September 24, 1976

Books of The Times

By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

n his last novel, "Breakfast of Champions," Kurt Vonnegut not only bade farewell to all
the literary characters who had served him over the years (Kilgore Trout, Eliot
Rosewater, and others), he also happened to give up
storytelling altogether. Well, of course one didn't believe him;
SLAPSTICK
he was just walking his despair around the block. But in his By Kurt Vonnegut.
eighth and latest novel, "Slapstick, Or Lonesome No More,"
it looks as if Mr. Vonnegut was serious about renouncing
fiction. The book begins with a Prologue, the first sentence of which announces, "This
is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography," and the remaining pages
of which give news of Mr. Vonnegut's background and family; and explain how he
came to daydream the fantasy that follows.

And even after we realize that this fantasy is storytelling after all (albeit without Kilgore
Trout, Eliot Rosewater, and others), we note that the short paragraphs in which the story
is told are shorter than they have ever been before in any previous Vonnegut novel. We
note that the author's already familiar mannerisms have gotten even more pronounced.
(For instance, perhaps a third of the paragraphs in the book end with the two words "Hi
ho"--as in "It is a thing I often say these days: 'Hi ho.' It is a kind of senile hiccup. I have
lived too long. Hi ho.") We note that the novel touches on the usual Vonnegut themes--
such as the horror of war, man's cruelty to fellow man, and the unhappiness of
America--and treats them in the usual Vonnegut way--that is, by regarding them with a
form of radical innocence that wonders just why wars must be fought, why man should
be cruel to man, and why countries should be unhappy.

In short, we note that Vonnegut seems to be doing what he does most easily, and doing it
more easily than he has ever done it before. So if he hasn't actually given up
storytelling, he seems to be putting less effort into it than ever before.

Now of course to appear to be doing something effortlessly is not the same thing as not
trying. They say it took Henri Matisse years of practice to toss off those effortless
squiggles, and perhaps Vonnegut has now perfected his own sort of squiggle. What's
more, his squiggles can be most entertaining. One cannot help but be diverted by his
autobiographical prologue, in which he and his older brother Bernard Vonnegut, the
atmospheric physicist who discovered the rain- making powers of silver iodide, fly off
to Indianapolis for the funeral of a favorite uncle. (As one paragraph informs us, "This
really happened.") After all, it is here that we learn some interesting, if melancholy,
history of the Vonnegut family. (Among its several members who died too young was a
sister of the author's who described her own impending death at the age of 41 as
"slapstick.")

And though the story he daydreams on the night sounds perfectly dreadful any way you
synopsize it--it is the memoirs of the last President of the United States--it has its
amusing moments too. The President, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, won election on a
plan to create instant extended families (hence his slogan, "Lonesome No More"). At
the end of American history he sells what was once the Louisiana Purchase to the King
of Michigan for a dollar he never receives. (I especially liked the childhood of Dr.
Swain, who, along with his twin-sister, Eliza, was though to be "neaderthaloid," though
in fact when they put their heads together, they were a genius who "could read and write
French, German, Latin and ancient Greek. . .and do calculus too.") And Lord knows the
squiggles are graceful.

But when I finished reading "Slapstick," I felt as if I had just devoured a bowl of air.
Could this have been because I don't share Mr. Vonnegut's passion for Laurel and Hardy,
whose caricature by Al Hirschfeld is reproduced on the dedication page, and whose film
comedies of long ago impressed Vonnegut as the "grotesque, situational poetry" he
intends this novel to be? Or is it because one grows weary of the author's pervasive
sense of resignation, which makes him willing to settle for "a little common decency"
instead of "love," and for his sister's tragic death dismissed as "slapstick"? Or is it that
the tone of understatement that worked for Mr. Vonnegut in "Slaughterhouse Five,"
where being a prisoner in Dresden during its firebombing was the subject, is no longer
effective in "Slapstick," where nothing much in particular, except perhaps the author's
way of fantasizing, is the subject?

Whatever it is, one is left feeling empty by "Slapstick," Emptiness, conveyed with grace
and style, still amounts to almost nothing. That is why, for all the new chic skill Mr.
Vonnegut has brought to his latest novel, it still seems as if he has given up storytelling
after all.