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Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love
Cultural Writing. Memoir. HEAVENLY BREAKFAST is Samuel R. Delaney's wise and vivid essay on urban communes and cooperatives in the winter of 'Sixty-seven/'Sixty-eight. It examines their function, structure, permanence, and impermanence as precisely as a sociological study. Because its method is narrative and anecdotal, however, it reads like a passionate memoir--a marvelous document from an extraordinary time. Based on journals he kept at the time, these pages recount his encounters with other communes and experimental living arrangements-some gentle, some brutal; of encounters between those inside and those outside the countercultural life; of idealism and hopes pushing against a resistant reality.
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Samuel R. Delany
306 books2,252 followersSamuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
March 15, 2021
“I never claimed to be a paragon of normal desire—”
I had no idea that Delany (78) ‘retired’ as long ago as 2015. I assume this is only from the rigours of academic life and teaching, because he is still very much publishing: Wesleyan University Press just released the first 400-page volume of ‘Occasional Views’, while Delany himself self-published the 500-page novel ‘Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas’ in 2020. (It is somehow extremely satisfying that Delany’s concept of porn as a ‘para-literary genre’ still ruffles the feathers of propriety).
Given his extensive and diverse career, it is incredible to think that Delany was only 25 when the events recounted in ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ transpired. Included at the beginning is a wonderful black-and-white photograph of a very dapper-looking Chip with his friends, taken by Bernard Kay in 1967.
At the end, Delany describes how he told his friends about the book and if he had ‘mispresented’ anything. “Do you think I’ve left out too much?” he asks worriedly. To which Sue replies: “Well, you’ve left out an awful lot about yourself.”
Of course, this was a time long before he was the cultural icon he is today. Delany proudly notes that his ‘personal income’ from writing then was $26, which kept him afloat at the commune. While he is very much a background figure, anyone familiar with his career will easily discern his larger-than-life presence throughout. It is clear that his brief six-month stint at ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ had a lasting influence, with the ripples and refractions from this early period having a big impact on ‘Dhalgren’.
What is also abundantly clear from ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ is what a naturally gifted writer Delany is. Yes, there is the occasional braggadocio that must make even the older Chip cringe. But there is a suppleness and life to the writing, and a richness of telling detail and trenchant observation, not to mention joie de vivre, humour and general sexiness, that all combine to make this a riveting joy to read.
For the Constellation Press edition, Delany contributes some fascinating footnotes and biographical details. He mentions: “I’ve always thought of the book as an essay and never as an autobiography, although there is lots of biographical material.” He first goes to the commune after he and Marilyn Hacker “were not really getting alone” (Delany quotes one of her poems in the book). “All I took was my guitar case and some underwear,” he says matter-of-factly.
After ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ the rock band – which lent its name to the commune, both becoming synonymous with each other – disbanded when their recording company went bankrupt, Delany managed to rent another apartment. Here he wrote ‘Nova’, probably the first proto-cyberpunk SF novel, and started work on his early-phase magnum opus, ‘Dhalgren’.
The sub-title ‘An Essay on the Winter of Love’ is a counter to the popular epithet of ‘Summer of Love’ coined for that era. With this, Delany refers to the shadow cast by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the shooting of Andy Warhol as a hint of a greater darkness to come. While ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ does seem to exist in its own temporal bubble, suspended magically outside the relentless pull of history, Delany has always argued for the value of granularity and particularity in making history live and breathe:
I couldn’t talk about life at Heavenly Breakfast without talking about drugs and sex. Yet I couldn’t mention either without their falling into value matrices set up by other people which precluded what I really wanted to discuss: the texture and affectivity of life lived humanely, day by day.
I had no idea that Delany (78) ‘retired’ as long ago as 2015. I assume this is only from the rigours of academic life and teaching, because he is still very much publishing: Wesleyan University Press just released the first 400-page volume of ‘Occasional Views’, while Delany himself self-published the 500-page novel ‘Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas’ in 2020. (It is somehow extremely satisfying that Delany’s concept of porn as a ‘para-literary genre’ still ruffles the feathers of propriety).
Given his extensive and diverse career, it is incredible to think that Delany was only 25 when the events recounted in ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ transpired. Included at the beginning is a wonderful black-and-white photograph of a very dapper-looking Chip with his friends, taken by Bernard Kay in 1967.
At the end, Delany describes how he told his friends about the book and if he had ‘mispresented’ anything. “Do you think I’ve left out too much?” he asks worriedly. To which Sue replies: “Well, you’ve left out an awful lot about yourself.”
Of course, this was a time long before he was the cultural icon he is today. Delany proudly notes that his ‘personal income’ from writing then was $26, which kept him afloat at the commune. While he is very much a background figure, anyone familiar with his career will easily discern his larger-than-life presence throughout. It is clear that his brief six-month stint at ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ had a lasting influence, with the ripples and refractions from this early period having a big impact on ‘Dhalgren’.
What is also abundantly clear from ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ is what a naturally gifted writer Delany is. Yes, there is the occasional braggadocio that must make even the older Chip cringe. But there is a suppleness and life to the writing, and a richness of telling detail and trenchant observation, not to mention joie de vivre, humour and general sexiness, that all combine to make this a riveting joy to read.
For the Constellation Press edition, Delany contributes some fascinating footnotes and biographical details. He mentions: “I’ve always thought of the book as an essay and never as an autobiography, although there is lots of biographical material.” He first goes to the commune after he and Marilyn Hacker “were not really getting alone” (Delany quotes one of her poems in the book). “All I took was my guitar case and some underwear,” he says matter-of-factly.
After ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ the rock band – which lent its name to the commune, both becoming synonymous with each other – disbanded when their recording company went bankrupt, Delany managed to rent another apartment. Here he wrote ‘Nova’, probably the first proto-cyberpunk SF novel, and started work on his early-phase magnum opus, ‘Dhalgren’.
The sub-title ‘An Essay on the Winter of Love’ is a counter to the popular epithet of ‘Summer of Love’ coined for that era. With this, Delany refers to the shadow cast by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the shooting of Andy Warhol as a hint of a greater darkness to come. While ‘Heavenly Breakfast’ does seem to exist in its own temporal bubble, suspended magically outside the relentless pull of history, Delany has always argued for the value of granularity and particularity in making history live and breathe:
I couldn’t talk about life at Heavenly Breakfast without talking about drugs and sex. Yet I couldn’t mention either without their falling into value matrices set up by other people which precluded what I really wanted to discuss: the texture and affectivity of life lived humanely, day by day.
December 15, 2020
This is an autobiographical look at communal living in New York City in the 1960s. It considers what was then a very radical living arrangement and social consciousness, with poignant observations about sex and drugs and rock'n'roll along the way. It was a very avant garde piece when it appeared, and now can be viewed as historical reminiscence of a time when times really were a 'changing. Delany was one of the premiere young science fiction writers of the time recounted, but this is much more than a look at his personal career. (Though fans of Dhalgren will find it valuable.) It's an intelligent and insightful look at the end of a one of the most turbulent decades in history from the perspective of those who were changing society unawares.
August 24, 2012
The texture and affectivity of life lived humanely, day by day.
For six months in the winter of 67/68, Samuel "Chip" Delany lived with his psych-folk band Heavenly Breakfast and many others in a 4-room commune of the same name in the Lower East Side. This is his highly lucid socio-analytical account of that period in the "Winter of Love" (ironically citing the oversimplification of calling 67 "The Summer of Love" in the midst of such social upheaval, good and bad). Even without spotting the bits of these events that inform his utter masterwork, Dhalgren, this is a pretty vital account and assessment of its era. Maybe a little idealized by his sympathies, but I think he's well aware of the complexities of such a portrayal, and it's really an excellent record.
As usual, the old cover is so much better than that of the one I'm reading:
July 31, 2021
This was such a smart, prescient intervention, not only into the politics of gentrification, but also of queer, racialized lateral aggression, collective caretaking, and the challenge of living/practicing radical leftist politics in the tight confines of a shared house. As is usual for Delany, you get a subtle and powerful critique of institutional psychiatry and paternalism; this is a great essay to think with in terms of Mad [chosen] family and reimagining collective, interdependent forms of autonomy.
November 7, 2017
A great addendum to The Motion Of Light In Water: Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village, taking place a year or so after the events of that memoir's end. For anyone who has lived in a punk house or similar improvised and strange housing situation of convenience and economy, you will find echoes here of the curious social aspects inherent to living close with others. So too you will find a blessed critique of those overdetermined projects in "communal" living that seem more like tedious and endless meetings coupled with passive-agressive tolerating of one another.
For being a memoir of the '60s it is surprisingly un-trite—it comes with the measured voice and musings of beloved SF master Chip, and (at least for me) doesn't skip a single beat. If anything, it makes me wish for a complete (and long) autobiography. Given Delany's prolificness, there may well be a MS of exactly such a thing floating around in a desk drawer out there. Here reigns the nebulous arrangement of improvised living, a slice of time of which I wish I could have more.
October 8, 2015
In the early eighties I lived in several squats so this took me back to a period which I hadn't thought about for some time. I have a great nostalgia for the era when people actively sought, and experimented with, alternative ways of living. In a world of panoptical control and media saturation I think communal living would provide at least some form of insulation against indoctrination.
June 26, 2020
4 1/2 stars. In my youth, I made a habit of reading a large number of 60s memoirs that covered various aspects of the political and cultural rebellions of that period, but I managed to miss this one. Since then, I've also become a huge fan of Delany's fiction, especially the novels he published after the period covered in this memoir. Finally reading this was a no-brainer and a treat, despite its brevity.
The only two 60s memoirs from America worth rereading at this point are Grogan's Ringolevio and this one, I'd say, but for vastly different reasons. While Grogan's expansive childhood-to-publication sweep has a pomo Dickensian feel to it (unsurprising given its fast and loose relationship with objective fact), Heavenly Breakfast is much more sociologically useful as well as being an interesting personal document.
The group living situations examined in the course of the work, written by an intelligent, intensely observant, and most importantly a personally invested participant can provide for an interested reader a great blueprint of the variety of voluntary group living circumstances available at the time and since, including a variety of communes, a co-op, and a monastery, examined from Delany's fascinating perspective in his usual amazing writing style. The direct correlation between Delany's understanding of his own temporary home and the current interest in the idea of "autonomous zones" as experienced by a single enthusiastic participant in a micro-scale example is worth examination as well.
I'm glad this is back in print and easy to find again, particularly given the historical moment we find ourselves in here in America, and I hope it finds a new audience of people interested in putting their political and ethical beliefs in action through their personal lives as well as otherwise.
The only two 60s memoirs from America worth rereading at this point are Grogan's Ringolevio and this one, I'd say, but for vastly different reasons. While Grogan's expansive childhood-to-publication sweep has a pomo Dickensian feel to it (unsurprising given its fast and loose relationship with objective fact), Heavenly Breakfast is much more sociologically useful as well as being an interesting personal document.
The group living situations examined in the course of the work, written by an intelligent, intensely observant, and most importantly a personally invested participant can provide for an interested reader a great blueprint of the variety of voluntary group living circumstances available at the time and since, including a variety of communes, a co-op, and a monastery, examined from Delany's fascinating perspective in his usual amazing writing style. The direct correlation between Delany's understanding of his own temporary home and the current interest in the idea of "autonomous zones" as experienced by a single enthusiastic participant in a micro-scale example is worth examination as well.
I'm glad this is back in print and easy to find again, particularly given the historical moment we find ourselves in here in America, and I hope it finds a new audience of people interested in putting their political and ethical beliefs in action through their personal lives as well as otherwise.
February 11, 2025
3 months late but easily finished overnight. ty seamus bb <333
Read
November 6, 2025Short and incredibly sweet. A beautiful documentation of an interesting kind of life. The ending was perfect Delany. I never claimed to be a paragon of normal desire!
May 14, 2021
Fascinating vignettes into life as it was lived by Delany in a New York commune in the 1960s. It was very interesting to read his memories of the different people he encountered, the music he made and the writing he did at the time while New York went through rapid changes around them. Will definitely check out his other Non-fiction and scifi
Read
March 7, 2008Portrait of the dawning of new awareness.
August 22, 2025
last of his non-fiction... there are the letters and ig the journals but nothing I think left curated quite like this (like Motion of Light in Water; Time Square Red, Time Square Blue; Bread and Wine to a certain extent). It was so good! one of my favorite things no.
the comparing of the communes and the send up of the one is so.... rhymes with Sophie Yanow's
The Contradictions. this is the moment I needed a clear-eyes view of these sorts of things and ... yeah this delivered and I did not expect.
works too b/c the pretentious bs that's in so much of his fiction is only here and bit and when it is it is often (almost always) undercut! (the line "you're so h*gh" after he goes on a bit of a heady tangent - love; +the time where someone is like "whatever" or "that doesn't make sense" [he says that about one of this journal entries] or something). He gets in the heady stuff while not messing w the tone or rather integrating it in the dissonant tone -- great formal work here <3 He's self-concious here--or at lest striking for a tone that he's not interested in his other works. ah - I love this one. And some of the more heady enigmatic moments tho they are v few are good -- I liked the one about narrative and Judy b/c of course I did.
The end was beautiful - made me want to cry a little.
I think I want to read about utopias now!
the comparing of the communes and the send up of the one is so.... rhymes with Sophie Yanow's
The Contradictions. this is the moment I needed a clear-eyes view of these sorts of things and ... yeah this delivered and I did not expect.
works too b/c the pretentious bs that's in so much of his fiction is only here and bit and when it is it is often (almost always) undercut! (the line "you're so h*gh" after he goes on a bit of a heady tangent - love; +the time where someone is like "whatever" or "that doesn't make sense" [he says that about one of this journal entries] or something). He gets in the heady stuff while not messing w the tone or rather integrating it in the dissonant tone -- great formal work here <3 He's self-concious here--or at lest striking for a tone that he's not interested in his other works. ah - I love this one. And some of the more heady enigmatic moments tho they are v few are good -- I liked the one about narrative and Judy b/c of course I did.
The end was beautiful - made me want to cry a little.
I think I want to read about utopias now!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2018
in new york i keep doing this awful thing where i visit items once, twice, three times before i buy them—i've been noting down in my pocket notebook the books i would, should buy from all the great used bookstores here. heavenly breakfast is the first one i've relented and bought, at codex on bleecker. because—well—if you're a delany fan it speaks for itself. and unlike most of the noted books, this seemed a rather more difficult one to find, a book that was in a pretty well curated used bookshop for a reason. i love how it has the same ellipses and interruptions as his fiction, love as always his open casual unprofessional (or rather unmasked) but intent mode of inquiry.
May 14, 2025
Another memoir by Delany about a lost work--the music of Heavenly Breakfast. O--and it's also about living with a million people living in a 3 bedroom NYC commune in the late 60s floated by the sale of grass, the intimacies and public privacies in close quarters doing ordinary things like taking a bath in the same room as someone chopping vegetables, communal care. As Delany acknowledges, sex and drugs hover in the background of all of it, but that's not the point.
It's accessible and written in terse and often modular chapters. I'd love to teach it.
& tbh it feels less known because of the timing of its publication, 1979, well after the first wave of 60s memoir and CNF, for a publisher advertising pulp sci-fi on the final pages. Though, in hindsight, it also has the benefit of being conversant with the first wave of memoirs and cultural commentaries written about the counterculture. There's a pointed riposte to Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem here, I swear, on page 100, where Delany does a head fake with drug using youngest commune member Judy, writing her as if she met a moralistically tidy end in an early death then saying no, actually, she's just fine. Well after the fact Delany remained optimistic about the capacity of communal living to expand our capacities for care and humane attention.
It's accessible and written in terse and often modular chapters. I'd love to teach it.
& tbh it feels less known because of the timing of its publication, 1979, well after the first wave of 60s memoir and CNF, for a publisher advertising pulp sci-fi on the final pages. Though, in hindsight, it also has the benefit of being conversant with the first wave of memoirs and cultural commentaries written about the counterculture. There's a pointed riposte to Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem here, I swear, on page 100, where Delany does a head fake with drug using youngest commune member Judy, writing her as if she met a moralistically tidy end in an early death then saying no, actually, she's just fine. Well after the fact Delany remained optimistic about the capacity of communal living to expand our capacities for care and humane attention.
November 29, 2019
Moderately interesting but not particularly coherent with few if any lessons to take away or characters whose stories I became invested in.
October 17, 2023
read for a class and thoroughly enjoyed it!!
September 8, 2025
your average horny bisexual study of urban communes in the late 60s
January 16, 2020
as a memoir I felt Delaney was too detached from himself in his writing for me to connect to, and as a novella-length essay it painted too blurry a picture of its topic (communes) but the writing style was lovely and engaging, and it was really prescient of current housing crisis + class struggles.
October 18, 2012
My initial quick review while I was reading it was, "I'm really liking this book ... a look back to a simpler age, that's really just as complicated as today."
The truth is it is a very short book, a recollection of sorts for the author of what was likely a more innocent age in his eyes, a happy time in his youth. I have to say that it is unlike anything I've read by Mr. Delaney. He write science fiction that is eye opening, as is this book though in entirely different ways. He plays with language in a way few authors today dare, he has a unique style in a literary scene that quite honestly has few true stylists anymore.
This book however is written without too much authorial affectation I think, it is simply a recollection of his time as a part of a band, and a collective known as The Heavenly Breakfast. It was an interesting read in many ways, because it opened up my eyes to some facts about a past that is often mythologized by the civil rights movement or glorified or romanticized by youth of their day. Here Mr. Delaney takes us through an honest voyage back to a time when drug use was rampant, when abortions were illegal, when being a hippy was being an outcast instead of the quaint figure in the background that is your weird uncle Al.
The book bounces around chronologically between recollections, vignettes of different times and experiences at the Heavenly Breakfast. It is written in a very clear and concise style that doesn't play too much with language but just seeks to tell the events as they happened. And I can't help but feel that this is really more of a setting down of memories for Mr. Delaney than it is any kind of expose about his early life. Which is refreshingly original and honest. I think the author held back somewhat from revealing everything, which would account for the length of the book and the abrupt way it seems to skip to the end. But just the same it is a personal glimpse into something that is very personal and it was a pleasure to glean at least a little bit of what inspired and formed the great and creative genius of Samuel R. Delaney.
I would recommend this book for fans of memoirs, people with an avid love of history, or the author or the literary process. Its a lovely, honest, look back at the author's humble beginnings. I loved the book, and I hope to read more of his non-fictional works.
The truth is it is a very short book, a recollection of sorts for the author of what was likely a more innocent age in his eyes, a happy time in his youth. I have to say that it is unlike anything I've read by Mr. Delaney. He write science fiction that is eye opening, as is this book though in entirely different ways. He plays with language in a way few authors today dare, he has a unique style in a literary scene that quite honestly has few true stylists anymore.
This book however is written without too much authorial affectation I think, it is simply a recollection of his time as a part of a band, and a collective known as The Heavenly Breakfast. It was an interesting read in many ways, because it opened up my eyes to some facts about a past that is often mythologized by the civil rights movement or glorified or romanticized by youth of their day. Here Mr. Delaney takes us through an honest voyage back to a time when drug use was rampant, when abortions were illegal, when being a hippy was being an outcast instead of the quaint figure in the background that is your weird uncle Al.
The book bounces around chronologically between recollections, vignettes of different times and experiences at the Heavenly Breakfast. It is written in a very clear and concise style that doesn't play too much with language but just seeks to tell the events as they happened. And I can't help but feel that this is really more of a setting down of memories for Mr. Delaney than it is any kind of expose about his early life. Which is refreshingly original and honest. I think the author held back somewhat from revealing everything, which would account for the length of the book and the abrupt way it seems to skip to the end. But just the same it is a personal glimpse into something that is very personal and it was a pleasure to glean at least a little bit of what inspired and formed the great and creative genius of Samuel R. Delaney.
I would recommend this book for fans of memoirs, people with an avid love of history, or the author or the literary process. Its a lovely, honest, look back at the author's humble beginnings. I loved the book, and I hope to read more of his non-fictional works.
June 1, 2009
This book, along with Delany's Motion of Light in Water, seem to have helped me develop a qualitative affinity for non-fiction. The reason I can overcome my usual level of immediate disinterest in memoir-type books, is because of my ongoing relationship with the author's work. Funny how that works. Reading this takes little to no effort for me, since the voice is a familiar one to anyone who's read much of Delany's work, but more readily accessible due to the fact that the real-world events are easier to imagine than a fictional creation, nevermind a fantastical one. Additionally, when you've read much of an author's fiction, then turn to his non-fiction, the stories take on additional depth as you piece together the symbols and inspiration (real or imagined) within the "true" stories and find yourself attempting to figure out where or if they fit into the creation of the fiction, adding an entirely new layer to both what you're reading and what you've read.
Other than the above, I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with Delany's work wanting to read this unless you have a large interest in the general subject matter (commune-life in the '60s), but for what it is, this book is great.
Other than the above, I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with Delany's work wanting to read this unless you have a large interest in the general subject matter (commune-life in the '60s), but for what it is, this book is great.
January 6, 2022
For an essay whose subject of youthful communists and their drug use, free sex, sloth, filth, and life changing conversations in filthy new york, I found it rather cute.
My favorite part was their trip to the monastery, (the monks are so pleasant in their confusion) followed by Chip's defense of his commune vs a neighbor's commune as he waxes the differences between a commune and a co-op while he is high with Lee at the subway at 4am.
Reminds me of my old times in the lofts of Brooklyn, 50+ years after Delaney pioneered what is now chic LES.
My favorite part was their trip to the monastery, (the monks are so pleasant in their confusion) followed by Chip's defense of his commune vs a neighbor's commune as he waxes the differences between a commune and a co-op while he is high with Lee at the subway at 4am.
Reminds me of my old times in the lofts of Brooklyn, 50+ years after Delaney pioneered what is now chic LES.
December 25, 2023
“Maybe an essential part of communes is their impermanence. Maybe communes just break up. … The commune is a more delicate organism than the co-op, more sensitive, more shorter-lived.” In Heavenly Breakfast, Delaney offers the texture of his short-lived time in a commune in the East Village in 1968. I feel lucky to have tumbled into it as part of the research for a new play I’m writing about communes of the era. A beautiful and frightening glimpse into the “winter of love.”
July 28, 2011
A compelling memoir of life in a commune in mid-1960's New York City. I first read it in 1980, when I was a senior in high school and I revisit it periodically. I've outgrown my blind nostalgia for the 1960's but not my affection for this book.
February 14, 2011
This book took my favorite aspects of Dhalgren (the romanticization of 1960s communes) and distilled them into a perfect, slender volume.
May 9, 2012
A perfectly engrossing memoir of NYC in the 60's. Delany's ability to capture the humor and intelligence of randome encounters makes this entertaining.
June 1, 2009
I *think* I read this book? It's really confusing.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews