SOURCE: "Any Old Irony," in Spectator, Vol. 266, No. 8467, October 20, 1990, pp. 31, 33.

In the following review, Buchan states that Hocus Pocus has many elements in common with Vonnegut's earlier novels.

This is Kurt Vonnegut's 17th novel to appear in England, so the British reader should know what to expect. It's all here in Hocus Pocus, vintage Vonnegut: the short narrative units, the repetitions as in a roundelay, the intergalactic knowingness and the small-town good sense, the good humour, the tricks of typography, the exclamation marks as in a debutante's letter, the diversions, the threadbare coincidences.

Let me say right off that I can't begin with this stuff. Even when I was a hippy, I couldn't stand Vonnegut. Vonnegut, along with a Californian novelist of cloying whimsy called Richard Brautigan, were the only novelists read in my circle of friends. I rebelled against this orthodoxy—I thought rebellion against orthodoxy was...