Hocus Pocus

By: Kurt Vonnegut / Narrated By: LJ Ganser

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

When the tragic and the depraved are wry yet reeeeally funny…

So I dunno what all that makes me, cuz I laughed myself silly throughout Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus, which covers just about aaaaall of man’s inhumanity to man/the world at large. Every single disgusting thing you could think about mankind just came to your doorstep, courtesy o’ Vonnegut and a great big ol’ red ribboned bow.

Full disclosure (Which I TOTALLY am NOT proud of)? Other than Slaughterhouse-Five, I’m about as ignorant of Vonnegut’s works as it gets. So lemme just start this with a line lifted from Wikipedia: “Like many of Vonnegut’s novels, Hocus Pocus uses a non-linear narrative and has a plot centered on a major event heavily alluded to until the final chapters.” Thanks, Wikipedia! I couldn’t have for the life of me drawn parallels between the structure of this book to any others of his. So there you go.

Our hero, if you can call him that, is Eugene Debs Hartke, and from the get-go, we’re given to understand that he is post-existence. “Vonnegut” at the beginning, states that the words and work following, Debs’s story, was found in a library on paper, scraps of paper, scribblings and jottings tossed pell mell all about the place, and it was all pieced together to form the finished product. We don’t know exACTly what happened to Debs, but as the story progresses, as things become more and more dire, we’re pretty sure that…

…well… this is not a happy little audiobook. Debs is a Vietnam veteran who is pretty sure that he’s killed as many people as he has bedded women (And by the way, has he mentioned that he once threw a guy outta a flying helicopter?). He’s not so much haunted by his memories of war (Though some of the imagery that comes up is pretty horrific), but they’re there for him, always there, lingering lingering lingering. Every now and then, when he gets stinking drunk, he has a tendency of saying things about the war. Words never taken well by enthralled and disgusted listeners who would like to think of him as a war hero, from a hated war, a war that should’ve been won.

Debs is also a professor at an elite school for rich students (That’s what I got from it, at any rate) who have learning difficulties. He’s an intelligent man, and that he’s a professor has him as a spewer of witticisms, wry, and often deplorable, observations. He can skewer with his sharp tongue. And did I mention that he ties one on every now and again and verbally unloads bile-ridden diatribes about society and humans? These things are never taken well, especially if they’re listened to via recordings made surreptitiously from a disaffected youth with a tape recorder and a mean streak and a powerful papa.

Thus, Debs is also a fired professor who winds up working in the prison next to the school. There, his witticisms and disgust of all things Mankind continues, even as he works to help the prison Warden with plans on giving the inmates education to pass the time, to better themselves. That Debs talks talks talks, that he says plenty of things about the lay of the land surrounding the prison, the nearby town, the nearby school, to a hyper intelligent inmate who leads a revolt after a breakout from the prison? Well, kinda sorta too bad that now all the murderous inmates know where to go, where to rampage, whom to take hostage. Murder, mayhem, and through the narrative, Debs keeps referring to this or that person he’s talked with, had sex with, or actually honest to God cared about, who just haaaappens to be buried ignominiously on prison grounds in the aftermath of the swirling chaos and violence.

That Debs survives it all makes him the de facto warden, housing prisoners in the school now that the prison’s all blown to hell. But then too he becomes an inmate himself after aaaall THAT work as a warden, cuz it’s come to light that he kinda sorta gave so much information to the ringleader, and he is now deemed an insurrectionist.

He’s a saint, for taking care of his insane wife and his insane mother-in-law. He’s a jerk, for being a lackadaisical and remote father. He’s also the surprised dad of a bastard child from long ago. And has he mentioned how many women he’s bedded throughout his life? He’s a pig… no offense to pigs.

Still and all, at no point does he bemoan the fact that he’s a jerk, or that Life threw him so many gosh-danged curveballs. He simply rides the waves of his life, of his story, and tells it all, through the scraps of paper, the snippets of writing left in the library. It could be a very depressing book, what with his observations about humanity, and our roles in the horrors that occur, and his utter lack of belief in a future worth living. But there’s something so very appealing about a hero who has the spunk to comment daringly, all without giving a rat’s patoot.

LJ Ganser does the story justice with his narration. At times he comes off as a bit of a dry anchorman, but then again, Debs is pretty darned removed from all that he’s saying and passing judgment on… cough cough (And has he mentioned how he now has Tuberculosis? No big deal… cough cough). Ganser, a narrator I generally smile upon, continued to make me smile throughout this book, and to chortle mightily every now and again.

But seriously. All that was depraved, and violent, and dismissively heartless was in this book. No future.

Just wry smiles.

It was either chortle.

… or cry…