So it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors of all time. But he's also a writer whose style is so predictable that you almost can guarantee what's going to happen in many of his novels before you even begin. You'll have a sardonic narrator, who is either the main character speaking first-person or an omniscient narrator who's amused by it all, and a series of various incidents that don't necessarily mean an action-packed plot but which nonetheless give you a lot to think about. "Jailbird" is no exception to this rule, and while it's not what I would consider top-tier Vonnegut, it's not too shabby in its own right.

"Jailbird" is the story of Walter F. Starbuck, the least-well-known participant in the Watergate scandal. Just given freedom from prison after he was caught embezzling funds (which were planted in his office by others), the former "Special Assistant on Youth Affairs" for the Nixon administration is given his liberty to return to New York, where he encounters former friends and lost loves, and tries to make sense of the world that he's been set loose upon. He reflects on his past, on his deceased wife and distant son, and the whole sordid mess of what caused his downfall in the first place and what could lead to some measure of vindication, if it doesn't come off too dream-like for him to believe in his luck.

I feel like, years ago, I attempted to read this during my first flowering of Vonnegut fandom and was left unsure of what exactly was happening. I had a sense of deja vu at certain portions of the book, but I'd never bothered to finish it. It's true that sometimes the book finds you, and in this case, with way more years under my belt, I could appreciate the old-man miserableness of Walter and his befuddlement at the events he finds himself caught in. It's not a particularly funny novel, in terms of laugh-out-loud moments, but it does display some of Vonnegut's trademark wit and bitter truth-telling about how life really is. I think it'd compare well to another not-quite-great Vonnegut novel that I read years ago, "Deadeye Dick," in that neither book is a perfect example of the author's style and gift for prose, but they're pretty entertaining minor works in his canon.

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”



Jailbird has been called Kurt Vonnegut's Watergate novel. What it lacks in absurdity (at least compared to his other novels) is more than made up for by his biting sarcasm, cynical insights and dark humor. Our protagonist, William F. Starbuck, is a minor-level co-conspirator in Nixon's White House who is sent to a minimum security prison for two years. Interweaving political and labor history with fact and fiction, Vonnegut also turns Jailbird into a novel about the death of idealism.

After being released from jail, our protagonist, Starbuck, is 'reunited' with a former girlfriend, Mary Kathleen, who is now a bag lady. Though this is a minor part of the novel, I liked that she remembered Starbuck as good and full of potential. She finds validation in that belief when he tells her he has been incarcerated. As a jailbird, Starbuck's potential is largely gone as is any meaningful relationship with family or friends; however, Mary Kathleen has lost big chunks of her memory. She sees Starbuck as he would like to see himself.

Vonnegut's personality comes through in Jailbird. I prefer Vonnegut novels that veer toward the absurd. Still, Jailbird is an interesting and engaging read. 3.75 stars

If I selected one passage to tell what this book is abut I’d pick this: “I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out in some way. I am a fool.”

The author is famous for his biting satire (and cynicism?) and, as one reviewer says in the blurbs, “nothing is spared.” It’s loaded with political satire and black humor.

The back cover gives a summary that I will use so I don’t give away too much of the plot:

“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.”



Written in 1979 Vonnegut was prescient in predicting outfits like Amazon – just about every company mentioned in the book is owned by a super-huge world-wide corporation called RAMJAC or a subsidiary of RAMJAC.

The main character pines for his deceased wife and his son with whom he has no contact. He resents his son’s lack of connection to him and says he deserves a better son, but he also admits that his son deserved a better father. “Fair is fair.”

There are a lot of coincidences almost to the point of fantasy. This gives the novel one of its main themes “Small world.” (Like “So it goes” in Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five.)

There’s a lot about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Harvard men – the main character is one. He reflects on his radical days with union activism. He was a socialist/communist and even got questioned by Congressman Nixon of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In a “small world” scenario the main character ends up working as a minor advisor to Nixon in a sub-basement office in the White House. (He interacts with Nixon only once, as the butt of one of the President’s jokes.)

Some of his political reflections are still modern and could come today from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren “She was talking about rescuing the people of the United States from their economy…” He’s riding in a car where the driver has a kiddie steering wheel attached to the passenger side. “He [the driver] said that the President of the United States ought to be give a wheel like that at his inauguration, to remind him and everybody else that all he could do was pretend to steer.”

We also get mini-history lessons about Sacco and Vanzetti and union advocate Powers Hapsgood upon whom Vonnegut’s character Kenneth Whistler is modeled (as he tells us). It’s also a realistic portrayal of the difficulties faced by people trying to get their life back together after release from jail.



I enjoyed the book. It’s fast paced and, like other Vonnegut’s works, filled with black humor, satire and sarcasm.

Top photo Nixon examining microfilm on the on the HUA Committee from moma.org/media
The author (1922-2007) with his wife and children, 1955 from wikimedia.org

Premessa: non penso di averlo capito bene questo libro. Un apologo delle debolezze umane, sulla ineluttabilita' del fare del male e subirlo, quasi sempre aldila' delle intenzioni e allo stesso tempo una riflessione sul fatto che il bene sia quasi sempre a portata di mano ancorche' non lo si voglia perseguire. Ironico, malinconico e paradossale oltre che confusionario.

This is, if not the best Vonnegut I have read, at least in the top two. The many disparate plot lines and events that Vonnegut ties together seem a natural fit under his great skills.
Once again Vonnegut gives us a hapless protagonist who lets the waves of life wash over him, rarely taking the time to notice or care all that much. "Jailbird" is written as an autobiography of its central character Walter F. Starbuck. Walter's life has always been a life of the moment, and his very values and core beliefs are built upon sand, and shift accordingly. Starbuck is a massively empathetic person, but unfortunately he has learned such empathy only at the end of his life, and after numerous disappointments. Vonnegut seems to be asking why this is the way so many of us choose to learn empathy.
Vonnegut also seems to be satirizing himself, and almost everyone else, when he gives Starbuck socialistic tendencies and acquaintances. Yet, nothing ever comes of these ideals. One reason I have always admired Vonnegut is that although his political beliefs are very leftist, he also has the honesty to admit that they will never work, as long as humans are the ones who try and implement them. The characters in this text are for the most part very decent people. It is the world and society we live in that keep them from soaring. Yet some of them are still able to perform the most decent acts of small kindness.
The major strength of this book is that it is more narrative in style than many of Vonnegut's other works, and the storyline comes together in a very nice falling action that brings all the separate entities of its main character's life together in a very satisfying and clever way.

This is one of my favorite Vonnegut books, perhaps because its narrator, Walter F. Starbuck, penned it in Nineteen Seventy-seven, my freshman year in college. As he says at the outset, years are characters as much as humans in this book, and as a fallen Watergate figure who develops a late-life conscience, he seems an appropriate representative of the Nineteen Seventies to me. It’s of course an absurd story filled with the kind of fantasy, foible and wry humor that is so often at the heart of Vonnegut’s work. But it’s also an entertaining commentary on capitalism, socialism, and social awareness, and the unequal application of justice. And it’s a whopper of a name dropper, so much so that it includes an index to every reference from Adam and Eve to Mussolini and Mick Jagger. And the central cast of Watergate, of course, because Starbuck himself is a Watergate jailbird, a circumstance on which all the rest of the story depends. It all worked for me.

Maybe this really deserves four stars, I just can't tell anymore. For me, Of Human Bondage set the bar so high it's now unreachable and most likely all the ratings I've given since have suffered accordingly.

What did I learn from this book?
Apparently that whole Sacco and Vanzetti thing was as important as that graphic novel I read about the wobblies said, it must have been because Vonnegut constantly references it throughout the book, according to the index at least a dozen times. Who puts an index in a fictional novel?

Anyways just your typical Vonnegut dark humor, fun but still far more insightful than most people often give him credit for.

On a related note:
While reading a previous Vonnegut novel, my coworker picked it up and reading the back-cover where it describes the author as "known for his black humor" he says to me: "I didn't know Kurt Vonnegut was black."

I could never choose a favorite Vonnegut book, but when he died recently it was Jailbird I picked up to reread and feel his humanism and his compassion for all of flawed mankind. To me the underlying theme of Vonnegut's work is the importance of fundamental kindness. Even when Vonnegut it as his most negative about a situation, his conviction that compassion and generosity would be enough to fix whatever problem he's dwelling on shines through. His disappointment that this approach is all too seldom used is the root of his cynicism but it is never disheartening to read because of that glimpse of childlike hope that we really could learn to be kind to one another.

Was waffling between 3 and 4 stars on this, but being a big fan of Vonnegut I went 4. The reason I hesitated is that this did not quite contain that whimsical Vonnegut-ness I am used to. This book was a little more straight forward and written as if it were a memoir penned by the main character. I think if I hadn't read so many of his other works and wasn't influenced by that, this would have been 4 or 5 stars. That said, like most of his works, definitely worth the read.

Known as his “Watergate novel,” this touches on the labor movement, power, and politics, all draped in dark humor, of course. It’s told from bureaucrat Walter Starbuck’s POV in the days following his release from prison for his wee involvement in the Watergate scandal. This isn’t Vonnegut at his best, but still enjoyable. I’m always thrilled for a Kilgore Trout cameo, though he is slightly different in this account.

While not my favorite vonnegut, enjoyable nonetheless. I just love how his ability to weaves together so many different themes into one wacky lil narrative. In this case, watergate, communism, ills of American economic system, monopolies, harvard.

Fantastic. The realization that started with Galápagos gets shored up here: I sometimes think Kurt Vonnegut is the only one of us who can do the true history of us any justice.