BOOK REVIEW: Slapstick

It is hard to believe that I went through my Kurt Vonnegut period without reading SLAPSTICK. Fortunately, I found out this month that this is an author who did not lose his charm.

We enter the world of Wilbur Daffodil Swain, King of Manhattan, landlord and tenant of the vacant Empire State Building, genius idiot, pediatrician, twin, and the former tallest President of the United States, on his 100th birthday. It is important to know all of these things about Wilbur because they are important to the tale that he is about to tell us.

He and his twin sister, Eliza Mellon Swain, were born and christened in the hospital, not with loving family and friends surrounding the happy new parents. Because, the parents were embarrassed by how ugly the twins were, they had them rushed to a mansion in New York to be cared for by a very well paid staff.

Wilbur and Eliza learned very early in life that the staff expected the two of them to be as stupid as they were ugly. Thus these two geniuses learned to act the part of drooling idiots and to mask the fact that their two brains worked together to solve very complicated puzzles. By the time their talents are discovered, the world is still not ready for them and their parents are embarrassed by their weird behavior.

The world has changed by the time Wilbur reaches his 100th birthday. Eliza has died while helping to set up a colony on the moon and Wilbur has led a very full life that included being President--for a short period. He now lives in an almost deserted Manhattan writing his memoirs.

Vonnegut needs no explanation if you also are of an age to have considered him cool a few years back. He, himself, was bigger than life and had become a delightful curmudgeon in his later years. I heard him interviewed once and he seemed to be truly upset with the tobacco industry. He had been smoking for years and it did not seem to be killing him. He blamed the cigarette companies that he was still alive.

One reviewer referred to his plots as “ a saucy spaghetti of ideas”. That seems to fit when you think of how hard it is to track one strand of spaghetti through the bowl.

SLAPSTICK may not be the best of Vonnegut. That honor belongs to Slaughterhouse-Five. Still, it is an exercise in inventive writing and a peek into one of the most creative authors of our time.