Franklin Library: SIGNED: KURT VONNEGUT: HOCUS POCUS: EUGENE DEBS HARTKE

Description: Franklin Library leather edition of Kurt Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus," a Limited edition, Frontispiece by Edith Vonnegut Squibb, Personally Signed by KURT VONNEGUT, one of the SIGNED FIRST EDITION SOCIETY series, published in 1990. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has marbled paper end leaves, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, satin book marker, gold gilding on three edge--in FINE condition. Kurt Vonnegut, who lived from 1922-2007, was an American novelist and short story writer with a career spanning over 50 years. Born in INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, he attended CORNELL University but dropped out and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in WW II and was captured by the Germans at the BATTLE OF THE BULGE. The novel opens with the lines: "My name is Eugene Debs Hartke, and I was born in 1940. . . in honor of Eugene Debs of Terre Haute. Debs was a Socialist and a Pacificist and Labor Organizer who ran several times for the Presidency of the U.S. In an editor's note at the beginning of the book, Vonnegut claims to have found hundreds of scraps of paper of varying sizes, from wrapping paper to business cards, sequentially numbered by their author to form a narrative.The breaks between pieces of paper often signal a sort of ironic "punchline." Eugene Debs Hartke, a Vietnam War veteran and carillonneur, realizes that he has killed exactly as many people as the number of women he has had sex with. The character's name is also a homage to anti-war senator VANCE HARTKE. Both Debs and Hartke were from Vonnegut's home state, Indiana. Upon his discharge from the military, Hartke becomes a professor at Tarkington College in upstate New York, but is later fired for sexual misconduct. "There I was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstitions and illiteracy and hypnotic TV, with virtually no health services for the poor. Where to go? What to do?" Hartke then becomes a teacher at a private prison in the nearby town of Scipio. The prison is run by a Japanese corporation and overseen by Hartke's occasional acquaintance, Hiroshi Matsumoto. The prison is populated entirely by black inmates, America having been resegregated by both race and class. Hartke sets about teaching the inmates how to read. After a massive prison break, the escaped inmates occupy Tarkington College and take the staff hostage. With the old prison destroyed in the breakout, Tarkington becomes a prison with Hartke as its warden. When it becomes known that the breakout was led by one of his former students, Hartke is accused of collaboration and becomes an inmate himself. Upon completion of the riddle on the final page Eugene's number of sexual partners and confirmed kills is found to be 82. 303 pages---a VERY RARE title. I offer combined shipping.

Price: 164.95 USD

Location: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas

End Time: 2024-11-22T17:31:57.000Z

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