This incredibly witty funny clever book is a satire about a man scarred by Vietnam war, the decline of american culture and values, the manic consumerism, selling out, higher education and racial politics and other incredibly serious topics. Written back in 1990, it is a bit dated, but at the same time unsettling vision of the future. I would definitely recommend this one.

While I would never admit that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a great writer, I would not hesitate to say that he is a national treasure and a writer that I would never hesitate to read and enjoy. His Hocus Pocus is the story of a career military man named Eugene Debs Hartke who retires to teach at an undistinguished college in upstate New York. He is something of a philanderer, partly because he cares for a wife and mother-in-law who have become mentally incompetent.

At one point, he is fired for arousing the ire of a conservative pundit who has him followed and notes down everything even vaguely unpatriotic that he has ever said. The day he is fired, he is hired at a maximum security prison across the lake from the college that is run by the Japanese. When there is a riot at the prison, the guards bolt and the prisoners invade the college town in force and hold the trustees for ransom.

What I love about Vonnegut is that he is the diametric opposite of Ayn Rand: His characters are failures, usually in a small way, while many of his most successful characters wind up being failures in a big way. As he says about his firing:

There I was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic TV, with virtually no health services for the poor. Where to go? What to do?

When the prisoners riot, he suffers no harm because the convicts like him. I guess in his world likeability is sort of the gold standard.

Hocus Pocus is the story of Eugene Debs Hartke, a Vietnam veteran, who after leaving the Army became a teacher at a private school and then a prison. After a prison break, he is mistaken for one of the ring leaders and ends up awaiting trial, dying of TB, contemplating his life and trying to count the number of women he has slept with.

In itself, that would make a good basis for an ordinary book, but as this is a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, the basic story has little to do with making this one of the final greats of the late 20th Century.

In fact describing it as a novel may be pushing it at all. As all you fine creative writing course graduates know, a beginning and an end are kinda compulsory, and even without them a middle would be quite handy. Vonnegut no doubt knew the 'rules' but you get the impression that he never let that get in the way of anything. Instead he put together a beautiful satire of just about every aspect of American life, from the idiocy of Vietnam, the treatment of the 'vets when they got home, the sale of just about everything to the Japanese and the inbred insularity of the majority of Americans.

But not all Americans are equal, and the difference between those with money and those without is a constant theme and despite quoting Orwell's opinion that 'Rich people are just poor people with money' there is an 'apartedness' that sees rich Americans believe themselves to be a different species, with the incisive narrator in the form of Hartke wearily pointing a leary finger at them.

All of this before what was surely at the front of Vonnegut's mind when he sat down to write Hocus Pocus, the imminent death of the planet through his country's disregard of the environmental impact of 'The American Way (tm)'. And does he lay on the environmental concern with ladles.

Like Heller, Vonnegut's humour softens what are in the main quite bleak and dark episodes, and the ridiculousness of the characters and their beliefs highlights his central themes. The characters themselves are a master class, with every individual at least receiving a passing note regarding their quirks and peccadilloes. Nothing is simple - after the prison break, the head of the school (which naturally is over-run by the prisoners) takes to the bell tower with a sniper rifle, before ultimately being killed and then crucified.

The beauty of it all is that it is almost believable, yet still fantastic in its truest sense.

I must admit, I'd avoided reading Vonnegut's novels for years, believing him to be a second-rate science fiction writer for some reason and it is only in the last few months that I have tackled some of his work. Reading other reviews, I understand that his output was quite patchy, but if this, Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 are anything to go by, I'll be reading and enjoying many more.

Ever since my introduction to Vonnegut's work (via The Universe Versus Alex Woods) I have become a little obsessed with his writing. He's dark, filled with pessimism and hints of anarchy. Is it even possible to summarize or fully interpret a non-linear story that considers post-Vietnam Imperialism, racism, drugs, globalization, and a raft of other themes?

He does that admirably and in a funny satirical tone. The story concerns the character of Gene Hartke who is being held in prison after allegedly masterminding a mass escape that had murderously bloody results. Hartke then goes on to record (on random scraps of paper ripped from the endpapers of library books) his entire life story including his accidental career as a war hero in Vietnam, his accidental role as a teacher, how he came to be saddled with the care of two insane women, his many adulterous affairs, his accidental role as a prison warden, his accidental role as a Brigadier and finally his role as a prisoner in the same prison in which he was a warden.

The core philosophy of hocus pocus is, "what goes around comes around".

There also is a strong anti-war message.
Vonnegut's work is so much more than literature, it is literature with a soul and with its own philosophy.

Cannot recommend it enough to all the nitwit humans out there.

Do yourself a favor and read him.

Highly recommended.

Happy Reading!

After Kurt Vonnegut passed away, I decided to read a novel of his I had not read yet as a sort of tribute, and picked this up at random from the bookstore. Until that point, I had never read something by Vonnegut I hadn't loved. However, I struggled for months to finish this novel. Eventually, when I did get to the second half of the book, I had forgotten exactly who some characters and things were (eg: GRIOT) that were introduced back in the beginning of the novel, making it an even more difficult read.

I am still not sure if it was the novel itself, or my state of mind at the time, but I just wasn't able to get into this story like I had with other Vonnegut books, such as Cat’s Cradle, Galápagos, and The Sirens of Titan.

I am giving this three stars anyway, because even at his worst, Vonnegut is still better than most at their peak. I will try to read this again someday, but I still have some other Vonnegut treasures I've yet to open for the first time -- Welcome to the Monkey House may be next, as its short story format may better suit my waning attention span.

Una de las grandes novelas de Kurt Vonnegut. Su ironía con el poder más explosivo. Me encantó la estructura, que va sumando pequeños avances narrativos con cada papelito. Brillante!

Quite the book. Truly profound. Though I guess any book that covers the problems with wealth, the prison system, race, war, the education system, and globalization would be. But this one is fun because its absurdist! I particularly liked the references to slaughterhouse five and himself. Good job Kurt!

'How embarrassing to be human.'

Hocus Pocus is the kind of story that's ideal to read when you want to chuckle at some biting quick humour. There's not much for a story here but the non-linear plot keeps you engaged. It is the story of Eugene Debs Hartke named after an American labor and political leader Eugene V. Debs and anti-war senator Vance Hartke. His formative years and crucial life decisions were shaped by his father who hardly knew what was in Gene's interest, after which he emerges a war veteran and has to decide what to do with his life going forward. It seems as if he is pushed by his current and past circumstances to weave his future where he openly indulges in all things life throws at him.

'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.'

If it weren't for Vonnegut's quips and philosophical proclamations, I'd have slept through the whole book.

'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.'

Vonnegut is just so fun to read

a little bizarre, but holds up surprisingly well and i found it very enjoyable and a relatively quick read! i like the way vonnegut fucks with time in a way that’s relatively easy to follow.

After "Slapstick", it's my least favorite Vonnegut book so far. The bit of trademark cynical wit came off, this time around, more as rantings and grumblings. As compared to his other wonderful works, I found there was not to be enough story here. Although the end part was quite good, thank goodness, over all, it was rather sluggish and depressing. Not once, did I laugh like hell.

I'm re-reading all the Vonnegut in 2021. I'm purposely not going in order. I remember really liking this book when I first read it. I was reading a lot of Vonnegut and this book was fairly new as I bought it as a paperback at the local magazine shop.

The only thing I remember from this book is that there was a Rush Limbaugh-type (named Jason Wilder) in this book. And with the recent death of Rush Limbaugh, I decided to read this book next. I'm not sure if he's really based on Rush Limbaugh or not, but his rhetoric is pretty tame compared to the right-wing talk of today.

This book was pretty good, but maybe my least favorite one so far. I still have many of the what's called lesser books to read (Slapstick, Player Piano, Timequake) so maybe I'll like another even less. I thought it was still very good and earned it's four stars, but most Vonnegut books have gotten five stars. I've been reading them in quick succession so maybe the formula of some of these books has lost some of it's novelty. Vonnegut, without a doubt, is my favorite writer, but there is definitely a formula. The way he starts off telling you what is going to happen and then slowly lets it unfold with little twists and turns, all the while pointing at the flaws of our world. He covers a lot in this one: the prison system, war, higher education, and mostly, the USA. I can see why I liked this so much when I was younger.

I also love whenever a Kilgore Trout story is in one of his books. Kilgore Trout is the ultimate sci-fi hack writer. No one knows who he is and his stories usually just show up in smut magazines to fill space between lewd pictures. But when a character in a Vonnegut novel, through happenstance, comes across and reads one of his short stories, they always make a great impression on those characters. It's the power of the written word.