![]() "I think any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever the people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today." If facts weren’t funny or scary, or couldn’t make you rich, the heck with them." " The lesson I myself learned over and over again when teaching at the college and then the prison was the uselessness of information to most people, except as entertainment. But then again, he hadn’t had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government." "He hadn’t killed nearly as many people as I had. Vonnegut fans won't want to miss this one.Ībout a man serving a life sentence in prison: As always, he does it in the most amusing way. In Hocus Pocus, he not only derides the Vietnam War, but also institutional racism, capitalism, the gullibility of the masses, and the greed of the rich. The more I read Vonnegut, the more I appreciate his gift, his insights, his satirical way of calling out bullshit. It won't sound as entertaining and humorous as it is. Afterwards, after the "excrement hit the air conditioning", Eugene took a position as a physics teacher at Tarkington College before ending up in prison. ~Oxford Languages Dictionaryįans of Vonnegut know that he was against the Vietnam War and often used his books to point out the absurdity and evilness of the conflict and Hocus Pocus is no exception.Įugene Hartke used his gift of gab in the Vietnam War to encourage his troops to kill "the enemy". Noun: meaningless talk or activity, often designed to draw attention away from and disguise what is actually happening. Vonnegut has taken the war and made it his, so that every single plot or narrative arc (because indeed, even with the masterful scatter plot-logic of this novel, there is much calculated thought mingled in with a raw emotion) returns always to Vietnam. He's a master at making the protagonist both blatant observer & Man of Action. He writes about politics, & sex, & human ties. He has a beating heart, and it beats louder and faster, with a warlike violence and even more often with a human tenderness, as Vonnegut attempts to externalize all of his thoughts on this most miserable stage in American history. None of that with Vonnegut, who writes about the Vietnam War like no one else: with the courage to mix in futuristic and antiquarian events, all fictional but lifelike, as well as merging composite psyches with individual personal histories. There are a couple of authors who aimlessly write, sometimes attaching all this "drivel" to one profound, emblematic theme. ![]() The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. Army and serving in World War II.Īfter the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003. Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist.
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