1976, 1989 Laurel-Leaf edition
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
Original price $6.95, purchase price $3.95
Good condition paperback
C+
On a level with the better known Slaughterhouse-Five, this is even stranger, although only marginally funnier. (OK, I did enjoy the Kleindienst joke right after reading the Watergate books.) Again, his writing doesn't work well as either political satire or sci-fi. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain has the advantage over Billy Pilgrim of being the narrator, and less of a nonentity, but the book isn't any deeper. I think I've only read it once before, and that was just because I'd heard that the movie version (Slapstick of Another Kind) had Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn. (I still haven't seen it.) As with Slaughterhouse, you won't be bored by this book, but it doesn't add up to anything other than a time-killer.
Oh, and the writing tic this time is "hi ho" rather than "so it goes."
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