Coincidence: choosing this book including a mysterious disease named ‘The Green Death’ which is actually microscopic Chinese people; invariably fatal when ingested by normal-sized humans. Hi ho!

It is also quite possibly my greatest ever secondhand book find - a first edition Vonnegut ( )

“Nations could never acknowledge their own wars as tragedies, but that families not only could but had to.”

At once, this story seems like a dystopianic work of art. But the story from the narrative of an old, ugly, and divorced President of United States with 2-meters height with six fingers and four nipples, also with tons of memories refusing to fade, is actually some rare type of literature work of art with utopianic theme. Yes, Slapstick or Lonesome no More is a story which tells an autobiography of Dr Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain, the President of United States that lived in the lobby of the Empire State Building which in his prime time succeedingly led his nations into a family, without realizing that he was a drug-addict. President Wilbur believed that all evil things the people had done was because they were all lonely and tired with their lonesome. Thus, he created a program for his campaign when he was running for the President.

His campaign was Lonesome No More, a program when everyone get a new middle name from random natural objects with number from 1 to 20. Those with the same middle name have to be a new family under the middle name and all they had to do is to take care of each other as relatives. President Wilbur made this program with his deceased twins sister: Eliza Mellon Swain. Wilbur himself had the sacred middle name in which made him creating the relatives program. Because he and his sister was considered as monsters since they were a child by their own parents and they were exiled from the society since they were a child, Wilbur and Eliza wanted to have a family outside of their own family, so they felt like they belong to something, or to someone.

This story is interesting because as it was told as an autobiography of some old President, but with the prolog of epilogue from Vonnegut, we can tell that he was like creating his own autobiography. Vonnegut was an American author and although he wasn’t a president of USA, putting Wilbur Daffodil-II Swain as a president somehow could make his opinion and critics to be louder. In the story, there were also plagues called “The Albanian Flu” and “The Green Death” which took people’s lives. The source of “The Green Death” later was known as the microscopic Chinese people and the Americans had ingested or inhaled them. In the earlier part of the story it was also told that Wilbur and Eliza’s parents were saying that Chinese defeats Americans in part of intelligences. I believe that it was Vonnegut’s critics about Americans perspectives towards Chinese, while the lonesome-no-more campaign is his hopes for Western civilization, that no matter how bad it will be ruined, humanity could build it back again.

Another amazing part of this story is about Vonnegut’s takes about afterlife, for how boring it is. He didn’t believe that closeness with God would make loneliness erased, so Wilbur chose to erase lonesome as his campaign. ( )

How absurd. The farce of our future. ( )

Strange, but captivating. Makes no sense, but it does. The sort of thought-strings I wish I could do. His thoughts are not the same as mine, naturally, but being Vonnegut he makes something of them. Something that makes it enjoyable to read.

Absurd and insightful. One of the odder Vonnegut books, no real plot, lots of interesting thoughts.
Hi ho. ( )