Kiedy mam opowiedzieć o książce, która mi się nie podobała, to dłużej się zastanawiam nad tym, co napisać, niż kiedy chcę napisać o książce, która mnie urzekła.

Po pierwsze: nie chcę nikogo urazić.
Po drugie: czasami ciężko mi nazwać to co mi się nie podoba (choć zdarza mi się to też wtedy, kiedy chcę napisać co mi się podobało w książce).
Po trzecie: kiedy zaczynam rozbierać na czynniki pierwsze moje przyczyny antypatii, to znajduję przykłady, w których te same elementy podobały mi się (albo przynajmniej mi nie przeszkadzały).

I tak się ma właśnie sprawa z Hokus pokus. Ta książka ma wiele elementów, które są charakterystyczne dla Kurta Vonneguta: wiele wątków i postaci, absurdalny, czarny humor, dużo dygresji i szkatułkowych historyjek.

I jakoś tak się wydarzyło, że akurat w tej powieści te elementy kompletnie mi się nie podobały i nie miałam przyjemności z czytania tej książki. Ale już na przykład w Rzeźni numer 5 wszystko to samo idealnie się ze sobą splatało i rezonowało z moim poczuciem humoru.

Nie wiem jak Wam to opisać. No nie jest to książka, którą będę dobrze wspominać.

Fairly bitter and cynical; he often is, but this is definitely up there even for him. Biting commentary — and is there ever commentary — on war (and Vietnam), education, capitalism, prisons, and many of the other social issues Vonnegut consistently wrote about. It won’t go down as my favorite of his — at least not for now — but it certainly is very good.

I’d recommend this to folks that like Vonnegut, commentary-driven plots, or satire.

Con una narración bastante lineal, raro en n   Kurt VONNEGUT Jr.n, esta historia no puede ser más absurda, increíble y divertida. En muchos sentidos, esta novela se trata sobre la hipocresía y el engaño, y me parece que es una de sus obras más cínicas, donde la ironía y la complejidad de la situación presentan la perspectiva al revés. Como todas sus obras, hay varios niveles de interpretación: está la historia superficial, la del militar retirado que acepta un trabajo de profesor en una escuela bastante particular, y están todos los diversos subtemas y divagaciones que hacen que su escritura sea tan entretenida e interesante.
En cierto sentido, es posible que no sea la mejor de sus obras, de repente puede parecer demasiado larga, lenta, y ciertamente repetitiva, con un aire pesimista más marcado de lo que sería normal con VONNEGUT. Pero a pesar de su tono negativo, en general es bastante ingeniosa y entretenida.

A great Vonnegut romp, full of prescient insights that, sadly, are more real now than when he wrote this novel. To say more would be to leave a trail of spoilers. By the way, the secret number at the end is somewhere between eighty and one hundred, but you will just have to figure that out for yourself.

As a cheat, 82. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Eugene Debs Hartke. This book is tremendously funny. Vonnegut's satirical wit and social critizism are as sharp and poignant as ever.

I can't say that this is one of Kurt Vonnegut's best works. To be honest, it's rather more depressing than many of his other novels - and they're a rather depressing lot anyway! Unlike his Bluebeard, though, this book lacks a deeply moving and somehow uplifting ending. It lacks a sense of resolution...perhaps that's what Vonnegut intended. It probably is.

But even so, Vonnegut retained his gifts as a writer. So although I found myself frequently feeling a little depressed by this book, I also couldn't stop reading it - and I'll eventually read it again.

One thing that's almost shocking is the accuracy of Vonnegut's "future" (2001) America. Environmental collapse (from glaciers instead of global warming, but close enough), an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, a desperate energy crisis, booming prison populations and the privatization of prisons, the wholesale purchase of American businesses and properties by foreign businesses, chronic unemployment caused by the demise of American industry, no healthcare for the poor...and that's just from memory, I know there was more. The seeds of all these trends were not only planted but sprouting back in 1990 when Vonnegut wrote this, but even so he paints a pitiless and frighteningly accurate picture.

It's nice to see a few of his old favorite characters in the book; it gives a feeling of continuity. And he retained his wicked wit and imagination. It just seems that they were being overshadowed by the essential bleakness of Vonnegut's worldview - a worldview which, I fear, was only too clear.

“Any form of government, not just capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.”

Kurt Vonnegut can be difficult and frustrating but his use of bitter sarcasm and dark humor in Hocus Pocus proved to be effective in plotting out the life of a deeply-flawed and narcissistic Vietnam veteran turned professor. It’s fun to read how a very problematic character talks about social conditions, racial injustice, and inequality.

There are parts where he sounds like a drunk lolo – yelling unnecessary details about so and so – but then again, in classic Vonnegut way, the punches will hit towards the end.

I can’t exactly place what made this book so good but I simply couldn’t put it down. The writing style made the story flow extremely well and I loved all the analogies with the prison, the war and the college. Super fun read.

The first Vonnegut book I read. Immediately hooked.

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I can't possibly imagine what I thought about this when I first read it.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I do remember one thing I thought about it, but more on that later.

So let us examine the state in which I first read this book. Obviously, I didn't pay much attention to the statement on page 54, "I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them." Or if I did, it didn't have any sort of lasting effect on me then, though this time around it caught my attention, for pretty obvious reasons.

Obvious reason number one: I read this for the first time when I was 12.

Obvious reason number two: I'm now 25.

I'm not anywhere near as old as Vonnegut was when he wrote that, but despite lacking in that wisdom granted to years, I have enough experience to see a difference between now and then.

But let's continue on my zeitgeist the first time I read this book.

I don't actually know how it came to be in my possession. I know I acquired it sometime in middle school, but whether that happened before the move or after I can't say. I do know that I read it in Massachusetts, and not Nebraska, so I would have had to have been at least 12.

Since my childhood was spent in the 1990s, coincidentally when this book was written, I am familiar with (and rather liked) a piece of cinematic not-history known as Hocus Pocus, with Bette Midler, about three witches that turn a small boy by the name of Thackery Binx into a cat, or rather an immortal cat, as this happened in Colonial times and then the movie forwarded to the here and now, as some children try to help the boy-cat (cat-boy?) defeat the witches. Same titles, so I assumed this was the novel upon which the movie was based.

Hoo boy, was I wrong.

I then remember being enthralled by the editor's note, about Vonnegut using scraps of paper to write on, not having access to notebooks, being on trial, and digging through the garbage for more paper. An interesting image for sure, and not exactly one having much do to with witches or cats, but a familiar image to me, since I also had a habit of scorning notebooks for scraps of paper on which to write. After reading through this foreword several times, I finally got it into my head to read the book.

I loved it. Like I said above, "Immediately hooked."

But what did I make of it? The rampant racism? The prevalent social disjunct between the Ruling Class and those at the bottom (which is so glaring to me now)? The image of a human head superimposed on a rotting water buffalo carcass? What was I possibly thinking about then?

But I know what I thought. I thought it was hysterical. And now, well, I had to laugh like hell.

Yet again the usual flawed ageing male narrator. This one is I guess Vonnegut's Vietnam novel. Not his best but still enjoyable

I read a lot of Vonnegut back in the 70's including such classics as "Slaughterhouse Five," "Sirens of Titan," "Cat's Cradle," and "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater." I also reread "Mother Night" a few years ago and found it to be a very biting satire leaving me wanting to read more of Vonnegut. Well, I finally got around to reading "Hocus Pocus," one of Vonnegut's later works being written in 1990 that I have had on my shelf for several years. This was very reminiscent of his early work with his humor and satire poking jabs as usual at how mankind seems to have screwed up the planet. The novel takes place in 2001 where there is mass segregation at prisons and other places, where the Japanese have bought up most of America including the prisons, and where most resources are scarce. The protagonist is Eugene Debs Hartke, a Vietnam War veteran, college professor, and carillonneur (a player of tuned bells) who realizes that he has killed exactly as many people as the number of women he has had sex with. The novel is basically filled with Eugene's thoughts from the war, his family, his life as an instructor at a college for underwhelming students, and as an instructor at a nearby prison after he is fired from the college. After a massive prison break, Eugene's former college is occupied by escapees from the prison, who take the staff hostage. Eventually the college is turned into a prison, since the old prison was destroyed in the breakout. Ironically, Eugene is ordered to be the warden of the prison, but then becomes an inmate, presumably via the same type of "hocus pocus" that led to his dismissal from his professorship. The novel is written on scraps of paper as Eugene is awaiting trial based on a bogus charge that he incited the prison break. The novel also has a reference to "Tralfamadore," the fictional planet from "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Sirens of Titan." The exploits of multi-dimensional beings are chronicled in The Protocols of the Elders of Tralfamadore (a title which parodies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is published serially in a pornographic magazine called Black Garterbelt. The magazine turned up in Eugene's footlocker from Vietnam.



Overall, this was another of Vonnegut's biting satires on mankind. It was filled with humor but was also very thought-provoking and I will probably be reading more of Vonnegut's novels that I have missed.

“He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.”

"Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe"

This book does to Vietnam war, what Catch 22 did to World War. Except, this does much more to the state of human condition than just the war.

Eugene Debs Hartke is a Vietnam veteran, a professor at Tarkington college for the dyslexic, later a teacher at the prison where the break-in happens. Now he is awaiting trial for abetting the criminals lay siege of his old university and dying of TB.

The book is as much about hypocrisy and pointlessness of the American bravado. More than once - Kurt Vonnegut uses situations to explain how pointless the Vietnam war was. Sample this : When his father tries to enter the school science exhibition and gets caught by the judges - they do not know how to get out gracefully and end up glorifying the cause and selecting an undeserving project as winner. Or how a 14 year old stuck in an elevator imagines the president of America is watching with attention his crisis while no one even bothers when he steps out safe from the elevator.

The book plays on irony, satire and complex characters. It's a good book, but somehow, found it more complex than required to make the point.

Scathing commentary on the stupidity of human beings!