On the HahaFiction shelf
Slapstick or Lonesome No More!
Wilbur Swain, the last president of the United States, is spending his old age as the king of a nearly deserted Manhattan. Looking back, he remembers a childhood spent with his twin Eliza, whose mind worked so well with his that they were geniuses together. He carries their preoccupation with loneliness all the way to the White House.
From the publisher’s blurb
“a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies”Read the full description at Dial Press
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What makes it funny?
Wilbur has a government program for anyone who's lonely. A computer hands out new middle names, and suddenly you have thousands of relatives. You can see the policy at work every time the president gives his own name, Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain.
The comedy at work
Wilbur writes his memoir in a world where gravity can vary like the weather, and he can report a light-gravity day with about as much fuss as a dry spell. Vonnegut gives catastrophe short sentences and keeps bringing back the same little refrain, “Hi ho.”
Try this if…
There's plenty here for readers who like political satire that follows a well-meaning idea to a ridiculous conclusion. The ruined New York setting also leaves room for science fiction on the scale of a single household, with the former president living in the Empire State Building alongside his granddaughter and her lover.
Good to know
The novel opens with a personal prologue about Vonnegut's sister Alice. Her death and what she meant to him give the book's interest in siblings and loneliness a context outside Wilbur's story.
A few distinguishing details
- A federal program that assigns relatives by middle name
- A presidential memoir written from a nearly empty Manhattan
More funny post-apocalyptic
Sources & further reading
- Penguin Random House book page
Publisher
- John Updike's review in The New Yorker
Review
- The Vonnegut Collection edition record
Book information
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