I read Vonnegut pretty intensely from age 12 to 15 or 16, and not much after that. He was one of my first literary obsessions, along with Cummings and Tolkien. Breakfast of Champions came out in 1973 when I was 13, so that represents the height of his career for me, the intersection between him near the height of his powers and me as a reader. Then the next book failed to impress me. Nothing he wrote after Breakfast seemed to have as much weight. Now I don't know whether that's because his books were not as good any more, or whether I had outgrown him in some sense. I'd have to go back and read him again, but I don't think I'd ever be able to re-capture the adolescent emotion of reading him.

The fact that he may be a writer for adolescents says nothing against him. Adolescents are those most in need of writers. Things I read in those days, like Kafka, have stayed with me forever. I read Catch 22 five times before the age of 17, but not once since. It has stayed with me.