Lonesome No More!

The two big questions I ask when I am analyzing something I potentially love are these: “Does it make me laugh?” and “Does it make me think?” Slapstick, by Kurt Vonnegut, did both, in great quantities and with great quality.

Slapstick was an interesting experience. It is a surrealistic vision of Manhattan post-apocalypse, written from the perspective of the horrendously ugly former President of the United States of America, Wilbur Daffodill-11 Swain. However, most of the book is used to describe the unusual relationship between a brother and a sister, which Kurt Vonnegut reveals in the prologue is a parallel to his relationship with his own sister, Alice.

The book is actually officially titled Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!, because the latter phrase is the platform Wilbur was elected on when he ran for President. Wilbur, along with his sister Eliza, developed a system of reorganizing everyone in the United States into different, randomized families—effectively “eliminating” loneliness in America. While they are working on this, the Chinese are finding ways to cure cancer through the sounds of gongs, colonize Mars, and miniaturize themselves, and the Albanian flu is killing everyone

How can I describe reading Vonnegut, especially Slapstick? I can’t. It’s frenetic and fast-paced and jumbled and loud. It’s irreverent and unpredictable and hilarious. I’ve heard (several times) that it was Vonnegut’s least favorite thing he’d ever written; certainly, for someone who had never read any of his work, I would urge them to save it for later. (Maybe after they read Slaughterhouse-Five or Breakfast of Champions). I strongly suspect that it is the type of book where you love it or hate it; I am stuck firmly in the “love” category, which may or may not be entirely due to my deep respect for Kurt Vonnegut. I can only say this: it’s either the work of complete sheer genius, or the lunacy that Kurt Vonnegut scraped out of the corners of his brain and desk drawers.

This book is unique, and also jammed full of side stories and themes that I won’t take the time to flesh out. So, I will instead quote lines that made me laugh.

“I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.”

“’History is a list of surprises,’ I said. ‘It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.’”

“As far as they are concerned, the most glorious accomplishment of the people who inhabited this island so teemingly was to die, so we could have it all to ourselves.”

Hi-ho.

(Image from http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/061/archives/cat_2.html)