"Jailbird" by the late Kurt Vonnegut

I don't have it in me today to post about politics, which it seems this blog has been primarily concerned with so far other than yesterday's bit about television.

So, as promised, I will be trying to review Kurt Vonnegut's "Jailbird."

Published in 1979, "Jailbird" is about a man you've never heard of who was stung by the Watergate scandal. Walter Starbuck's life seems, in most respects, to be a giant joke with a punchline of prison. Not very funny but then again books about economics rarely are.

If you think you didn't read that last sentence correctly, then I invite you to try again. But rest assured that this book is, in a manner of speaking about economics. It's basic philosophy is one of waxings and wanings that are ridden like surfers on waves by people participating in the system.

The main character is, by the end of his stay in prison, ready to be pushed around by the waves rather than swim against them. This lethargic floating leads him on a journey that takes only two days in reality but seems like much more as the years the old man has lived float by almost as if they were seperate protagonists themselves.

The oddity of the years, or so the author tells us, is that they really are like people. Each distinct with it's own markings and features, each belonging to groupings of other years. To this end, thoughout the novel years are written out and capitalized rather than being presented in numerals.

Vonnegut plays literary jokes like this all the time, another with numbers can be found in "Hocus Pocus" (1990) regarding how many people Eugene Debs Hartke has killed, which is incidentally equal to the number of women he's had sex with.

Yet another joke of Vonnegut's makes some play in the book, the appearance of pulp sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut himself thought that this work was one of his best, giving it an A when he self-rated it in chapter 18 of "Palm Sunday" The only books to score higher than A are Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five which got A+s.

I feel less generous. I don't think that Jailbird deserves ranking equal to other Vonnegut works. It is a solid work, but nowhere near as engrossing as "Mother Night" which also got an A from Kurt.


While I am regretful to denegrate any work from a master like Vonneguy, the lack of focus in the novel was too great to entirely overcome. It jumps around from economic matters to love, to war and betrayal.

For this reason Jailbird receives a B+ from me.