I had to read this for American Lit. last semester, and enjoyed it very much. It is easy to read but at the same time you have to pay attention to what is going on. The way the novel is pieced together is different, and it makes it all the more interesting. I highly recommend this book, and I can't wait to read more of his books, and I also want to try reading his son's books also.
Helpful Score: 2
Social inequalities with a humorous twist!
Helpful Score: 2
This book begins with an Editor's Note: 'The author of this book did not have access to writing paper of uniform size and quality. He wrote in a library housing some eight hundred thousand volumes of interest to no one else. Most had never been read and probably never would be read, so there was nothing to stop him from tearing out their blank endpapers for stationery. This he did not do. Why he did not do this is not known. Whatever the reason, he wrote this book in pencil on everything from brown wrapping paper to the backs of business cards. The unconventional lines separating passages within chapters indicate where one scrap ended and the next began. The shorter the passage, the smaller the scrap....'
OK, now you've got the idea! This is NOT the average novel. I'm not entirely sure that Kurt Vonnegut inhabits exactly the same world the rest of us do, and he surely doesn't look at the world from the same direction.
OK, now you've got the idea! This is NOT the average novel. I'm not entirely sure that Kurt Vonnegut inhabits exactly the same world the rest of us do, and he surely doesn't look at the world from the same direction.
Helpful Score: 2
This book is classic Vonnegut sarcastic humor. I loved it! Dark, intellectual and witty. The main character is a vietnam vet, who also teaches at a university for learning challenged students of wealthy elite parents. There is plenty of infidelity. There is a prison, inmates. Social commentary. Read it-you will laugh.
Helpful Score: 1
A Vonnegut classic, comedy, satire, social commentary, very easy to read and engaging
Helpful Score: 1
I love Vonnegut's sharp-toothed satire on americans and humans in general. I highly recommend that you check him out!
Helpful Score: 1
Hilarious, wonderful Vonnegut...you are sure to enjoy!
I love Kurt Vonnegut!!
"Sharp-toothed satire...absurd humor." - San Francisco Chronicle
I highly recommend Hocus Pocus and all Vonnegut books for that matter!!
"Sharp-toothed satire...absurd humor." - San Francisco Chronicle
I highly recommend Hocus Pocus and all Vonnegut books for that matter!!
This was just about his last book to publish, by which time he had generally lost hold of an ability to present his absurdist twist to reality. Couldn't pass the 40-pp assay. Needs a home with a new KV convert.
Classic Vonnegut. Great read.
"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," writes main character Eugene Debs Hartke. And not just personal failure, but large-scale continental collapse. The American economy is dominated by Japan, colleges are turned into prisons, and Swedes are mining US forests with Mexican labor. Another Vonnegut hand-slap to America for failing to live up to his expectations for it. But he's a brilliant writer and, again in this book, someone you suspect is deeply concerned about others.
Eugene Debs Hartke -- Vietnam Vet and career officer, teacher, philanderer, and now... prisoner. "Hocus Pocus" tells his story in small snatches of thoughts he scribbles on whatever comes to hand. He's accused of masterminding the largest mass prison breakout in US history. (As a side project to these notes, he's assembling two lists: all the women he's loved and all the people he's killed.)
This is classic Vonnegut. His black humor is in full force as Hartke comments on war, love, politics, the prison system, insanity, education, misinformation, and the "ruling class" in America.
For longtime Vonnegut readers, we even get to revisit a story by his fictional alter-ego, Kilgore Trout. Hartke finds deep meaning in "The Protocols of the Elders of Tralfamadore" which he finds in a copy of "Black Garter" magazine.
Maybe the last sentence of the book sums up its viewpoint best: "Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."
This is classic Vonnegut. His black humor is in full force as Hartke comments on war, love, politics, the prison system, insanity, education, misinformation, and the "ruling class" in America.
For longtime Vonnegut readers, we even get to revisit a story by his fictional alter-ego, Kilgore Trout. Hartke finds deep meaning in "The Protocols of the Elders of Tralfamadore" which he finds in a copy of "Black Garter" magazine.
Maybe the last sentence of the book sums up its viewpoint best: "Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."
Difficult to read not in chronological order, but entertaining once you get the format down.
From Publishers Weekly
While awaiting trial for an initially unspecified crime, Vietnam vet and college professor Eugene Debs Hartke realizes that he has killed exactly as many people as he has had sex with, a coincidence that causes him to doubt his atheism. According to PW , "The cumulative power of the novel is considerable, revealing Vonnegut at his fanciful and playful best."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
While awaiting trial for an initially unspecified crime, Vietnam vet and college professor Eugene Debs Hartke realizes that he has killed exactly as many people as he has had sex with, a coincidence that causes him to doubt his atheism. According to PW , "The cumulative power of the novel is considerable, revealing Vonnegut at his fanciful and playful best."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Not Vonnegut's best work, but awesome nonetheless.
"Irresistable...Hocus Pocus is vintage Vonnegut, witty, startling, satiic...Off the wall brilliance. Vonnegut is a true original. Hocus Pocus is not only Poignant and provocative, it is outrageous and very funny indeed. If Luck and Time are the two prime movers of the Universe, we are lucky in our time to have a Kurt Vonnegut to prod us, scold us, astonish us, unnerve us, entertain us and make us laugh..."
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer
While awaiting trial for an initially unspecified crime, Vietnam vet and college professor Eugene Debs Hartke realizes that he has killed exactly as many people as he has had sex with, a coincidence that causes him to doubt his atheism. According to PW , "The cumulative power of the novel is considerable, revealing Vonnegut at his fanciful and playful best."
Joseph Heller and Playboy magazine liked it.
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.
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.
This capable, if not thoroughly inspiring KV novel isn't too many people's favorite, probably because it is one of the more depressing ones. It borders on satire, but is sufficiently grounded in reality as to be unsettling, unlike many of his other novels, which are comprised of delightful farce. One of the worst fates in the world is to be a character in a KV novel, because the whole cast is comprised of those people whom nothing good will happen to, no matter their actions or intentions. Futility and inevitable disappointment are usually overarching themes, as here: "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." This novel in general, in fact, speaks to real depression, his or the characters'. I'm not certain.
The multiplicity of common themes are there, but they're not as artfully presented as many of the other novels. This one is more narrative-oriented than the typical fractured style readers have generally come to expect. War and family discord are present, as is futility, as he notes: "the two prime movers in the universe are Time and Luck" His characters are often just drifting through time and space. They have aspirations, to some degree, but they are usually foiled by circumstance. that can be comedic and tragic at the same time. Rarely does one of his main characters have a good relationship with his children, or the parents, and this novel is no exception. This common literary trope takes on a life of its own in KV's novels, however. There is something clearly very deep-seated there.
Although it's less than inspired, this prototypical KV novel features the familiar hallmarks of his work, most significantly a creation of someone's mind that has to have some larger significance: playing bells with a keyboard, crystals at a science fair, parents killed under a falling roof, laughing like hell. I will forever wonder about these seemingly paltry details, about which Ammianus writes, and what they truly mean, from whence they came in the mind of this author of singular genius. Maybe that's the point. He loves daily life, in all its mundane magnificence, that much is clear. He excoriates the things that annoy him but celebrates the sublime of quotidian life.
That said, something I sorely missed: there's not too much to laugh at in this novel, which is one of the most endearing qualities in KV's work. There aren't nearly as many quotables here, either, so it's surprisingly uninspired compared to many of his others; dare I say, conventional, even? There's much more dry than overt wit in this one. The primary theme is the dichotomy of wealth, and, somewhat uniquely to his work, race, illustrated in the juxtaposition of the school for morons and the prison. The protagonist, a philandering anti-hero with a psychotic wife and mother-in-law, who is (as usual) estranged from his children, is undone by a rich but moronic student whose father, a former student himself who has seemingly produced a mindless drone like himself gets him fired, and he has to go teach on the other side of the proverbial tracks, at the prison, where his fortune changes from bad to worse. KV rails against the offense of faux intellect: Shakespeare in the mouths of morons, who get their quotations from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations instead of the original text.
The end kind of fell apart for me, similar to Jailbird, but overall, it's definitely a worthwhile read, and still left me hungry for the next Vonnegut novel, which somehow constitute a celebration of life through the miseries of their characters.
"I would have given anything to die in a war that meaningful."
His insane wife and mother-in-law, one one occasion, upon his returning home "had torn the bedsheets into strips. I had laundered the sheets that morning, and was going to put them on our beds that night. What did they care? They had constructed what they said was a spider web. At least it wasn't a hydrogen bomb."
The multiplicity of common themes are there, but they're not as artfully presented as many of the other novels. This one is more narrative-oriented than the typical fractured style readers have generally come to expect. War and family discord are present, as is futility, as he notes: "the two prime movers in the universe are Time and Luck" His characters are often just drifting through time and space. They have aspirations, to some degree, but they are usually foiled by circumstance. that can be comedic and tragic at the same time. Rarely does one of his main characters have a good relationship with his children, or the parents, and this novel is no exception. This common literary trope takes on a life of its own in KV's novels, however. There is something clearly very deep-seated there.
Although it's less than inspired, this prototypical KV novel features the familiar hallmarks of his work, most significantly a creation of someone's mind that has to have some larger significance: playing bells with a keyboard, crystals at a science fair, parents killed under a falling roof, laughing like hell. I will forever wonder about these seemingly paltry details, about which Ammianus writes, and what they truly mean, from whence they came in the mind of this author of singular genius. Maybe that's the point. He loves daily life, in all its mundane magnificence, that much is clear. He excoriates the things that annoy him but celebrates the sublime of quotidian life.
That said, something I sorely missed: there's not too much to laugh at in this novel, which is one of the most endearing qualities in KV's work. There aren't nearly as many quotables here, either, so it's surprisingly uninspired compared to many of his others; dare I say, conventional, even? There's much more dry than overt wit in this one. The primary theme is the dichotomy of wealth, and, somewhat uniquely to his work, race, illustrated in the juxtaposition of the school for morons and the prison. The protagonist, a philandering anti-hero with a psychotic wife and mother-in-law, who is (as usual) estranged from his children, is undone by a rich but moronic student whose father, a former student himself who has seemingly produced a mindless drone like himself gets him fired, and he has to go teach on the other side of the proverbial tracks, at the prison, where his fortune changes from bad to worse. KV rails against the offense of faux intellect: Shakespeare in the mouths of morons, who get their quotations from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations instead of the original text.
The end kind of fell apart for me, similar to Jailbird, but overall, it's definitely a worthwhile read, and still left me hungry for the next Vonnegut novel, which somehow constitute a celebration of life through the miseries of their characters.
"I would have given anything to die in a war that meaningful."
His insane wife and mother-in-law, one one occasion, upon his returning home "had torn the bedsheets into strips. I had laundered the sheets that morning, and was going to put them on our beds that night. What did they care? They had constructed what they said was a spider web. At least it wasn't a hydrogen bomb."
His usual romp, this time about the life of a teacher and how he affects his surroundings.
