Slapstick (novel)

Slapstick

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Kurt Vonnegut
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction, surrealism
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Publication date	1976
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback)
ISBN

Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! is a science fiction novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1976, it depicts Vonnegut's views of loneliness, both on an individual and social scale.

The book was adapted into the 1982 film Slapstick of Another Kind.

The novel was published in 1976 and is a bizarre meditation on the nature of the closeness Vonnegut had with his sister Alice, who died of cancer in 1958. Alice's husband had died in a train accident two days before her death. Vonnegut adopted and raised her children. The novel was written shortly after the death of the author's uncle. In it, Vonnegut and his sister transform into the Swains ("Neanderthaloid" dizygotic twins). When minds of both twins were combined together they formed a genius, a beautiful Swan (hence, Swain twins). The twins felt that they become the ugly duckling as separated individuals. When self-assessing his own work, Vonnegut graded Slapstick as D. Written in an almost free associative style, the book lacks the structural intricacies of Vonnegut's earlier works.

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:

"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.