Volume 23, Number 19 · November 25, 1976
So It Went
By Robert Towers
Slapstick
by Kurt Vonnegut
Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, 243 pp., $7.95
Much has been written about the reasons for Vonnegut's appeal to the first television generation. The time-tripping, the McLuhanite non-'linearity,' the pacifism, the jokes, the sci-fi inventiveness, the quick sympathy for life's losers and has-beens—these have all been repeatedly cited and have evoked little disagreement. But there is a more interesting question. Why has Vonnegut encountered such strong and continued resistance from so many literate members of his own generation, which may be extended to include serious readers from thirty to seventy? Why should a well-educated, highly intelligent magazine editor confess to me that she has been unable to finish a single Vonnegut novel? Why should a first-rate college teacher I know—sympathetic to the young, open to new experience—complain vehemently when compelled to include Slaughterhouse-Five in an introductory course? After all, the elements that endear Vonnegut to his cult are not in themselves antipathetic to older readers who cherish Catch 22, love the Beatles, and feel themselves magnetized by the phallic hardware of Gravity's Rainbow.
Review, 1924 words
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