Kurt Vonnegut wrote autobiographies. That's the only thing he ever wrote. Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! starts with a Prologue and the prologue starts with these words: "This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography". It then goes on to laying out a few facts about Vonnegut's personal life: how he lost his sister when she was forty-one, how she died two days after her husband, whose train derailed off an open bridge. At thirty-six, pretty much penniless, Kurt had to take in their four boys. These four boys become three in Slapstick's prologue, and the two days become one. It is as if, writing an autobiography, Vonnegut was making sure that none of the facts would be quite accurate. To tell us that everything is fiction, perhaps, no matter how real and true it claims to be. "This really happened", he adds, and it did. Just not exactly the way he tells it.
What is true though is Vonnegut's belief in and love of extended families. He lost many people over the course of his life. He also gained many people. Some left him, others, like his first wife, he left. You need an extended family around you, he claimed. It was important to him that it be a family. They don't need to be clever, he added, they don't need to be good people either. You don't even need to like them.

Of all his books, Slapstick is the one where he developed this concept in full. The world has fallen apart. Gravity, that one thing which we rely on as an absolute constant and certainty, gravity has become variable. All of a sudden, without warning, it becomes lighter (and then all surviving males know about it because they all get unyielding hard-ons), or heavier (and then things crash to the floor and people can't get out of bed). The main character has become president of what's left of the United States and has decreed that everyone's name should change. From now on, every one of you will belong to one of the extended families I have created, he says. From now on every one of you will have hundreds of thousands of family members. These extended families will live like other families do, they will celebrate weddings, births and funerals, they will be proud of one another, they will care for each other.

Of course, nothing quite works the way he has planned. It does not matter. Slapstick is also about releasing control. It is about letting go, about accepting that, as part of an extended community, our role is minuscule. It is about developing feelings for people because they are part of our family, rather than the other way around. Slapstick, despite its title, is a serious book. It is just written in a very funny way.

Slapstick was not loved. Critics hated it. Vonnegut hated it. It is as Vonnegutian as any of Vonnegut's books though. The main character may be President of What's Left Of The United States. He is foremost a brother. He and his sisters are actually monsters, giants ugly stupid creatures that become geniuses when reunited. Slapstick is also the story of isolation, ostracism, mourning and living with remorse. It is the story of how, despite our failings, mistakes, shortcomings and evil acts, we live on and, with a bit of luck, better ourselves. It might be Vonnegut's most hated book, but it has lived on and somehow managed to better itself. Its premise strongly echoes with our current world. Its dark humour certainly echoes with my current mood. And since it was rejected by its own father, I am ready to make it my adopted book.