Jailbird (1979)

Jailbird begins as a story about a man who has been jailed for having a very insignificant part in the Watergate scandal. Because of this, he is housed in a jail for white collar criminals near Atlanta, Georgia. The story traces his past beginning with his childhood as the son of two servants for the wealthy McCone family and continues on to tell about his life as a Harvard student and role in the HUAC hearings among other things.

I found the book to be characteristic of Vonnegut in that it is filled with his trademark wit and dark humor. The reader wants to root for the protagonist to find some sort of fulfillment in life in a world that Vonnegut portrays as being very silly and senseless. Through humorous portrayals of the US government and corporations, Vonnegut provides a scathing mockery of the US economic system and how inhuman we all become within it.

I liked this book even though I doubt that Vonnegut and I would agree on a lot of things politically. Regardless of how you feel about the American version of the capitalist system, you have to admit that at many times Vonnegut does point out some of the absurdities of it. Likewise, as I previously mentioned, he does write in such a way as to make you want to root for the protagonist and hope that he gets some sort of justice in his life even though, after comparisons are frequently made to Sacco and Vanzetti, that this isn't likely to happen for him. ( )

Even if you just read the prologue, you've read, in my opinion, one of the most beautifully written passages in 20th century American lit. I was reading this on a street corner on an obscenely warm July evening and literally got chills when he started describing the falling snow. So brilliant.

70' KV... Loved this one. A minor Watergate conspirator, power, greed, and a cameo by Kilgore Trout to boot! ( )

Jailbird like most of Vonnegut’s novels, is a tightly woven series of events that create a hilarious and enjoyable story. Walter F. Starbuck is a white collar prisoner falsely accused of crimes associated with the Nixon presidency. His only wrongdoing was having an office within earshot of many conversations he should not have heard. The book opens on the day when he is finally released from jail and he collects his belongings from the future Kilgore Trout. Through a series of silly and coincidental run ins and relationships Walter finds himself floating though a zany adventure. I love Vonnegut for his crazy style and his tight stories. They are full of commentary on humanity, and Vonnegut’s meta writing about the writing being read is a very creative and unorthodox way to tell a story. I personally think Jailbird is the most tightly woven of Vonnegut’s plots and is great fun for readers.

It's not shocking that in Palm Sunday, the "autobiographical collage" Vonnegut compiled/wrote immediately after publishing Jailbird, he grades this book as an A.

While this one came first, Jailbird shares a great deal in common with 1985's Galápagos -- specifically, that both novels take place over the course of one very star-crossed day (with numerous forwards- and backwards-looking references, of course), and that both deal with the nastiness of human nature in a surprisingly endearing way. Here, we have Walter F. Starbuck, who epitomizes the good man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time throughout his life, who begins the novel leaving prison after serving his sentence for his involvement in Watergate and ends it about to return to prison for concealing a will.

In between, we meet a huge amount of horrible people, and some good ones too, all of whom have contributed to Walter's downfall. Despite it all, he's still a good man (a Vonnegutian man, no doubt), and the novel is saved from potential jadedness by the devil-may-care sweetness of its main character. Still, that such awfulness happens to such a good man is troublesome, and by the end, that's the entire point.

Human horridness never looked so good.