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.

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.

:/

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

"You know what is going to kill this planet?"
"A total lack of seriousness."

"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.

"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.

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'.

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.

This was another disappointing novel, Vonnegut's second in a row, and given the gaps between his three novels of the 70s, it certainly raised some questions about whether he had passed his prime. It could be argued that, indeed, he had. Which is no crime for a writer who had produced a body of work like that which he published during the late 50s through the first half of the 70s. And, to be fair, "Jailbird" is far from a total disaster. Vonnegut's weaker work was still topped the best that some authors could muster.

"Jailbird" suffers from many of the opposite flaws as its predecessor, "Slapstick." Whereas "Slapstick" had been disjointed and meandering, "Jailbird" was ploddingly linear. Whereas "Slapstick" had been wildly fantastic, incorporating many elements of science fiction, "Jailbird" attempted a mundane realism (not unlike Vonnegut's first novel, "Player Piano") which did not play to the author's strengths. Whereas "Slapstick" left far too many loose threads, "Jailbird" made too great an effort to tie every thread up in a nice, neat bow. In many ways, it was everything that "Slapstick" had not been, but if Vonnegut had shifted to the opposite extreme with the intention of ameliorating the weaknesses inherent in his previous novel, he probably pushed too far.

One thing the two novels do have in common: they both end with a whimper. Although the climax of "Jailbird" is easier to pinpoint, the epilogue feels like an afterthought, and a somewhat impotent one at that.

Two other flaws are probably worth noting. First, Vonnegut inexplicably resurrects the character of Kilgore Trout, but does so in such a way that it diminishes the character, as already established. In short, he attempts what we today would refer to as a "reboot" of the character, and it does not work well. In addition, whereas in past works Vonnegut's digressions into the stories of Trout had often managed to be seamlessly integrated into the larger narrative, here they just feel like tacked on filler.

Second, and arguably more significant, is the lack of a clear moral. Vonnegut had, up to this point, always centered his novels around a moral -- or at least a clearly identifiable theme. In "Jailbird" there is no such clear central message. Now, it could be argued that moralizing is not -- should not -- be the job of a novelist. But Vonnegut's social commentaries had always benefited from this emphasis on a singular truth, something which "Jailbird" never quite manages. There are allusions to time as an antagonist, and fairly late in the novel he calls into question the capriciousness of our economy. But a clear, singular message never emerges.

None of this detracts from the genuine belly laughs which bubble to the surface from time to time. Even at his most seemingly apathetic, Vonnegut is still uproariously funny, if only sporadically here. Thus, fans of his work will still find much of value in these pages, but those looking for an introduction to the man's novels should certainly start elsewhere.

Prefaced with the well-known premise “against stupidity even the gods contend in vain” (xii), and notes thereafter that “labor history was pornography of a sort” in the early 20th century (xviii). Narrative arises out of a fictional moment of labor history, the fabricated “Cuyahoga Massacre” in Cleveland, 1894 (xxi). Narrator is raised by one of the industrialist villains who authored the massacre, and becomes a big commie, and later ends up in prison several times for stupid things, such as being a tertiary Watergate thug.

That’s the story, I suppose—but one doesn’t read V for story, of course; it’s all about the observations along the way, such as: militias “represented an American ideal: healthy, cheerful, citizen soldiers” (xxvi), “utopian” (xxvii), but “worse than useless on battlefields” (id.).

Narrator was “a radical at Harvard,” “cochairman of the Harvard chapter of the Young Communist League” (13) (that’s a Stalinist outfit, FYI). After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, however, “I became a cautious believer in capitalistic democracy again” (id.). Despite this, dude ends up as Nixon’s youth affairs advisor. He wrote many unread memos, all of which boiled down to: “Young people still refuse to see the obvious impossibility of world disarmament and economic equality” (15).

V writes with a subtle rhetorical power, such as when he describes the post-war plans of narrator’s wife, a survivor of the Third Reich’s camps: “to roam alone and out-of-doors forever, from nowhere to nowhere in a demented sort of religious ecstasy. ‘No one ever touches me,’ she said, ‘and I never touch anyone. I am like a bird in flight. It is so beautiful. There is only God—and me’” (21). But in earthy contradiction with that ethereal image, “there was no movement or sound she made that was not at least accidentally flirtatious” (24).

Dude gives his wife probably the best wedding gift of which I’ve ever heard: “a wood carving […] it depicted hands of an old person pressed together in prayer. It was a three-dimensional rendering of a drawing by Albrecht Durer” (28).



Narrator is scolded for denouncing comrades to HUAAC with “The most important thing they teach at Harvard […] is that a man can obey every law and still be the worst criminal of his time” (75).

Definitions, V-style: twerp = “a person, if I may be forgiven, who bit the bubbles of his own farts in the bathtub” (110); jerk = “a person who masturbated too much” (id.).

Narrator notes the “tens of thousands of [shopping bag ladies]” loose in the US, “ragged regiments of them,”

produced accidentally, and to no imaginable purpose, by the great engine of the economy. Another part of the machine was spitting out unrepentant murderers ten years old, and dope fiends and child batterers and many other bad things. (140)

Reasonable persons were “As sick about all these tragic by-products of the economy as they would have been about human slavery” (id).

Overall, as normal for V: committed, witty, smart. Most bizarre thing is that the novel has an index. The hell?

Recommended for irony collectors, fanatical monks in the service of war, persons baptized Roman Catholic but who aspire to indifference, and readers who are pure phlogiston.

Let's face it: this is a minor novel by Vonnegut.
Which means - mind you - that 'Jailbird' is still a good book.

There is a certain melancholic Shawshank Redemption-like feeling here and I've found the pages about Sacco & Vanzetti to be particularly touching and interesting. The weather sympathises.

A sentimental novel imbibed of heavyweight topics such as the Watergate, McCarthysm, civil rights, fight against the corporations and much more.

Any other novelist would have either made a mess out of this lot or took it too seriously (Philip Roth, I'm talking to you). Not so Kurt Vonnegut.

'Jailbird' may have hazy, even blurry outlines but its core is clear and straight. And it's this: disillusion.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 9th novel and he reverts to a more conventional style of novel last seen in his third,
Mother Night.

I had read Slaughter House Five as a late teen in say 1977 or 1978 and had devoured it; such was my Sci Fi bent of the time. This, Jailbird, was purchased on its release in 1979 probably based on my then thoughts that it may have had Sci Fi elements. I recall liking it in my youth, though now reading it into my older age I suspect I had no idea what it was about thematically. I have been surprised how much I recalled of this tale of Walter F Starbuch and his life and times, told as an autobiography. I must have reread it a few times back then.

Starbuck tells his story in a world-weary manner about his estrangement from his son, his trial for a minor part in Watergate through to a strange meeting with a past love that brings him to a position of power in a large corporation.
Thematically the human condition is still at the centre of Vonnegut's writing, greed and power come forth as does religion and labour relations. What I found interesting was his inclusion of a historical labour event in the US that leads to the judicial murder of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. I have realised that my overall knowledge of US history other than WW2 and a few other topical events such as Watergate is sparse. Vonnegut has led me, through the reading of his books, down a rabbit hole as he interweaves fact and fiction into his oeuvre. This is an occurrence that I did not particularly take note of on the way through but recognise now that I am into his later books. In Jailbird we come across RAMJAC Corporation that is interesting conceptually. RAMJAC is a comment on massive corporations that are an entity all to themselves in terms of control of individuals purchasing habits and economies. It takes small mishaps to bring about RAMJAC’s downfall. This beggars the question, how long can Amazon survive small mishaps?


Again one for the Vonnegut reader in my opinion and recommended as such.

My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...