Critical Essay | Critical Review by Ian Bell

SOURCE: "One-Liners," in Observer Review, October 21, 1990, p. 58.

In the following review, Bell argues that the narrative of Hocus Pocus becomes secondary to themes that Vonnegut wishes to discuss.

Here comes another of Vonnegut's exemplary tales about one man unravelling the tangle of his life and trying to find out What Really Happened. It is full of wit, humanity, cruelty and trite narrative devices.

This time, as editor 'KV' explains, the imprisoned hero has committed his story to scraps of paper, thus allowing scope for the elliptical, the gnomic and the discursive. Often, these entries are one-sentence paragraphs.

'Vietnam.'

That's one. Eugene Debs Hartke, a West Pointer named after the only socialist ever to mount a real challenge for the presidency, was in charge of the helicopter evacuation from the US embassy in Saigon. His experience of war looms large as memory and metaphor.

'Losers!'

That's another entry....
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