'you can't just eat food,' he said. 'you've to talk about it, too. and you've got the talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.'
s.105

the walls of the little entrance hall were covered with blue ribbons from horse shows before the crash. 'i see you have won a lot of blue ribbons,' i said.
'no,' she said, 'it was the horses that won those.'
s.112

'beautiful is such a funny thing to be,' said sarah. 'somebody else is ugly, but i'm beautiful. walter says i'm beautiful. you say i'm beautiful. i say i'm beautiful. everybody says, "beautiful, beautiful, beautiful," and you start wondering what it is, and what's so wonderful about it.'
s.118

'i think everbody older just pretends to know what's going on, that it's all so serious and wonderful,' said sarah. 'older people haven't found out anything new that i don't know. maybe if people didn't get so serious when they got older, we wouldn't have a depression now.'
s.118

her nose was broken, which was where the blood had come from. there were worse things wrong with her. i can not name them. no inventory was ever taken of everything that was broken in mary kathleen.
s.214

'it's all right,' she said. 'you couldn't help it that you were born without a heart. at least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed - so you were a good man just the same.'
s.218

so i elected to complain about our levity. 'you know what is finally going to kill this planet?' i said.
'cholesterol!' said frank ubriaco.
'a total lack of seriousness,' i said. 'nobody gives a damn anymore about what's really going on, what's going to happen next, or how we ever got into such a mess in the first place.'
s.234

Lots of dark humour, political satire, melancholy, dark tales of forgotten and almost forgotten history, slapstick, coincidence, sadness, prescience (the mega corporation RAMJAC) and much more. Fun and depressing at the same time.

One of the central conceits of Jailbird is that the RAMJAC corporation seems to own everything, and it is owned by Mrs. Jack Graham, a reclusive woman whom few people have met in person and who gives orders by telephone, confirming them by mailing a letter to her subordinates signed by fingerprints from both hands. That’s weird, right?

Problem is, this is a Vonnegut novel, so it’s not nearly weird enough.

Walter F. Starbuck is a Harvard man, a minor public servant who does time in a white-collar prison for tangential involvement in Watergate. The story begins with Walter’s release; most of his earlier life is told as a series of flashbacks, with Walter meditating upon and foreshadowing various formative events. Having lived through much of the twentieth century, Walter is the world-weary proxy for the author, able to use his decades of experience in the public service to demonstrate how, no matter what happens, this is life. So it goes, eh? As the story goes on, Vonnegut introduces any number of improbably named supporting cast members, dipping into their lives to various degrees, and connecting them in ways both unlikely and realistically serendipitous.

In these respects, Jailbird is typical Vonnegut fare, and for the first half or so, I was quite enjoying it. Despite the setbacks dealt to him, Walter was remarkably mellow. He goes through his life almost as if he can’t believe anyone is bothering to interact with him. So many protagonists of stories are heroes: they are often the most important or become one of the most important people in the story’s setting. Vonnegut seems to have set out to demonstrate that it’s possible to tell a good story about someone who isn’t a hero, isn’t an antihero, isn’t anything. He’s just some guy, you know? He hasn’t made much of a big difference doing anything in his life. But he’s OK with that.

Somewhere towards the back half, though, I began to check out. The novel starts to take weird twists and the plot begins to spiral outwards at an accelerated pace rather than in the tight, constant coils of the earlier part of the book. I wasn’t sure what was going on—but in the head-scratching, unable to enjoy myself kind of way, as opposed to the usual Escher-like constructions Vonnegut springs upon the reader.

Some of this is a personal issue: I’m just not that interested in Watergate or its fallout. It’s difficult for me, as a child of this era, to relate to that particular part of the twentieth century. I feel strange saying that, because I have no problem enjoying the myriad stories set in World War II, which is surely a world much more different from mine than America during Watergate. But I studied World War II in school, and its presence in our culture far overshadows that of Watergate. Moreover, in today’s accelerated news cycle coupled with unprecedented access to information, it seems like a new scandal rears its head every second day. Keeping up with the illegal activities President of the United States and his advisers was exciting in the 1970s. Now it’s just another exhausting facet of your unpaid Internet labour.

Another disappointment peculiar to my tastes and preferences is the dearth of science fictional elements. That’s not an automatic failure—Bluebeard similarly lacks science fiction, and I still loved it. No, just my mood in general at the time was hoping for more zany and unforgettable pulp sci-fi on the order of n  The Sirens of Titann. Oh well.

I will say this: I like the subtle way in which Vonnegut critiques both capitalism and communism here. Whenever we discuss critiques of communism in fiction, Orwell always dominates. Don’t get me wrong, I love Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm as much as the next self-respecting English student, and Orwell’s corpus of anti-authoritarianist literature is amazing. Yet there is so much more to be said and so many other people saying it.

Latent in Jailbird seems to be the premise that World War II really fucked everything up in terms of capitalism versus communism in a way that few people anticipated. Though its cost in terms of lives was staggering and atrocious, it did jumpstart the economies of Europe and America, even as it triggered the long slide of Russian communism towards its eventual collapse. But the social changes that accompanied the absence of young men from the workforce and the general fatigue with fighting that followed the war really altered the way in which people thought about work and acquiring profit.

(Oh, and having the ability to destroy all life on the planet with a few bombs also changed things.)

Vonnegut is clever in the way he connects the Watergate-era politics of Walter’s career with Walter’s earlier efforts in post-war Germany. He illustrates how the decisions made following the war have influenced the rise of various corporate interests, a process that has continued towards a concerning climax in my time. The RAMJAC corporation lurks in the background of the first part of Jailbird: it keeps coming up, but no one ever discusses what it is or why it seems to own everything. (And I like at the end how Vonnegut reveals that it doesn’t actually own that much—perception can be far more powerful than fact.) That RAMJAC is more of a trojan horse than anything is fun, though I wish Vonnegut had played with the idea more instead of just stating it flat out towards the end.

I’m happy I read Jailbird, and I wouldn’t rule out revisiting it at some point in the future—I might like it better then! That being said, there are plenty of other Vonnegut novels to read, or ones I’d rather re-read first, so that won’t be a priority. It just lacks the volume of satire and humour I want from my Vonnegut, preferring instead elements of pure farce, which don’t satisfy me quite so much. Though still eminently Vonnegut in voice and style, it is not the an exemplar of his work.

n  n

First I have to say that Mr. Vonnegut is amazing, so I'm a bit biased. If you REALLY want to start reading all of Mr. Vonnegut's books (which you should want to do) please don't start with this book. But then again Jailbird is much more straightforward in its story line then some of his other books so it might be a bit more accessible. I like how Mr. Vonnegut's writing skips around and truly makes no sense until about half way through when it starts to slowly come together. Jailbird is not like that, but it kind of is. He drops some hints here and there about the ending (foreshadowing would you call it?), but you know they're hints if you've read any of his other works.

I will say that Jailbird does demonstrate Mr. Vonnegut's writing abilities. Jailbird kind of combines his skipping around style with a more straight line style (a la Player Piano). Yet through it all you can still hear Mr. Vonnegut's unique voice. So I would suggest Jailbird to anyone who has read a few other of Mr. Vonnegut's books, but not as your first.

I would give you a synopsis of what happens, but that would be entirely too hard to do for a book by Mr. Vonnegut and I would only end up telling you the whole story. So it goes.

Jailbird is a personal favorite of mine, which means that it ranks in the top 5 of Vonnegut's novels. Here we find Vonnegut at his most grounded and his most overtly political. These are, of course, relative terms for a writer as inventive and socially conscious as Kurt Vonnegut. He explores the absurdities of the American education system, socialism, corporate monopolies, class identification, and man's fundamental lack of compassion in the face of money or power.

In Jailbird, as in all of his finest fiction, Vonnegut is charming and witty. His tone is conversational without sounding banal. He is doing what he does best, spinning modern fairy tales of human frailty.

Another slick satire from Mr. Vonnegut. Here the focus lies with Watergate, Communism, trade unionisms, labor history and capitalism, through the eyes of narrator Walter F. Starbuck. And once again we have Vonnegut's much traveled character Kilgore Trout making an appearance. For those who are familiar with him, it might not come as a surprise he is in jail for treason. But this is all about Starbuck, who finds himself out of the can in 77, where he arrives in New York and falls pray to an all too powerful conglomerate - RAMJAC - that seems hell-bent on owning most of the planet. Flashing back over his life: brought on by the fact he keeps running into people from his past in one coincidence after another, the son of a millionaire's chauffeur and Harvard grad meets and falls in love with a young Irishwoman, and through radicalization joins the Communist Party. It's then off to join Roosevelt's New Deal before he quits the party on the occasion of the Nazi-Stalin pact. Whilst In Nazi Germany through the Second World War he meets and marries a death-camp survivor and has dealings at Nuremberg. On returning to Washington he betrays, by complete accident, a friend, and winds up grabbing the attention of Nixon, who, after years of joblessness for our man Starbuck, makes him his special adviser on youth affairs. Great! - he's got himself a decent job in government! . . . Big mistake of course. Hmm . . . where did that money come from hidden in his office, I wonder? Everything zips along nicely, but starts to fizzle out a bit in the last third, but there is no doubt in Walter F. Starbuck we have another fined crafted Vonnegut central character. Not as fun to read as Galápagos, nor as biting and memorable as God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (which I thought was great). 3.7/5

n  I could imagine Hitler, already experiencing maximum agony, periodically finding his head draped with my father's underpants.

Oh Lord, Walter, you think I haven't tried Mormons? I was up to my ears in Mormons one time!n (The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith)

I couldn't decide on the best representative quote from the novel, so I've gone with two above.

Jailbird is a most underrated novel with (at least) two true crimes at its heart: The Sacco and Vanzetti kangaroo court-ordered executions, which (successfully, more or less) covered up the extrajudicial assassination of Salsedo at the DOJ's hands. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with "dangerous radical activities" because they were calling for an investigation into Salsedo's killing and were found in possession of LEAFLETS. They were falsely accused of murder, then murdered themselves by the U.S. national state police apparatus by means of an electric chair.

LOA edition pagination:
pp. 194: Not even in prison is there anything special about Harvard men.

pp. 199: "What could be repulsive in the belief that each person could work as well as he or she was able and should be rewarded, sick or well, young or old, brave or frightened, talented or imbecile, according to his or her simple needs?"

pp. 285: [radio] as a prosthetic device for enthusiasm - artificial enthusiasm for the planet.

pp. 317: The policemen who will protect property rights but not your human rights--those are loaded dice!

Veľmi dobre sa číta ten Vonnegut. Tento určite.

I read a lot of Vonnegut and find I share a lot of his opinions. Did he plant them in me? Or did he simply articulate better the things I felt already?

"I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool." (58)

3 stars. This book has an important message but not a particularly memorable presentation, especially compared to Vonnegut's better-known works. He sets up flashforwards in a nifty, forceful and engaging way but there isn't as much razzle-dazzle as his novels that dabble more in science fictiony tropes. Like Mother Night it's a strictly earthbound human drama, tight and quick. Unlike Mother Night, it's a teensy bit mean.

I don't mind so much the Republicans who embrace greed and general douche-baggery.

But it's those Republicans who cloak themselves in smug, moral self-righteousness, the ones who invoke God and think somehow Jesus would be on board with their selfish hypocrisy, that really annoy me.

In the intro to Jailbird, Vonnegut refers to a letter he had recently received from a high-school reader who told Vonnegut he had read almost everything by him and wanted to share the single idea he found at the core of Vonnegut's life work: "Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail." And he's right; that's the message at the heart of everything Vonnegut has written, including his recently published Letters. This most human and humane of authors who was an atheist and whose books have been burned by these same smug, sanctimonious conservative nutjobs has a better handle than they do on the gospel of Christ which, ironically enough, shares the same message you'll find in those books that were burned.

In the intro as well, Vonnegut relates a lunch he had as a young man still in uniform, recently back in the U.S. after WWII. The lunch was at a restaurant in Indianapolis with his uncle and father and a labor organizer named Powers Hapgood, who had attended Harvard with Vonnegut's uncle, who was politically rather conservative. Vonnegut had told his uncle that he was interested in a labor union job and instead of discouraging him, his uncle had arranged the lunch with his Harvard classmate. Hapgood had a colorful history; he had been jailed many times for his union activities, had led pickets at the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, and in fact had just come to the restaurant after a morning of testifying in court about a labor case. The judge had asked him why a Harvard man like himself from a distinguished Indianapolis family had chosen to live the life he did. He told the judge, "Why? Because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir."

And I like that.

So I picked up Jailbird and just read it again, a book I first read maybe back in 1980 shortly after it was published, when I was the age of that fan who wrote Vonnegut the letter about the message at the core of his books. Having just finished Kurt Vonnegut's Letters, I remembered Jailbird as one of my least favorite Vonnegut books, and I wondered if maybe I had been too young to appreciate it at the time. I could barely remember Jailbird; I knew there was a bag lady and references to unions, but that was about it. Jailbird certainly hadn't become a part of my larger cultural consciousness, the way Cat's Cradle or SH-5 had. I had forgotten the title refers to the least significant of the Watergate conspirators, one Walter F. Starbuck, or that Kilgore Trout plays a minor role in this novel, too, as one of Starbuck's fellow prisoners in the minimum security facility in Georgia where Starbuck is being released after serving his sentence. I had forgotten that Roy Cohn even makes a cameo appearance. In fact, I had forgotten almost everything about this novel, except for the sense that I didn't really like it that much the first time, and so I'm glad I gave it a re-read.

I'm leaving my initial 3-star rating up there, although I'd be tempted to give the re-read 4 stars today. And I'm sure I enjoyed the book much more now than my 16-year-old self did, being older and wiser and more compassionate now that I'm almost 50, as well as a dues-paying member of a union. But it isn't as good as those earlier works by Vonnegut, and its message of treating others with kindness and civility probably comes across better in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Still, I'm a better person for re-reading it, and the recent anti-labor movements in places like Wisconsin and Michigan make Vonnegut's concerns in this novel all the more relevant today. And my copy of the novel has a photograph on the back of the dust jacket of Vonnegut sitting on the edge of a bed looking out the window and talking on the phone, wearing a stocking cap and smoking what I assume is a Pall Mall. On the window sill is a plate filled with smoked-out stubs. And I like that too.

Aunque probablemente "Pájaro de celda" no se antoja una de sus novelas más inspiradas, sigue observando las constantes que hacen bueno -y para mí impesindible- un libro de Kurt Vonnegut, a saber, finísimo dominio de la ironía, el sentido del humor y la autoparodia; así como personajes, de tan asbsurdos, profundamente humanos.

Como en tantas novelas de Vonnegut, "Pájaro de celda" versa sobre un perdedor tranquilo, un derrotado resignado, que asume su condición de nota al margen en el texto de la vida, mientras describe a su alrededor una extensa telaraña de otros tantos perdedores sin remisión como él, atrapados en el del circo "nonsense" que es la realidad para Vonnegut: un asurdo que fluye mansamente desde los días de nuestro nacieminto, hasta la muerte, y que sin embargo no tiene por qué significar el final.

Como muchas veces también en el autor norteamericano, aunque no la describa explícitamente, la sensación de que todos los destinos se interrelacionan de algún modo debido a que todos los hechos, habidos y por haber, "han sucedido" ya, y que por tanto, lo que en principio podría parecer una inverosímil y constante sucesión de casualidades, no es sino el despliegue de la trama del mismo Universo, en el que cada alma es una pequeña mota de polvo, cumpliendo su fútil pero a la vez predispuesto papel.

i really really like kurt vonnegut. very underrated book of his exploring labor rights & anti war ideology via his usual anticaptialist allegories w all their silly, sad, kind, weird, little, human families.