Goodbye Indianapolis

By R.Z. Shepard

SLAPSTICK by KURT VONNEGUT 243 pages . Delacorte. $7.95

Love conquers nothing in Kurt Vonnegut's fiction. Instead, love is a strategic withdrawal from a threatening world where even the best intentions can cause suffering and chaos. With Slapstick, that withdrawal seems complete. The novel, a linking of autobiography and fantasy, is an aggressive retreat not only from the complications of society but also from the invention and charm of the author's early novels.

The book, says Vonnegut, "is about what life feels like to me." That feeling might be described as the phantom ache an amputee sometimes has where his limb once was. Vonnegut is keenly aware of the separation between his present and his past--the Indianapolis where he grew up surrounded by members of a large, cultured and comfortable German-American family. Indeed, Slapstick begins with a recollection of flying home a few years ago to attend the funeral of a favorite uncle. Predictably, Vonnegut finds the city has become just another "interchangeable part in the American machine."

The experience triggers a melancholy reverie about a future when the American machine has rusted to a halt. The nation resembles some medieval terra incognita. Bandit barons rule its regions. Manhattan is an ancient ruin reclaimed by vegetation. The Chinese have become the world's most advanced civilization. They have even learned to shrink themselves to the size of egg rolls to conserve natural resources.

Vonnegut's principal characters are Dr. Wilbur Swain and Eliza Swain, a brother and sister who seem to owe some of their identities to Vladimir Nabokov's Van and Ada of Ada. The aged doctor camps out in the lobby remnant of the Empire State Building and relates the disjointed fantasy of his life and times.

The tale is dominated by his relationship with his sister Eliza. Yes, it is incestuous, but as in Ada, incest has a private, figurative significance. Wilbur's and Eliza's love and loneliness are conveyed in a slurry of short scenes, part science fiction, part dreamlike shorthand, whose allusions the author seems unwilling to share fully with his reader. Instead of ideas, he offers whimsy; instead of feeling, merely sentiment. Vonnegut calls his method "situational poetry."

This is academic jargon that may be best translated as "I'm too tired to write as well as I used to. " /?. Z. Sheppard

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