 Cover of first edition (hardcover) | |
| Author | Kurt Vonnegut |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction, absurdist fiction |
| Publisher | Delacorte Press |
Publication date | 1976 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-385-28944-8 |
Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1976, it depicts Vonnegut's views of loneliness, both on an individual and social scale. [1]
Slapstick is dedicated to Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy (better known as Laurel and Hardy), and the title of the novel is in reference to the physical and situational comedy style that duo employed. Vonnegut explains the title himself in the opening lines of the book's prologue: [2]
"This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography. 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. It is about what life feels like to me."
The novel is in the form of an autobiography of Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. Dr. Swain tells us that he lives in the ruins of the Empire State Building with his pregnant granddaughter, Melody Oriole-2 von Peterswald, and her lover, Isadore Raspberry-19 Cohen. Dr. Swain is a hideous man whose ugliness, along with that of his twin sister Eliza, led their parents to cut them off from modern society. The siblings came to realize that, when in close physical contact, they form a vastly powerful and creative intelligence. Through reading and philosophizing together, Wilbur and Eliza combated the feelings of loneliness and isolation that would otherwise have ruined their childhood.
Throughout the book, Wilbur claims that his sister Eliza is the more intelligent of the two, but that no one realizes it because she can't read or write. Wilbur and Eliza are like two halves of a brain, with Wilbur the left brain—logical, rational, able to communicate—and Eliza the right brain: creative, emotional, but unable to communicate effectively.
The siblings created, among other things, a plan to end loneliness in America through vast extended families. Under the plan, all citizens would be provided with new middle names, made of the name of a random natural object paired with a random number between 1 and 20. Everyone with the same name would be cousins, and everyone with the same name and number would be siblings.
Their parents and the staff of the mansion believe the children are Intellectually disabled, and the children play this up when in the company of others, so as to not interfere with what they view as a perfect childhood. But after hearing their mother wish that they were normal, the children reveal their intelligence to their parents.
Eliza is still deemed disabled, and is sent to a mental institution. Wilbur however is sent to a prep school and eventually goes to Harvard University and earns a doctorate.
Armed with the plan created with Eliza and the slogan, "Lonesome No More!," Dr. Swain wins election to the Presidency, and devotes the waning energies of the Federal government to the implementation of the plan. In the meantime, Western civilization is nearing collapse as oil runs out, and the Chinese are making vast leaps forward by miniaturizing themselves and training groups of hundreds to think as one. Eventually, the miniaturization proceeds to the point that the Chinese become so small they cause a plague among those who accidentally inhale them, ultimately destroying Western civilization beyond repair. However, even as life as we know it collapses, Swain's middle name policy continues to unite the survivors. The American population constantly risk their time and their lives to selflessly help their fellow cousins and siblings, ensuring that people may live their lives "lonesome no more."
The novel has a typical Vonnegut pattern of short snippets often ending with a punchline of sorts. These are separated by the words "hi ho", which Dr. Swain describes as a sort of verbal hiccup that has developed in his old age.
Vonnegut does not believe that traditional religions can cure loneliness or provide significant comfort. His take on belief in the afterlife is satirical. In his novel he describes a Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped which becomes a dominant American religion in the post-apocalyptic world of the novel. Vonnegut finds the church followers' behavior comical: [1]
He was jerking his head around in what then seemed an eccentric manner, as though hoping to catch someone peering out at him from behind a potted palm tree or an easy chair, or even from directly overhead, from the crystal chandelier.
Vonnegut is concerned about the transitoriness of the modern lifestyle, wherein people are forced to leave their familial and cultural roots and trade those for professional and financial security. He explains in an interview: [3]
Well, I am used to the rootlessness that goes with my profession. But I would like people to be able to stay in one community for a lifetime, to travel away from it to see the world, but always to come home again,...Until recent times, you know, human beings usually had a permanent community of relatives. They had dozens of homes to go to. So when a married couple had a fight, one or the other could go to a house three doors down and stay with a close relative until he was feeling tender again. Or if a kid was so fed up with his parents that he couldn't stand it, he could march over his uncle's for a while. And this is no longer possible. Each family is locked into its little box. The neighbors aren't relatives. There aren't other houses where people can go and be cared for.
Vonnegut was influenced by the theories of Robert Redfield, from whom he took courses at the University of Chicago. Vonnegut recalls: [4]
when I went to the University of Chicago, and I heard the head of the Department of Anthropology, Robert Redfield, lecture on the folk society, which was essentially a stable, isolated extended family, he did not have to tell me how nice that could be.
Vonnegut identifies the root of the problem in the modernisation of production techniques in the world of economics, but instead of suggesting going back to the way of life of the nineteenth century, he designs an anthropological plan wherein extended families are created by the government with the same ease of implementation as in the distribution of Social Security numbers. Peter J. Reed, author of the bibliography Vonnegut in America says: [3]
Though all of the slapstick mocking the idea ... some reasonably serious defence of extended family survives.
The idea of artificially extended families aims to increase the welfare and social support of the individual. However, it is not a utopian dream. Wilbur, the novel's protagonist, explains during his election campaign for the presidency how any request for money from a street beggar in the new social order should be treated: [5]
You ask him his middle name, and when he tells you "Oyster-19" or "Chickadee-1" or "Hollyhock-13" you say to him: Buster - I happen to be a Uranium-3. You have one hundred and ninety thousand cousins and ten thousand brothers and sisters. You're not exactly alone in this world. I have relatives of my own to look after. So why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?
According to Vonnegut, Slapstick received negative reviews "in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The New York Review of Books, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone". [6]
The book was adapted into the 1982 film Slapstick of Another Kind .
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Theodore Sturgeon was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels, and several scripts for Star Trek: The Original Series.
Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published on March 18, 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years. Throughout the novel, Billy frequently travels back and forth through time. The protagonist deals with a temporal crisis as a result of his post-war psychological trauma. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience that Vonnegut endured as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".
Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) is a 1987 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. It is told as a first-person narrative and describes the late years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (1973). Circumstances of the novel bear rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard popularized by Charles Perrault. Karabekian mentions this relationship once in the novel.
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in February 1962.
The eastern whip-poor-will is a medium-sized bird within the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae, from North America. The whip-poor-will is commonly heard within its range, but less often seen because of its camouflage. It is named onomatopoeically after its song.
Player Piano is the debut novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr., published in 1952. The novel depicts a dystopia of automation partly inspired by the author's time working at General Electric, describing the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works.
Timequake is a 1997 semi-autobiographical work by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Marketed as a novel, the book was described as a "stew" by Vonnegut, in which he summarizes a novel he had been struggling with for a number of years.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and shared in its success.
A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism, is defined as a "false karass". That is, it is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Robert Redfield was an American anthropologist and ethnolinguist, whose ethnographic work in Tepoztlán, Mexico, is considered a landmark of Latin American ethnography. He was associated with the University of Chicago for his entire career: all of his higher education took place there, and he joined the faculty in 1927 and remained there until his death in 1958, serving as Dean of Social Sciences from 1934 to 1946. Redfield was a co-founder of the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought, alongside other prominent Chicago professors Robert Maynard Hutchins, Frank Knight, and John UIrich Nef.
Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut. The collection provides insight into Vonnegut's thoughts on various subjects, including writing, war, and his own literary career. The book is known for its eclectic mix of genres and personal reflections.
Slapstick of Another Kind is a 1984 American comic science fiction film starring Jerry Lewis, Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman. It was filmed in 1982, and released in March 1984 by both The S. Paul Company/Serendipity Entertainment Releasing Company and International Film Marketing. The film was written and directed by Steven Paul and is based on the novel Slapstick (1976) by Kurt Vonnegut.
This is a list of bestselling novels in the United States in the 1970s, as determined by Publishers Weekly. The list features the most popular novels of each year from 1970 through 1975.
On February 6, 1951, a Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle in Woodbridge, New Jersey, United States, killing 85 passengers. It remains New Jersey's deadliest train wreck, the deadliest U.S. derailment since 1918 and the deadliest peacetime rail disaster in the U.S. history.
The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library is dedicated to championing the literary, artistic, and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, and Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It opened in January 2011 and was located in The Emelie, a structure on the National Register of Historic Places at 340 North Senate Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana, until January 2019. Funding for a new building at 543 Indiana Avenue was secured, and the library reopened to the public on November 9, 2019.
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young is a 2013 collection of nine commencement speeches from Kurt Vonnegut, selected and introduced by longtime friend and author Dan Wakefield.