I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus a couple days ago, and it was, in a word, amazing -- so good that I read it in a week. It was really eye-opening, too, and put a lot of things in perspective. Vonnegut writes in a definitively post-modern style, so it's hard to nail down what the book is really about, or what the plot is, but the work, as a whole, is really delicious fodder for thought.

One of the major points of the novel is the dehumanizing aspect of war. Vonnegut was, of course, a prisoner of war in World War II, and was held at a prison in Dresden (Slaughterhouse-Five). In short, he survived the fire-bombing of Dresden, which clearly shaped his outlook on war. The main character of Hocus Pocus is a Vietnam War veteran. There's a great line in the book in which the character says that he would've given anything to have died in a war as meaningful as World War II. In light of the two wars we're fighting right now, I think this line brings our current conflicts into a different light.

The book also provides a haunting critique of the American "ruling class" which is even more profound given our current economic problems, and the follies that brought us where we are.

Anyway, the only other Vonnegut work I've read is Timequake, and that was eight years ago, before I could really appreciate Vonnegut's work fully. I'd like to read his other works now, though, since Hocus Pocus was so amazing.

love that

i've been meaning to read his stuff for a while now. for a class i took we read a chapter or so of his Slapstick book to study his style some. i remember laughing a lot just at our short reading and thinking to myself that i needed to get the book. still haven't gotten to it yet but i plan to read a few by him.


"Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."



maybe i'll put hocus pocus on my list too

I just read Slaughterhouse-Five. Soooo good. He's brilliant.

Hocus Pocus is full of provocative passages, but one of my favorites appears on the second page of the book:

During those 14 years [in the army] I would have killed Jesus Christ Himself or Herself or Itself or Whatever, if ordered to do so by a superior officer. At the abrupt and humiliating and dishonorable end of the Vietnam War, I was a Lieutenant Colonel, with 1,000s and 1,000s of my own inferiors.

During that war, which was about nothing but the ammunition business, there was a microscopic possibility, I suppose, that I called in a white-phosphorus barrage or a napalm air strike on a returning Jesus Christ.

When I was in high school we had to read two books a quarter for "Read For Pleasure", and there was a kid in my class who always complained and goofed off. Then the teacher gave him Slaughterhouse Five and that was the only book he ever read for that class.

"It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

Breakfast for Champions (which I borrowed forever off my grandfather's bookself) and Cat's Cradle are also really good books. But now I need to go find Hocus Pocus.