Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut did not rate Slapstick very highly compared with some of his previous novels.  Despite its flaws, this book is well-written, thought-provoking and entertaining.

In a nearby future, most of the human race has been wiped out by two plagues.  Civil government in the United States of America has collapsed, only to be replaced by contending regional warlords.  Meanwhile, something odd has happened in China: the Chinese have embarked on a program of breeding miniaturised humans in order to reduce consumption, and they have developed the ability to travel to other planets without using spacecraft.

Wilbur Swain, a centenarian and a former President of the United States, narrates the story of him and his twin sister Eliza.  Wilbur and Eliza, who are possessed of average intellects, become super-intelligent when they are in close physical proximity with one another.  Their problems begin when they inform their parents of this fact.

In the prologue to the book, Vonnegut states that Slapstick is the closest thing to autobiography he has written: "It is about what life feels like to me."  Subtitled Lonesome No More, the novel's central themes are intimacy, loss and loneliness.

We see these aspects of the human condition as Wilbur unfolds the tale of his long life.  There seems to be little comfort in what Wilbur has to say, and the reader can perhaps be forgiven for feeling a little cushioned from the full impact of the themes by the bizarre, perhaps comical, circumstances under which they occur.

I have called it “Slapstick” because it is grotesque, situational poetry—like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago ... The fundamental joke with Laurel and Hardy, it seems to me, was that they did their best with every test. They never failed to bargain in good faith with their destinies, and were screamingly adorable and funny on that account.

Whether Wilbur and Eliza (or any of us) live up to the standard set by Laurel and Hardy is for the reader to decide.  We can but try; and that, I think, is a large part of the project of Humanism.