The late John Gardner called the novels of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. "literary comic books." Said Gardner, "I picture him writing something funny, then walking off and smiling to himself."
The remark was meant as a quick dismissal, an attempt to put Vonnegut in his place - the "American Minor Novelist" section.But Vonnegut refuses to stay put.
Norman Mailer blows hot and cold, Saul Bellow has burned out, and John Updike is beginning to bore. In 1990, the only consistent literary thread running through the 1960s, '70s and '80s is the work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
And "Hocus Pocus" is the latest stitch.
Giving a plot summary of a Vonnegut novel is a little like trying to lasso fireworks, but here's a try. In "Hocus Pocus" Eugene Debs Hartke is writing to us from the year 2001. (The old sci-fi writer in the author still seems to believe the future is prologue.)
Hartke has had a diverse life, ranging from service in Vietnam, a rock band called The Soul Merchants and several years working in a small "more or less liberal" college.
Hartke is a prisoner now.
He has TB. He has a guilty conscience. He has never come to terms with his parents, in-laws, wife, children or the world.
And he is soon to die.
Welcome to the monkey house.
As Hartke spins out his personal history, interesting characters and ideas surface, shine a moment, then return into the depths of his mind. The book he is writing is in small, bite-size chunks (Hartke can only find tiny scraps of paper to write on), but soon the memoir gets clipping along, held together by the free-wheeling imagination of the author.
"The two prime movers in the universe are time and luck," we learn. And, "I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them."
"Hocus Pocus" averages about one jewel a page.
As for the themes, the major concern is the same found in most Vonnegut novels. "Hocus Pocus" is a treatise against dehumanization, with the author's off-the-cuff irony concerning war, slavery, exploitation and social injustice hitting readers somewhere between the jugular and the funny bone.
Vonnegut is the only writer today who can make me laugh out loud and also make me feel the anger I felt as an undergraduate at society's insensitivity.
From me, that's no faint praise.
In the end, as each Vonnegut novel is published, blends into the one before and weds the one that will follow, the question a serious reader must ask is this: If we had just one of Vonnegut's novels, and this were the novel we had, would Kurt Vonnegut Jr. be a great American novelist?
With "Hocus Pocus," the answer is "yes."