BOOKS: Slapstick: Kurt Vonnegut

Apr. 15—Given this book is nearly 50 years old, and the number of other Kurt Vonnegut titles here and there on my bookshelves, I thought I had read this novel years ago.

If so, having purchased it then reading it in the past week, I don't recall reading it before. Even though it has much of Vonnegut's familiar satire and dark humor, its plot was unfamiliar.

And it's odd enough to be memorable years, even decades, later.

Following a bit of prologue as Vonnegut memoir, he introduces a post-apocalyptic future with a fictional former American president as narrator.

Having been president is one of the least interesting things about Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, who has inadvertently become the king of Manhattan, also the "King of Candlesticks," living in the lobby of a ruined Empire State Building.

Wilbur reaches back to his birth and childhood to explain the circumstances of his rise to the presidency, the downfall of the United States and how he got that intriguing middle name.

He was born a twin to a wealthy family. He describes himself and twin sister Eliza as "monsters" with extra digits, rejected by their parents.

As they age, the twins pretend to be imbeciles but together they have the combined mind of genius. Apart, they are intelligent but nowhere near as brilliant as when they literally and figuratively put their heads together.

They eventually reveal their intelligence to their parents then face a battery of psychological tests. The twins are separated. As time passes, Wilbur finds a place in society while Eliza does not. She turns against her family and her twin brother in very public ways.

There are reconciliations and deaths, subplots about miniaturized citizens of China, colonization of Mars through teleportation, a presidency where Wilbur creates a law to give everyone new middle names so people can create new connections and families, a plague, a collection of candlesticks in a world without candles, etc.

Vonnegut, best known for the classic "Slaughterhouse-Five," is an expert in this kind of satirical writing that can seem like hilarious nonsense while at times breaking readers' hearts. Making them consider the silliness in our world that often passes for serious matters, and vice versa.

Perhaps, Vonnegut explains it best with the title and a bit from the prologue. He dedicates the book to the slapstick of Laurel and Hardy, whom he describes as acting in good faith and doing their best with one another but never out of love for one another.

"I find it natural to discuss life without ever mentioning love," Vonnegut writes. "It does not seem natural to me. What does seem important? Bargaining in good faith with destiny."

Which is how Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain also bargains with the world.