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.

Vonnegut's "Oh Lucky Man".

Not what I think of as typical Vonnegut ( )

This book is a little harder to read than some. More of a traditional fictional autobiography. Some of Vonnegut's own mythical autobiography comes through. ( )

There is a tendency, in some instances, when one is reading a Kurt Vonnegut novel, to feel that one has already read that novel. And I started with that sense while reading Jailbird. He makes it seem so easy. He makes it seem so smooth. He makes it seem like you have read this before. And, with this tale, you may think you have, indeed, read all this before. In a way, the book feels as though Vonnegut is just taking the themes of Slaughterhouse V and Cat’s Cradle and, gosh, since they worked so well before, let’s try them again. Hints of Bokononism proliferate, and the Second World War shows up again. And, as I have already stated, Vonnegut makes it all seem so easy, one can quickly fall into the trap of thinking he’s already done this.

Maybe he has. But this is a different story, and a different outcome, and a different (but similar) meaning. The intertwining of Watergate and McCarthyism gives the story a different edge – a different meaning to what is going on. And the story really begins to grab when the tale of Sacco and Vinzetti is brought in. (Don’t know who Sacco and Vinzetti are? Look them up. I’m serious; this is an important part of American history you’ll want to know. Go ahead – we’ll all wait here a minute. [“So how’s it going with you? Oh, don’t worry; they’ll be back in a minute. They just went to Google to look up Sacco and Vinzetti.”] Oh, back. See, aren’t you glad you spent the time?”) Yes, they are real, they are an important part of history, of Socialism and how our wonderful country can, every once in a while, really come a cropper and, as Vonnegut tells it, they have as much to do with McCarthy and Watergate as anything. (Of interest, had it been written today, I am sure many people would be calling it an indictment against the current regime.)

This is a typical (if there is such a thing) Vonnegut book – one that almost seems silly. But the humor pays, and the reading pays, and the better understanding of events that have shaped us pays. It pays all of us to notice. ( )