Kurt Vonnegut: "Slapstick"

Having read four volumes of John Fowles, I proceeded with both relief and caution to something entirely different, encouraged by a friend's recommendation - Kurt Vonnegut's "Slapstick". To use an airline turn of phrase, on initial approach it seemed like a completely different landscape; yet at close range it was remarkably similar to Fowles - the same autobiographical tone, the same troubled sadness and concern for humanity's lunacy. Only of course (fittingly for a book with the title Slapstick) the message is delivered in a frivolous and grotesque fashion:

The way Mother described Heaven, it sounded like a golf course in Hawaii, with manicured fairways and greens running down to a lukewarm ocean. I twitted her only lightly about wanting that sort of Paradise. "It sounds like a place where people would drink a lot of lemonade," I said. "I love lemonade," she replied.

There is a generous measure of self-negating mockery, both at oneself and at one's country - for example, when one of the characters is asked to comment on China's withdrawal from diplomatic ties with the U.S., she promptly and firmly replies, "What civilized country could be interested in a hell-hole like America?". The explanation provided by the Chinese themselves is even better: there is "no longer anything going on in the United States which was of any interest to the Chinese at all".

The image of Manhattan turned into the Skycraper National Park - deserted, overgrown, populated by only a very few survivors that have adapted the city's now useless infrastructure to their own daily needs - is strangely familiar to a modern viewer thanks to WALL-E; but it was pleasant to discover an earlier occurrence of the theme.

I usually try to finish my blog posts with a sentence or a paragraph that brings closure; it lulls me into narcissistic complacency, an illusion of observing my literary and intellectual strengths. And I will end today, uncharacteristically, with a Vonnegut quote and an invitation to anyone (including myself) who is inclined to take themselves with seriousness and admiration: "Why don't you go and take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut?".