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Jailbird

kurt vonnegut jr.

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“[Kurt Vonnegut] has never been more satirically on-target. . . . Nothing is spared.”— People

Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government—and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate’s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.

Praise for Jailbird

“[Vonnegut] is our strongest writer . . . the most stubbornly imaginative.” —John Irving
 
“A gem . . . a mature, imaginative novel—possibly the best he has written . . .  Jailbird  is a guided tour de force of America. Take it!” — Playboy

“A profoundly humane comedy . . .  Jailbird  definitely mounts up on angelic wings—in its speed, in its sparkle, and in its high-flying intent.” — Chicago Tribune Book World
 
“Joyously inventive . . . gleams with the loony magic Vonnegut alone can achieve.” — Cosmopolitan
 
“Vonnegut is our great apocalyptic writer, the closest thing we’ve had to a prophet since . . . Lenny Bruce.” — Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Vonnegut at his impressive best. . . . His imaginative leaps alone . . . are worth the price of admission. . . . His far-reaching metaphysical and cultural concerns . . . are ultimately serious and worth our contemplation.” — The Washington Post

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1979
Places
the united states of america, 

This edition

Format
310 pages, Paperback
Published
January 12, 1999 by Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN
9780385333900
ASIN
0385333900
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Walter F. Starbuck

    Walter F. Starbuck

    ...

  • Kilgore Trout

    Kilgore Trout

    Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon (Vonneguts colleague in the genre of science fiction), although Trouts consistent presence...

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About the author

Profile Image for kurt vonnegut jr.

kurt vonnegut jr.

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Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.

He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.

After the war, he attended University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York in public relations for General Electric. He attributed his unadorned writing style to his reporting work.

His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. This event would also form the core of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, the book which would make him a millionaire. This acerbic 200-page book is what most people mean when they describe a work as "Vonnegutian" in scope.

Vonnegut was a self-proclaimed humanist and socialist (influenced by the style of Indiana's own Eugene V. Debs) and a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)

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Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
SolrBlade
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Daily Vonnegut – Day 6.

n  “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.”n

A lengthy Kurt Vonnegut prologue.

Ironic musings on capitalism and communism, McCarthyism and Watergate. No sci-fi to be found, and I believe that is when I find Vonnegut can be close to his best. Or minimal sci-fi, anyway. Closer to Mother Night, in that sense, but not quite there. Mother Night is on another level.

From Allen: “The novel unfolds the irony that a man who had been a communist in his youth would end up working for a Republican president as his Advisor to Youth Affairs and lumped in the public’s mind with the right-wing zealots of the Watergate hearings and trials.”

Probably a valuable source of understanding public sentiment for that period of time in the US. I don’t believe it transcends literature, but I don’t think it has to.
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Crazedseal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This was my third Vonnegut book, having recently read Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five. His fragmented style requires extra effort from my already distracted mind, but the effort always pays off.

My appreciation of this book was easily won, since I tend to agree with the points he is trying to make. And the payoff when all the seemingly marginally related stories sync up perfectly is reward enough. But my favorite part of this and other Vonnegut books is the little moments of tragic cynical humor that are both beautifully poetic and capable of prompting audible laughter.

At times I missed the highly conceptual style of his other two books, but it’s absence was surely appropriate in service of his message.
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Sirlion
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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:/

As far as lesser-known Vonnegut (is such a thing real?) goes this is nothing spectacular. If you’re an avid Vonnegut reader then you know to expect an emphasis on kindness, a distrust of political figures, and irreverent comedy. This book has all three of course. It also features narrative motifs you might be familiar with: the repetition of a phrase to emphasize a point, for example. “Ting-a-ling” makes another appearance as well.

Anyway, you could go to Rosewater if you wanted something more positive and humanistic.

You could read Hocus Pocus if you wanted something more critical of American politics and democracy.

If you wanted something more serious and somber (this is one of his more somber works) you could read Mother Night.

If you wanted something more irreverent you could read Galapagos.

Point being, this isn’t a BAD book, but Vonnegut has so much excellent work that unless you’re a completionist, I’d recommend skipping this.

As true a 2.5 star book as can be imagined

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ihatemal1234
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"You know what is going to kill this planet?"
"A total lack of seriousness."
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SeaJaeger
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years."

Unlike Kurt Vonnegut's other books I've read, Jailbird doesn't seem to have much of a message, a purpose. Perhaps that is its purpose, to highlight the purposelessness of everything?

It's the story of Walter F. Starbuck who, though his parents are poor and working class, is sent to Harvard by his parents' employer. It's not because he's particularly bright; he isn't. Mr. McCone, who is filthy rich, doesn't have a son. Young Walter plays Chess with him. Ergo, he gets to go to Harvard. It's not about brains, it's about who can pay.

"I was a robot programmed to behave like a genuine aristocrat."

Mr McCone is wealthy not because he is particularly intelligent or hard-working or innovative. He isn't. He's wealthy because his family is wealthy.

His family is wealthy because, for generations, they've taken advantage of the working class, paying them as little as possible so they themselves could get more and more money. Capitalism! What a wonderful system! (For the few)

You'd think young Walter would be grateful for Mr McCone's generosity and subscribe to trickle down economics. Instead, he becomes a Communist. This was during the Great Depression and it wasn't yet the worst crime in America to be sympathetic to Communist ideals.

We follow Walter throughout his life, as he works for Nixon and is later sentenced to prison during the Watergate scandal. When he is released, a series of fun coincidences puts him near the top of the capitalist hierarchy.

Jailbird is written in Vonnegut's witty and sarcastic style. It moves along slowly and yet it's hard not to be invested and keep wanting more.

Vonnegut was often prescient and he was in this book as well, showing how corporations would grow and grow if capitalism isn't reined in, how the richest will suck up more and more of the wealth.

The richest, at best, turn a blind eye to the suffering of those they profit from. It behooves them to not care about those they deem below them.

"Nobody who is doing well in this economy ever even wonders what is really going on."

Maybe this book had a purpose after all. Maybe the whole point was to show the evils of unchecked capitalism. Whatever the case, Vonnegut is always a joy to read.
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Marvln
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"While I was a student, I sometimes caught the whiff of a promise that, after I graduated, I would be better than average at explaining important matters to people who were slow at catching on. Things did not work out that way." (46)
The last book by Vonnegut that I read, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, left me rather cold—this one, Jailbird, was much better. In fact, I'd say it's up there with his best.
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PopAnime123
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Jailbird is one of Vonnegut's less-known works.I saw some people saying that it's such an underrated book, yet I still believe that the most underrated of Vonnegut's works is Bluebeard—and that's by the way goes back to individual preferences. Vonnegut, I came to realize, has a brilliant talent in playing with main themes dominating his stories. Reaching the sixth book of his, I see that his works tend to have their take on humanity, war, and the vagueness of the future using different approaches,theme-wise of course. For instance, in Galapagos, it was the discussion of evolution and Charles Darwin, in Bluebeard it was art and what makes it valuable —I believe that's the main reason it's the best one for me. Here in Jailbird, the main theme was economy and the economic system in the US, particularly which made me realize my ignorance of such territory and as you guessed it was at a loss of following what important things he was saying. I didn't distinguish what was real and what was fiction until I've had done post-reading research. Yet how otherly and amazing you will always remain Vonnegut, for in spite of all of that I enjoyed a lot of aspects in the book and took a lot out of it from this first ride. Vonnegut will never leave you until he's assured that your hands are loaded. What a load indeed!

I'll talk about the best two things about the book. The first thing is all dialogues between the protagonist and female characters especially his wife Ruth whom he met in post-war Germany. Yes the MC Starbuck has a generous collection of unlikable traits, but all women he met are relatively radical geniuses and the conversations they had have an utmostly profound quality.

Throughout the book we encounter several sci-fi anecdotes written by a prisoner who is ,also, a published author with the pen name , Kilgore Trout.I love this sci-fi touch to Vonneguts books and I'm looking forward to pay closer attention to them because I enjoyed the few ones in here a lot.
No two books I read of Kurt’s were the same.I feel he's as much knowledagble ,as he's human .He reminds me of why learning is essential to us and how Knowledge is 'power'.
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Stegosaurus-chan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Nobody belongs anywhere, it’s all just an accident - and therefore it’s up to you to derive your own sense of meaning and enjoyment.

Vonnegut is a master of making me feel emotions I am unfamiliar with. This book gave me an extreme sense of anxiety and hopelessness through the first half, but the magic of Vonnegut is his ability to flip those feelings on their head with levity and perspective. It’s not that you stop feeling those emotions, but you learn to live with them through this tragic comedy.

A key theme is the heavy satirization of the American economy, politics, and judicial systems. Vonnegut wildly, yet carefully, flips the switch between real world stories and his own dream-like tale to a point where you often no longer know what’s real.

This book also explores communication, specifically miscommunication, but the sort that nobody realizes it’s going on and everyone thinks they completely understand. So it goes.
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