Jailbird: A Novel (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"He is our strongest writer . . . the most  stubbornly imaginative." -- John Irving,  author of The Cider House Rules.

"A gem. . .  a mature, imaginative novel-possibly the best he  has written. . . Jailbird is a  guided tour de force of America. Take it!"  -- Playboy


From the Paperback edition. -- Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"He is our strongest writer . . . the most  stubbornly imaginative." -- John Irving,  author of The Cider House Rules.

"A gem. . .  a mature, imaginative novel-possibly the best he  has written. . . Jailbird is a  guided tour de force of America. Take it!"  -- Playboy


From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback (January 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385333900
• ISBN-13: 978-0385333900
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,739 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars poignant portrait of fallen bureaucrat, April 2, 1999

By	moroe([e-mail]) (America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jailbird (Mass Market Paperback)

Definitely the best of Vonnegut's novels that I've read, Jailbird is the story of Walter F. Starbuck, the smallest co-conspirator in the Watergate scandal. Having made his loyalties the best as he could, Walter finds himself in prison for withholding evidence against Nixon, even though he really had no true connection to him or respect from his fellow conspriators. After prison, Walter falls once again, committing a crime that mirrors his Watergate involvement in quite a few ways, and he goes to jail for the second time.

Vonnegut's ingenious humor is present always in the book, and his prose is bedazzlingly perfect for the subject. Even though the novel may seem sentimental at times, that seems to be Vonnegut's purpose: his character is a sentimental man and bureaucrat. Readers should note that Vonnegut also uses some symbolism to perfect effect, making the book subtler than most Vonnegut novels. All these elements are Vonnegut at his best; he recreates, hilariously and perfectly, the political world of modern times.

Throughout the story, Jailbird provides a pitiful hero, knocked down over and over again by his own fault in the bureaucratic world he has chosen for his home. It seems not so much the facelessness of the bureacratic system that destroys Walter(a theme visited over and over again in too many books, movies, etc.) as his own attempts to try and become part of that system and his emotional view of this world as a place where people are always considerate; his own desire to be a successful, protected, and respected man is the thing that makes him loyal and willing for all the wrong reasons and to the wrong people. In the end, Walter F. Starbuck is a victim of himself, a "jailbird."

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The conscientious civil servant, August 21, 2004

By	A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Walter F. Starbuck, the lovably pathetic hero of Kurt Vonnegut's "Jailbird," makes a potentially fascinating subject for a novel: son of immigrant servants of an eccentric wealthy man, Harvard graduate, ex-communist, well-meaning bureaucrat, squealer to the House Un-American Activities Committee, President Nixon's special advisor on youth affairs, and most recently a record company executive. Oh, and for two years following his service with Nixon he was a distinguished guest of the federal prison system for his circumstantial involvement in the Watergate scandal.

The novel is constructed almost like an autobiography in which Starbuck looks back on the vicissitudes of his life with fatalistic humor. The day that is clearest in his memory is the day he is released from his minimum-security incarceration and flies to New York to resume whatever remains of his life, and this day becomes quite momentous for him as he bumps into some old acquaintances who will change his fortunes possibly for the better.

Starbuck is a compassionate but unemotional observer of the consequences of war on both sides of the Atlantic. His wife Ruth was a Holocaust survivor whom he had saved from poverty when he met her in Nuremberg just after World War II, and his job in Nixon's administration as a youth culture watchdog was a response to the notorious gunning down of four student protesters at Kent State. Corporate encroachment on private enterprise is another theme, as Starbuck finds that the mysterious RAMJAC Corporation is acquiring everything from McDonald's to the New York Times.

"Jailbird" is not at all, as some might expect, a lampoon of Nixon's presidency, but a very general satire of the effects of governmental failure and mass corporatization on American society by the end of the transitional 1970s. This is a comical portrait of a well-educated but wishy-washy man who wanted to be a civil servant because he "believed that there could be no higher calling in a democracy than to a lifetime in government," became a communist pitying the downtrodden workers symbolized by the martyred Sacco and Vanzetti, joined a Republican administration, and eventually moved up to big business. Only in America, as they say.

Vonnegut's humor consists primarily of springing non sequiturs that shock by the nature of their contrast but whose significance becomes apparent later in the story; these can be very funny and clever at times, but after a while one longs for the subtlety of Evelyn Waugh or the erudition of Thomas Pynchon, both of which Vonnegut forgoes in his reckless attempts at meaningful absurdity. Still, "Jailbird" lacks nothing for which Vonnegut is famous; but what it does lack could have made it more than just another Vonnegut novel.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reading Jailbird is not a bad sentence, February 2, 2006

By	Beth S. (Butte, MT) - See all my reviews

Vonnegut writes another book with a slightly offbeat structure to it. Yes, Jailbird is a book that jumps from the present to the past and then to the future without a definite pattern that reminded me of a slightly demented stream of consciousness. Even with these random jumps between events I still thoroughly enjoyed the book. In fact, the random jumps were part of the reason I enjoyed the novel so much because at the end of the story all of the stories finally came together.

Obviously I had a few other reasons that made me give this book a rating of four stars. One of the major themes I located in Jailbird caught my interest. This theme is that when people act for themselves, ignoring money and other influences, they will be happier with the way their lives turn out. This theme was illustrated in the protagonist Walter Starbuck, who is both controlled and independent in different parts of the story.

This book immediately caught my attention because of the style in which it's written. Even though the story is written in first person it contains a disconnected tone to the whole story. Whenever major events in Walter Starbuck's life are described the description doesn't portray them as being as important as they should be. It reminded me a great deal of Slaughter House Five's "so it goes" comment whenever someone would die.

This is an interesting book for a multitude of different reasons. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is a fan of Vonnegut's offbeat writing style. Even though this story is nothing like the books I normally read for enjoyment, it was definitely worth my time.