by Nicole Lowman

I have inadvertently become a Vonnegut evangelist.

Preaching the good word hasn’t been totally unintentional, I suppose, since I intend to write my master’s thesis on why Breakfast of Champions should be taught to high school students. This means that when I talk shop with my graduate school cohorts, the first Vonnegut novel I read and loved plays a starring role.

Since I began researching adolescent education, secondary pedagogical theories and Breakfast criticism about three months ago, I have lured two people to read the novel and intrigued a few others. It would be ridiculous for me to list each human I’ve gushed to about Vonnegut changing my life when I was 14, and how high school kids need that kind of independent, critical thought in their lives.

I can, however, tell you about the two people I have converted to the dark side, as it were.

The first is my boyfriend, which you may think is a cheap win, but I stand behind that victory because the thesis idea attracted him to me.

The boyfriend and I both presented papers at Southern Connecticut State University’s Graduate English Conference. I created a handout for my presentation that featured some drawings from Breakfast, specifically beavers and a stork. My theory is that Vonnegut draws the reader’s attention to the arbitrary nature of symbols in American culture (and the arbitrariness of pretty much everything in this country).

It wasn’t exactly my intention to highlight only illustrations that are sexual in nature, but there it was.

After the conference, the boyfriend (who wasn’t yet the boyfriend) and I were flirting in a scholarly fashion, which involved a dialogue permeated with beaver innuendos. A few months later, we are still dating, the boyfriend has read both Breakfast and Slaughterhouse Five, and he has Mother Night on deck. Score one, Lowman!

The second is a classroom friend. We’d get together and wax master’s program periodically, and she would always say, “You know, now I really want to read Breakfast.” While this certainly was flattering, it seemed like the typical “friendliness” of people making plans and commitments that they have no intention of fulfilling in order to move the exchange along smoothly. It was not! A few days ago, her Facebook status was, “‘There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.’ Here’s looking at you, Nicole Lowman.”

Score two!





Nicole Lowman doesn’t intend to offend you, but she probably will. Her perverse fiction, poetry and personal essay have been published by various small presses. She is pursuing an MA in English at Southern Connecticut State University. You can hear more of her ramblings on her blog and her website. Eventually, she may have to grow up.