Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus – Kurt Vonnegut

Eugene Debs Harte (named in honor of the Socialist and labor organizer Eugene Debs) is writing his life story from a college library that is serving as his prison. It’s complicated. After a spectacular failure at his high school state science fair, Eugene gets recruited by West Point. Four years and a “B.S. degree in Physics” later, he finds himself serving in Vietnam. When “the excrement hit the air-conditioning,” he returns home like all other veterans – misunderstood, jobless, and verging on a destructive outburst. Fortunately, his former-commanding-officer-turned-college-president offers him a teaching position and a place to live at the university. He spends quite a few undisturbed years teaching, philandering, and hiding his insane wife and mother-in-law from the rest of the world. Then he suddenly gets fired, and just as quickly finds a new job as a teacher at the prison across the lake from the college. A few more years pass, then the convicts pull of a mass prison break and take over the college. In the next few days, Eugene finds himself dubbed Mayor, Brigadier General, Warde, and, finally, prisoner at the same college where he spent so many years teaching. With not much else to do besides read books that nobody will ever read again, or probably never read in the first place, he writes his life story on scraps of paper.

The quirk about “Hocus Pocus,” on top of all the usual quirks of a Vonnegut book, is that Vonnegut positions himself as the editor. The story was written by Eugene Debs Hartke on scraps of paper he finds in the library, and Vonnegut says he has compiled them to put the whole story together. The different pieces of paper are distinguished in the book by lines, so each section of text, sometimes almost a whole page, sometimes only one word, represents each supposed scrap of paper the author wrote on. My mind made a big deal about this in the first few chapters, but eventually I pretty much stopped seeing the lines altogether.

This is the second time I’ve read “Hocus Pocus” in less than a year, and it only got better. Largeley because I understood it more. In case you missed it, go back and read my summary. It’s a complicated plot to follow, especially when the narrator skips around between history and present day. The other reason it got better is because this is a truly fantastic book. Vonnegut comments on everything from the institutions of war, education, and prison, to racism, to the ability to guess at what the future holds. Though his view of the world is only cynical, he points out human short-comings so blatantly that the only option is to laugh at the stupidity of it all. His statements range from politically incorrect to harsh-realities, but he doesn’t shy away from topics others would generally ignore in an effort not to offend. Scathing, hilarious, and brilliant. Must read.