SOURCE: "Kurt Vonnegut: So It Still Goes," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. 20, No. 33, August 19, 1990, pp. 1-2.

In the following review, Cantor concludes that Hocus Pocus is a vehicle for Vonnegut to communicate his despair over humanity.

Woody Allen once observed that 80 percent of life is showing up. The other 20 percent—the part that stands between me and stardom—is making yourself likable, like George Burns, Jack Benny, Bill Cosby, or my pal (hah! don't I wish it!) Kurt Vonnegut. The amiable Vonnegut persona—a wry man who is a tad curmudgeonly, but as moral as he can honestly be—is, from book to book, Vonnegut's most substantial, continuing creation. Many people may be just, or think they are but it seems that few of us have doing justice as our aspiration—and they may do more harm than good. But if, like Vonnegut's narrators, they're not self-righteous...