Hocus Pocus

First Edition Hardcover

Hocus Pocus is Vonnegut's thirteenth novel, first published by G.P. Putnam's Sons of New York on September 5, 1990. Putnam also released 250 first printings specially bound and signed as a slipcased "limited first edition". It was written in New York City and Sagaponack from spring 1987 until January 1990. An excerpt appeared under the title "Hocus Pocus" in the September 1990 edition of Penthouse. The tombstone and "rubber-stamped figures" that appear in the text were drawn by Vonnegut. It was dedicated as a "work of pure fiction" to Eugene V. Debs, featuring his famous quote as an epigraph: "While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. Whole there is a soul in prison, I am not free".

Set in the year 2001, the novel is cast as the memoirs of Eugene Debs Hartke, a veteran of the Vietnam War who was later employed at Tarkington College, an institution for children with learning disabilities from wealthy families. After being fired at the instigation of Jason Wilder—a famous Conservative commentator whose daughter attended the school—Hartke found employment as an educator at the nearby New York State Maximum Security Adult Correctional Institution at Athena. After a jailbreak, Hartke was arrested and accused of aiding the convicts in their occupation of Tarkington, where they took hostage the school's Board of Trustees, including Wilder.

Franklin Library Edition

In the fall of 1990 the Franklin Library privately printed a specially designed "deluxe" edition of Hocus Pocus for members of its Signed First Editions Society. Vonnegut wrote a "Special Message" for this edition which was later included in chapter 14 of 1991's Fates Worse Than Death and reprinted in the fourth volume of the Library of America's Vonnegut set.

Summary

Having studied and taken an M.A. in anthropology at the University of Chicago, Vonnegut recognizes that he views history, cultures, and societies as characters in his fiction. Once a critic for the Village Voice claimed that Vonnegut had never created a character in his works, and for that he should be dismissed as a writer. While he says that this is surely an overstatement—since Eliot Rosewater, Billy Pilgrim, and some others are full "three-dimensional" characters—Vonnegut admits that in most of his novels, individuals are not the main characters. In this work, the primary character (excluding Vonnegut himself) is imperialism, the act of taking land, people, and resources of another group by military force and violence. Christopher Columbus, who is popularly credited with discovering a land already inhabited by millions of people, engaged in an enterprise that on a small scale is called the crime of armed robbery.

Now the wealthy heirs to these conquerors refuse to take responsibility for the management and maintenance of this stolen property and the people who live in it. Instead, they sell it to foreigners—at this moment in time, the Japanese—in exchange for paper representations of wealth, freeing them from their obligations. Most of these heirs in fact only recently acquired this property through speculations on Wall Street or through financial fraud, showing that they have no more patriotic affection for their land than any other colonizer in history.

At this same moment, the Soviet Union has collapsed, its dreams of compassion and fair play destroyed by economic failures, intentionally created famines, paranoia, xenophobia, and war. This allows the wealthy in the United States to proclaim now that anything that sounds remotely like the Sermon on the Mount is socialist and therefore discredited. They claim history has now proved that compassion can only lead to the worst for everyone. Vonnegut blames British literature—which makes imperialism honorable, brave, and charming while the lower classes are parasites—as well as "eastern-seaboard prep schools and upper-class clothing establishments" which idolize that world. This novel declares that such worshipers of imperialists in the United States are un-American.

See Also

• "Tom Wicker Signifying", a review of Wicker's A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt
• "Stars and Bit Players", which also makes reference to the Attica Uprising and Governor Rockefeller's response
• "The Last Tasmanian", a posthumously published reflection on imperialism and colonialism, original written in 1992