Hocus Pocus

by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

[clementine]

Seven years and thirteen novels into Vonnegut's catalogue, I think it's pretty safe to say that I'm a big fan. While some of his novels are certainly better than others, all of them are at least good. He's perhaps best known for his absurdist take on the sci fi genre, but I have to say my favourite Vonnegut novels are all invariably the more realistic ones - especially the ones about war and other human atrocities. Hocus Pocus is quite ideologically-dense - obviously, it takes an anti-war stance, just like Slaughterhouse-Five and to a lesser extent Mother Night. It's also about the interconnectedness of humanity and especially of various systems. This book makes it very plain how higher education, the military, and prison all reinforce each other. Vonnegut takes things to a predictably absurd place in order to make his point, but the conclusion to be drawn - that major American institutions are mutually-reinforcing - is true of the actual world as it exists.

This novel is also centrally concerned with the idea of inevitability as well as hereditariness. There are several hereditary conditions that are woven through the narrative, but there's also the idea that social class is hereditary and that things like class, race, and education combine to create an inevitable and predictable future. Of course, this is a (deliberately) essentialist take on complex sociological concepts, but there is a lot of truth in the fact that certain experiences and identities make people more or less susceptible to various successes or downfalls.

Of course, the theme that connects the entire novel is the Vietnam War - its futility and devastation, its ability to create successful, prolific killing machines, the way it has impacted life in the USA of the early 1990s. Eugene, a prominent soldier in Vietnam, is persistently haunted by one particular image of a severed head. Although he himself killed countless people, it is this particular horror that he cannot shake. Similarly, the book personalizes the idea of injustice - war, the prison industrial system - using Eugene as a stand-in for devastation that is on too large a scale to adequately comprehend.

This is a little harder to get through than Vonnegut's work often is, and worth every page.