Slapstick

Kurt Vonnegut's 8th novel and he reaches new levels of niche weird.

The introduction is “Dedicated to the memory of Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy, two angels of my time.”

This reader sees no Slaptsick per se in the story told, but he sure reads about being Lonesome no More.
Vonnegut gives the game away in the intro. He writes that “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. There are all these tests of my limited agility and intelligence. They go on and on. 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. • • • There was very little love in their films. There was often the situational poetry of marriage, which was something else again”

Let's leave Kurt there and just say that to this reader this is genuinely strange but audacious fiction. Very niche. The passing Slaughterhouse Five readers was going to wander by this one, surely.
The plot includes;
The collapse of his relationship with his sister.
His none relationship with his parent's.
Family schisms in general.
Any rich idiot can be the President of the US.
The coming of the Chinese as a world power
Pandemics.

And much more that I can hardly think about such is this mixed up muddled up world of the life of Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. This is his memoir and as the President of the United States.

And this is how Kurt Vonnegut Jr felt when this strangely compelling mélange of oddness that is, to repeat him, the closest he “will ever come to writing an autobiography”?
If this is the case then he had one oddball of a relationship with his parents and his sister and all those around him.

One for the Vonnegut reader in my opinion and recommended as such.

My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371515