I think this is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. Vonnegut wrote it shortly following the death of his sister. The main characters are two siblings who have a psychic connection and become half of a person when the other is absent. Vonnegut called this work autobiographical and the pain of losing his sister becomes raw and palpable when expressed through these characters. Having a sister myself, this book has had a strange resonance and I think about it a lot, despite not particularly enjoying it.

Vonnegut pinpoints the loneliness of being an American to the absence of extended families. Our consumer economy encourages us to live in small nuclear families and take up neolocal residence, which leaves no web of support to help cope if your family members die before you. Isolation is the inevitable result; our society is equipped with no solutions.

Science and modernization are not seen as agents of “progress” but as a de-evolution and the cause of widespread cultural isolation. Science is personified by the Chinese, who become Earth’s dominant society by physically miniaturizing themselves while America experiences apocalypse.

The Absurdism in Slapstick didn’t strike me as playful so much as nihilistic, a reaction to a world so cruel that it can’t be understood or improved by the imposition of rational systems.

In contrast with what the title leads one to expect, the humor is very dark, at points being imperceptible. The conclusions are bleak; we have gone too far down the wrong path, and not science nor religion can correct us. Vonnegut was always a pessimist, but his other books often searched for a punchline to the horrors wrought by humanity. In Slapstick, humanity itself is the punchline, laughed at by a jeering god.