Slapstick - Softcover

Vonnegut, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440180090 ISBN 13: 9780440180098

Publisher: Dell, 1992

Synopsis

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision seen  through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan  (and last President of the United States), a wickedly  irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of  today's follies. But even the end of  life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Vonnegut's pen into  hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the  Almighty's joke on us all.

About this title

Review:

Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, centenarian, the last President of the United States, King of Manhattan, and one-half (along with his sister, Eliza) of the most powerful intelligence since Einstein, is penning his autobiography. He occupies the first floor of a ruined Empire State Building and lives like a royal scavenger with his illiterate granddaughter and her beau. Buffeted by fluctuating gravity, the U.S. has been scourged by not one, but two lethal diseases: the Green Death and the Albanian Flu. Consequently, the country has fallen into civil war. (Super-intelligent, miniaturized Chinese watch the West self-destruct from the sidelines.) Swain stayed at the White House until there were no citizens left to govern, then moved to deserted New York City, where he writes a thoughtful missive before death.

In Slapstick, Vonnegut muses on war, man's hubris, and the awful, crippling loneliness humans are freighted with--but, miraculously, the book still manages to delight and amuse. Absurd, knowing, never depressing, Slapstick kindles hope--for the possibility of wisdom, perhaps; for human resiliency, surely.

It's best to end with a quote from the prologue wherein the author discourses on The Meaning of It All, or at least This Book: "Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go off looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please--a little less love, and a little more common decency.'"
Amen.

From the Publisher:

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.

"Vonnegut's ongoing puppet show. . .the fabulous is reborn."--John Updike, The New Yorker.

"Imaginative and hilarious... a brilliant vision of wrecked, wacked-out future!" --Hartford Courant

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0440180090
• ISBN 13: 9780440180098
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256