In the Kurt Vonnegut novel ‘Slapstick’, a failing US Gov’t eeks out a policy in its last days that everyone is to be assigned a middle name and a number.
All the middle names are based on words from the natural world. So you may be a Peanut-11 or a Squirrel-7 or Aluminium-4
Clubs pop up, people start connecting. Some folks are snooty with fancy names, some have humble names that fit them perfectly.
The idea is to give everyone a family. If you’re on hard times, you find some kin of your folk where you happen to be.
It is one of his most humane books but buried in one of his lesser read books.
#englishlit #humanism #vonnegut
