Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

 

"While there is a lower class I am in it. While there is a criminal element I am of it. While there is a soul in prison I am not free"-Eugene Victor Debs

I finished Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus a few days ago. I enjoyed the book a lot. I am not sure what the reason is behind me not liking it as much as his other books or thinking there was not a good message behind the main character's life. Eugene Debs Hartke is a man who was a professional soldier, womanizer, teacher, and lover. He attended the United States Military Acadamy at West Point and subsequently fought in the Vietnam war, where he was nicknamed "The Preacher" due to the speaches he would give to the soldiers under him. "If I was a fighter jet, I would have little people painted all over me."

Hartke killed many men, women, and children during the war and seemed to not be ashamed of it. The United State's way of showing that we were winning the war was to report how many Vietnamese we had killed. Hartke killed a lot. 

He came back stateside and while in a Boston diner he met the man who had gotten him to go to West Point. A man who would later kill himself. While talking to his old recruiter he was once again recruited into working for a college for the mentally challenged (ADD, ADHD, ect). Tarkington was located in a fictional valley just south of Rochester, NY. Hartke tought there many years, all while sleeping with many staff memebers, and staff member's wifes. He was eventually fired for his innapropriate actions and got a job teaching at the prison across the lake. A prison run by the Japanese that only housed black inmates. 

Eventually there is a prison escape and Hartke is not killed (unliek many of the town's residence) because the convicts know him and do not consider him the enemy. He is made Brigadier General in the NY National Guard and then warden of the new prison where Tarkington college's campus is. The story ends with him telling the reader about the former warden of the prison, a man who as a kid survived the nuking of Horishima, killing himself at the memorial blast sight. He is then arrested. THE END

I liked this book, just not sure how well it stacks up against his other works.

-Jay