalling about it - and not only in the sense of whether or not we consciously or intentionally mix reality and fiction? Are there not times when we wish the whole cycle of telling and recounting and explaining and narrating would simply stop - if only for a week, or a day; if only for an hour?...'

I absolutely loved that part.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book by this author that I have read. I wish I had started with his fiction as I found this a fairly dry and unappealing read and wonder if his other work would be more interesting. There was something elusive and detached about this whole book. I felt as if I was listening to the author muse about scenes from his life without any attempt to engage or interest me as a reader. Most of the places, people and incidents he encounters on his 'vagabondage' were unfamiliar and alien to me and I struggled to engage imaginatively with his descriptions. As someone who genuinely wanted to understand more, I found myself defeated. I am embarrassed and disappointed to admit I found the repeated tales of squalor and drunkenness neither remarkable or poetic - nor even educational - but just rather boring and repellent. I suspect that this was precisely the effect intended, which is why I continued to the end, but I don't really feel, having read it, that I've gained much new information or any real insights.

[Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earnestly, this book is fantastic. I didn't want it to end, and so I took my time moving between the chapters. While following a baseline plot from illness to recovery (and doing so in a way that is honest to the truths of illness), there is also a deep sense of an authentic and singular life lived, a life that the author looks back on with an acute sense of self-awareness, dedication to detail, and a lyrical quality that highlights both the brevity and beauty of life and what it means to live, both in the promise of youth and in the face of death.

A true, brave testament to the powers of nonfiction/memoir writing, _The Vagabond's Breakfast_ has prose-beauty equal to _A Moveable Feast_ but infinitely more honesty and depth.

[Geoffh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure on what evidence the previous reviewer bases her assumption that this book is not wholly autobiographical. I’ve found nothing to support this claim, and certainly nothing written by the author himself. I found The Vagabond’s Breakfast to be original and compelling, a sometimes brutally honest account of Richard Gwyn’s struggles with alcoholism and serious ill health, and of the experiences and literary influences which have shaped his writing style.

[Demetzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny and touching and awesome insight into a great author