Hocus Pocus
Hocus Pocus book cover

Hocus Pocus

Mass Market Paperback – November 1, 1991

by
Price
$8.04
Publisher
Berkley
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0425130216
Dimensions
4.14 x 0.86 x 6.7 inches
Weight
6.6 ounces

Description

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. Praise for Hocus Pocus “ Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date...he is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion.”—Jay McInerney, The New York Times “Vonnegut's best novel in years—funny and prophetic, yes, and fabulous too, as cunning as Aesop and as gloomy as Grimm...He's up to something special in Hocus Pocus .”— The Nation “A king-sized relief valve of comedy. Every bit as humorous as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five , Breakfast of Champions or any of Vonnegut's other comic masterpieces...Vonnegut evokes the cynical chortle, the knowing grin, the inner laughter that soothes our troubled reflections...He's mad as hell and laughing all the way to the apocalypse.”— Playboy “His voice is one of the most original in popular American fiction...sharp-toothed satire...truly hilarious... Hocus Pocus is ample proof that his literary prestidigitation can still amuse and delight.”— San Francisco Chronicle “Irresistible... Hocus Pocus is vintage Vonnegut, witty, startling, satiric...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.”— The Cleveland Plain Dealer Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him, in the words of The New York Times , as “a true artist” with the publication of Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • From the
  • New York Times
  • bestselling author of
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
  • comes an irresistible novel that combines “clever wit with keen social observation...[and] re-establishes Mr. Vonnegut’s place as the Mark Twain of our times” (
  • Atlanta Journal & Constitution
  • ).
  • Here is the adventure of Eugene Debs Hartke. He’s a Vietnam veteran, a jazz pianist, a college professor, and a prognosticator of the apocalypse (and other things Earth-shattering). But that’s neither here nor there. Because at Tarkington College—where he teaches—the excrement is about to hit the air-conditioning. And it’s all Eugene’s fault.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(317)
★★★★
25%
(264)
★★★
15%
(158)
★★
7%
(74)
★
23%
(242)

Most Helpful Reviews

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In the shadow of Musket Mountain

This is probably my favorite of all of Vonnegut's works. It's the story of an ex-military man who becomes a teacher at a school for learning-disabled rich kids. He eventually is fired from the school for telling the students what an embarrassment it is to be an American, and he is hired by the prison across the lake. The story only gets more cynical and more sentimental from there. As each character dies, and so it goes, they are buried in the shadow of Musket Mountain when the sun goes down, a nice, poetic touch on this deeply sarcastic look at the American ruling class. I loved the alternative history lesson provided in this book, it's nice to see the positive side of American socialism and the potential it once held way back at the start of the 20th century. Hocus Pocus is one of those books I go back to ever couple of years and re-read...I like it that much.
59 people found this helpful
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Great Book (And refutation to some reviws)

Let me first tell you that this is by far one of Vonnegut's best. The social commentary that is diguised in the form of satire is rather tremendous and poignant. It has definitely an anti-war flavor to it, but it never overshadows the real substance of the author's witticism. It's a funny book, but not "hillarious" as the back cover of this volume attests. From a different point of view, it's a rather sad book if you understand the implications of the subject matter. A very good book and would recommend to any one interested in modern and post-modern American prose.
Refutations:
* Vonnegut is a post-modernist, which implies that the book (or any work of art) can and more likely be free of classical rigidity. So, complaining that he jumps back and forth through time and places is not a good criterion to undermine this work.
* Repudiating this work because of Vonnegut's anti-war passages is as unfair as doing the same for say, Hemingway, O'Brian, Dalai Lama.
* This is a quinteseential post-moder work, and as said above, it should and does not need to conform to the cannonical rules of plot flow, time flow, and characater development. You could even call this book a Cubist work due to its subdivisions within chapters.
* This book goes much more than just war. It goes into love, sex, selling of American enterprises (and hence America) to foreign investors, race, class consciousness, and the attempt to keep the status quo by those who are ver well-off.
* This book is completely well structured. Your could easily read just one chapter and be as happy as reading the whole book. The chapters are self-sufficient and self-contained. The further chapters are elaborations of thing, characters and bits from preceding chapters.
* This is a GOOD book!
22 people found this helpful
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One of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels!

I came upon Kurt Vonnegut is the most unusual way, I found Hocus Pocus in a box left in the attic from the previous tenant of a lake house in Lincoln City, Oregon. Now, being a kid from the 1980's when I saw "Hocus Pocus" I thought of the Disney Movie, in fact I thought this book might be novel version of the film, well, it's not, and reading it changed my life. After I read Hocus Pocus I collected every Kurt Vonnegut book I could lay my hands on, Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night, and of course, Slaughterhouse Five. I have read them all and Kurt Vonnegut is my absolute favorite author. Nobody would recommend Hocus Pocus as the introduction to Kurt Vonnegut, as this book is laiden with insider jokes about some of his other works, but I am glad that I came into the fold the way I did. Do yourself a favor and read Hocus Pocus, and when you are finished with it, leave it in an attic for some future reader to stumble upon it in the most beautiful and natural way.
18 people found this helpful
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A Non-Magical Trip to Prison?

Vonnegut has written many works that are justifiably praised, often laced with biting satire and normally an excellent insight into people and their surrounding society.
The various praises of this book, liberally sprinkled on the back cover and the opening few pages, call this 'Hilarious', 'Sharp-toothed satire - absurd humor' 'Comic', '...a scream'. From these comments, I was all set for another Slaughterhouse Five, but when I finished this I wondered if these book reviewers had read the same book I did. I didn't even break a chuckle, finding instead a large amount of cynicism, retreads of ecological and Vietnam phrases that became trite long before this was published, a main character who entirely monopolizes the book (there is almost no conversation and darn little action), and a story line that very badly extrapolated the society trends of 1990.
Certainly, Vonnegut's sharp tongue is present, ripping up academia (and their captive students) as we explore the benefits of prisons run by outsourced Japanese guards, the equivalency of loving and killing, television talk-shows, the mindless drive to wealth normally thought of as the American dream, and, yes, the whole Vietnam experience with his typical precision. But instead of these items being couched in a manner that would bring a smile and a chuckle (before the sharp stab of truth hits), the barbs are almost baldly presented, or driven by obvious situations and comparisons. And his patented time-slip style of narration is still present, but it no longer seems fresh. Perhaps what I missed the most in this work was the completely zany worlds that his characters in previous novels occupied inside their heads. This work seemed far too mundane and everyday.
Perhaps I read this on a bad hair day, but for my money this is very minor Vonnegut.
--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
17 people found this helpful
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Cynical diatribe without the good humor of earlier works

I was a student of the University of Iowa when Vonnegut was in residence at the Writer's Workshop. Kurt would be working on drafts of Slaughter House Five in the English Philosphy Building where I was taking Rhetoric . I lionized Kurt because of his anti war stance and seminal earlier works. In the mids 1970 beginning with "Slapstick" he seemed to have lost his way as a writer. With the exception of "Bluebeard" his novels became
more and more difficult to read. "Hocus Pocus" is an angry book not leavened with the humor and sense of wonder that made his earlier works so delightful.

Read "Mother Night" and "Slaughter House Five " to start your tour of Kurt.
" Hocus Pocus" is a difficult, unrewarding read.
15 people found this helpful
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One of his finest books

At this stage in his career-1990, having already delivered several undisputed classics, Cat's Cradle, Slaughter-House 5, etc.-Kurt Vonnegut's place in the annals of American literature was already well established. And yet, he delivered yet another masterpiece with this book. The book is narrarated in first-person, and the character is another in the fine Vonnegut tradition: possessing a highly caustic wit, smart-alec persona, and a dry pessimism that is as funny as it is unfortunately true. This is the voice of Vonnegut, of course, and the body of literature is much the better for it. I won't divulge specific details of the book's plot here, like most Vonnegut, there is no real plot. Instead, the story is told in a very non-linear format, jumping from scene to scene in a juxtposed manner. This format, although idiosynctric, actually helps somewhat with the suspense factor... it reveals elements of the story that have not happened yet, without divulging their specific details. This is sort of a culmination of some of the many elements that make Vonnegut Vonnegut, coming on the heels of what many considered to be a series of downer books for him, which makes this one of his finest, funniest, and most enjoyable novels.
10 people found this helpful
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My First Vonnegut

Well I did it, I read my first Vonnegut!

If you enjoy cynicism and satire, then this is the book for you. The over arching themes in this book are dedicated to sociopolitical topics with the biggest focus on war, specifically the Vietnam war. Our main character is a decorated Vietnam vet who finds himself teaching rich learning-disabled students and nursing his mentally unstable wife and mother-in-law. The antics that ensue are pretty unbelievable but are told with enough actual facts that it is almost believable.

There are quite a following of die-hard Vonnegut fans so I know I'm not doing this review justice. One reviewer called the book choppy due to its paragraphs told almost on separate occasions with at least an inch of space between each paragraph. I personally enjoyed this, it made me feel like I was getting through the reading faster ... which could have just been an illusion of course. I would suggest that it is written this way to show how the events of history and one man's life, including the lives of the people he has come across, are indeed connected, but not in a linear fashion. Vonnegut wrote the book like life, it's a bit choppy.

As I was reading it did remind me of Catch-22, but that must be the satire and major war theme that they have in common. One thing that I did observe upon recollection is that there is no resolve and as a reader I do like resolve, but I appreciate the author's style due to the context. There are plenty of fun parts at the beginning but as the story goes, the fun parts kind of dissolve. I think this is on purpose though, it connected with the message that Vonnegut was telling. The message about Vietnam vets, corporate America being owned by other countries instead of America, and the appalling state of affairs in our penitentiaries.

But I could be wrong. I didn't give this one a lot of stars which is unlike me because I love rating things high, but I don't think I was in the right mood for this one. I look forward to reading more of his work though. It kept me captivated, I wanted to know how it ended which says a lot about a book I think.
8 people found this helpful
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Vonnegut needs more attention

Hocus Pocus may constitute one of the most compelling examples of why Kurt Vonnegut deserves more critical acclaim as one of the foremost authors of our time. In my opinion, Kurt ranks with Faulkner, Borges, and Phil Dick as the greatest of the great authors of our time. While Vonnegut lightly dances with his prose, he is actually showing us, just as Joyce, Faulkner and Kerouac did, how the past interacts with us on a daily basis. The past is present. Our pasts remain a part of us. In this whirlpool of time swirling by with all the force of a hurricane, (picture Edvard Munch's, The Scream) Vonnegut makes us aware that by being cognizant of time, and our place in it, we can become better navigators of this life.
6 people found this helpful
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Best of his later works

Hocus Pocus is still a brilliant satire. People who want another "Cat's Cradle" (which I think is his best) "Slaughterhouse 5" or Galapagos" may be a little disapointed, but this is still a very funny, sadly true look at life today, even if it was written 15 years ago. It satires war, education, the prison system, and the outsourcing of jobs, still hot-button issues today. This is just a good book, even if Vonnegut's prime was a bit earlier.
5 people found this helpful
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Vonnegut's Best

Easily my favorite work by Kurt, and I've read them all. Some I have forgotten, others are fond in my heart, but my mind remembers Hocus Pocus above all others. Whenever I'm in need of a book to occupy a week or two and nothing else is striking my fancy at the moment there are three or four book I always go back to and never grow tired of . . . Hocus Pocus is at the top of the list.
Just to give prespective on what other novels I like, my other top two favorite books of all time are Brave New World and Catch 22. Take that for what you will.
Peace
5 people found this helpful

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