-
Slapstick
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
-
-
Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
-
-
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
-
-
Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
-
-
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
- By Darwin8u on 03-27-14
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
-
-
Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Zen in the Art of Writing
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 3 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft - everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style.
-
-
Evocative fuel for any Muse!
- By Amazon Customer on 03-22-18
By: Ray Bradbury
-
Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
-
-
Great from start to finish
- By Tristin McCarthy on 02-05-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 3 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jonathan Hoag has a curious problem. Every evening, he finds a mysterious reddish substance under his fingernails, with no memory what he was doing during the day to get it there. Jonathan hires the husband and wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him during the day and find out. But Ted and Cynthia find themselves instantly out of their depth. Jonathan leaves no fingerprints. His few memories about his profession turn out to be false.
-
-
Brilliant Sci-Fi Detective Action!
- By Niels J. Rasmussen on 04-18-14
-
Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Candide
- By: Voltaire
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Candide and his tutor Pangloss travel the globe trying to follow the philosophy "All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds". However, they are stung and let down at every turn, being robbed, tortured, and ridiculed, amongst other trials. On hearing about their often disasterous travels, a listener feels unfortunately less than empathetic, and can't help themselves laughing out loud at this very funny account of the trail our optimistic travellers take.
-
-
Why the music?
- By MH on 02-23-17
By: Voltaire
-
The Call of the Wild
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Peter Husmann
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jack London's masterpiece tells the gripping tale of a dog named Buck who is wrenched out of his life of ease and luxury to become a sled dog in Alaska. Drawing on his wolf heritage, Buck must fight for survival in an alien environment.
-
-
the song of the pack or the call of the wild?
- By PutNameHere on 06-25-15
By: Jack London
-
Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
-
-
Funny..., Even if Malkovich Could Not Care Less
- By W Perry Hall on 02-05-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Time Machine
- By: H. G. Wells
- Narrated by: John Banks
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. But they have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity - the sinister Morlocks.
-
-
John Banks
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-19
By: H. G. Wells
-
Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
-
-
Great book, awful recording
- By aberk on 02-23-11
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
-
-
“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
-
-
Great story with disappointing narration
- By D. Francis on 12-01-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher's Summary
Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication. Vonnegut dedicated this to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
Like their films and routines, this novel is an exercise in non-sequentiality and in the bizarre while using those devices to expose larger and terrible truths. The twins exemplify to Swain a kind of universal love; he campaigns for it while troops of technologically miniaturized Chinese are launched upon America. Love and carnage intersect in a novel contrived to combine credibility and common observation; critics could sense Vonnegut deliberately flouting narrative constraint or imperative in an attempt to destroy the very idea of the novel he was writing.
Slapstick becomes both product and commentary, event and self-criticism; an early and influential example of contemporary "metafiction". Vonnegut's tragic life - like the tragic lives of Laurel, Hardy, Buster Keaten and other exemplars of slapstick comedy - is the true center of a work whose cynicism overlays a trustfulness and sense of loss which are perhaps deeper and truer than expressed in any of Vonnegut's earlier or later works. Slapstick is a clear demonstration of the profound alliance of comedy and tragedy which, when Vonnegut is working close to his true sensibility, become indistinguishable.
More from the same
What listeners say about Slapstick
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 11-16-16
Lonely No More!
“And how did we
then face the odds,
of man's rude slapstick,
yes, and God's?
Quite at home and unafraid,
Thank-you,
in a game
our dreams remade.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
My 15-ear-old son broke the screen on his iPhone 6s. I'm letting him buy down the debt (to me) by reading 6 Vonnegut novels before the end of the year. Every book he reads, drops his big OWE down by $10, up to $60. He is still on the hook for the other $80. This is what happens when daddy is an absurdist, but rules like a fascist King. Hi ho.
So, I've decided to read a lot of the Vonnegut novels he's going to be reading before the end of the year too. It has been 30 years since I went on a huge Vonnegut tear. It seems in an era of Donald Trump I'm going to need as many absurdist tools on my belt as possible. What better way than a book about loneliness, incest (perhaps not, or technically yes, but also not), disease, the destruction of America, and the Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped.
There are other, stronger Vonneguts where I could have started, but I'm also trying to go through my Library of America Vonnegut: Novels 1976-1985. Plus, it is hard to avoid a book that uses the phrase “Why don't you take a flying f#@% at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying f#@% at the mooooooooooooon?” often and with literary abandon.
As far as the stars, the book itself probably only warrants a Vonnegut 3-star (except for the fact that the autobiographical introduction is so good, I'm tossing in another star because, well, I can).
23 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Aaron
- 03-16-17
Painful
The performance was fine but the book was awful. I like Vonnegut a lot but this is possibly his worst work.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Justin Thomas
- 03-06-17
Lack of enthusiasm
I don't think the narrator did a good job of capturing the humor of the story. It felt like it was his first time reading it. Very little emotion put forth. I know the book is funny but this did not cut it.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- no te metas con el furioso
- 01-20-17
Great but not the best
I am a much bigger fan of Breakfast, Slaughterhouse 5, and Cats Cradle. It's still a good story. Just didn't grab me till the end like the others.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sara A EllertBeck
- 05-28-22
Escape for such a time as this.
A perfect narration for this comic tale. Definitely hits home for my demographic...50 something year-olds
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- just asking for some common sense
- 04-09-22
Typical Vonnegut Strangeness
When I was in high school through my early 20s I read a lot of Vonnegut. I didn't think I had read this, but after about an hour I realized I had. It is strange, like most Vonnegut. It is relevant today because there were pandemics and unrest.
The beginning is autobiographical. Vonnegut talks about his family, his sister that passed away, his children, including his sister's children that he adopted. I had expected more about his life, but I think he did this through his story instead.
The main character is a twin with a sister, children of Wilbur Swain. We learn of their early life when doctors told the parents that the ugly children would be mentally incompetent. It reminded of how so many young children used to be institutionalized with things like Downs Syndrome, and how they never reach the potential they have when that happens.
The book is written from first person perspective of the son who becomes President of the United States. His sister passes away much like Vonnegut's sister passed away.
I like the book, but it's not my favorite of his, as evidenced by my 4 star review. The narration is good. It makes me want to get in the Vonnegut books I've missed. One additional note - I thought about "Welcome to Night Vale" and hadn't really thought about how much it seems to be inspired by writers like Vonnegut.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dubi
- 01-27-22
Slap it all on and see what will Stick
In the summer of 1976, while I was doing my semester abroad in Germany, I read an excerpt in Playboy of Kurt Vonnegut's forthcoming novel, Slapstick. And loved it. I had only recently discovered Vonnegut via Slaughterhouse-Five, then read his entire back catalogue, endlessly quoted Between Time and Timbuktu after it aired on PBS, and even liked in that particular moment his first novel post-S-5, Breakfast of Champions.
These days, I periodically return to Vonnegut to re-"read" him in audio, under the presumption that his idiosyncratic style would be especially suited to this format. I'm constantly surprised by my reactions -- the books I loved best rarely hold up (other than the always great S-5) while the ones that didn't really grab me then I now love (Mr. Rosewater, Mother Night).
I especially find myself agreeing with Vonnegut's self-assessment of his post-S-5 novels. He gave Breakfast of Champions a C and Slapstick a D. In hindsight, we know that Vonnegut was having trouble adapting to the fame and pressure that followed the success of S-5, the mental health issues experienced by his son Mark (chronicled in The Eden Express and part of the inspiration of Breakfast of Champions), and the passing of his sister, which he cited as the driving force behind Slapstick.
The passages of Slapstick that are about the history of Wilbur and Eliza Swain, the oversized Neanderthaloid genius twin siblings, are still good. The rest of it, not so much. Part of the problem is the blizzard of metaphor and symbolism, none of it subtle (e.g. variable gravity, artificial extended families, the Hooligan). And the cynicism is just relentless -- a selling point to a 20-something idealist in the 70s, but no longer attractive to a thoroughly jaded 60-something in post-truth pandemic times.
Strangely, the pandemic that led to the post-apocalyptic setting of Slapstick has many parallels to Covid, particularly the Chinese connection, and Vonnegut's imagined apocalypse seems quite possible in the current climate, and yet it feels all wrong, at least to me. Maybe that's part of my discomfort. That and not really liking this narrator's take on Hi-Ho (although to be fair, the whole conceit really leaves him no margin for error).
John Updike reviewing Slapstick in The New Yorker in 1976 loved it, Roger Sale reviewing it in The New York Times hated it and had harsh words for Vonnegut fans like myself, calling us ignorant youth -- 45 years later, I think he was wrong about the ignorance, although we were youth, wasting it away, but not wasting it on Vonnegut, even if I can no longer see why I liked Slapstick at the time, other than the iconoclasm. But Vonnegut's own self-rating is the one that endures.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Buretto
- 12-17-21
Deep simplicity
Perhaps it's too direct to say that you either get it, or you don't. Layers upon layers of allusion, touching on loneliness, populism, collaboration and sectarianism. And the inherent paradox of family as both a bonding agent and force for further subdividing humanity. It may not be Vonnegut's best (who's to say?), but it is not an incoherent mess as some of those who don't get it claim. Art is what you make of it, and this has plenty to offer. And I'm thankful for the light gravity, as well.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lucas Conger
- 07-08-18
classic Vonnegut, read well.
Beautifully read, timeless story. it's striking how Vonnegut can write novels and stories that are still appropriate and nerve-jarringly relevant. Hi ho.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anika
- 11-15-17
Great story
I really enjoyed this book. The narrator was excellent. I thought the story was great