Jailbird

By: Kurt Vonnegut

Narrated by: Richard Ferrone

Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans, of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). In that sense, Starbuck is a generic Vonnegut protagonist, an individual compromised by the essential lack of an interior.

Jailbird (1979) uses the format of the memoir to retrospectively trace Starbuck's uneven, centerless, and purposeless odyssey in or out of the offices of power. He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend. Written in the aftermath of Watergate, Jailbird is, of course, an attempt to order those catastrophic events and to find some rationale or meaningful outcome, and, as is usually the case with Vonnegut's pyrotechnics, there is no easy answer, or perhaps there is no answer at all.

Starbuck (his name an Americanized version of his long, foreign birth name), in his profound ambiguity and ambivalence, may himself constitute an explanation for Watergate, a series of whose consequences have not, decades later, been fully assimilated or understood. The Nixon who passes across the panorama of Jailbird is no more or less ambiguous than Starbuck himself - a man without qualities whose overwhelming quality is one of imposition.

©1979 Kurt Vonnegut (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Einstein wrote God a note

I see a lot of reviews saying this is not the best Vonnegut. I don't know. I just know there are brilliant insights to the world, and not just in the time of writing, but still today. And little gems like "Asleep at the Switch" tucked away in the text. Great stuff.

Story

Read not for a story. Read, or as in my case, listen for KV's message. Thoughtful.

Another Kilgore Trout Classic

Another Kilgore Trout Classic

Vonnegut at his usual fantastic finest.

Richard Ferrone does an excellent job narrating.

Loved it!

His humor is so dry, and the narrator delivered this perfectly! Will definitely relisten to this one.

Vonnegut writes interesting stories

I don’t know where he gets his ideas and perspectives about the human condition, but he has a way of weaving the very fascinating tails.

Great intro, then slow, then good. It's Vonnegut.

It's Vonnegut. So it's worth it. The very long and personal intro is really great, especially the description of a short story that never came to fruition and in which Vonnegut tried to describe seeing his dad in Heaven. The narrator is solid without being awesome. The book takes you on a historical trip. Why is my overall rating greater than the sum of the performance and the story? It's Vonnegut.

Clear narrator with great voice performance

Very clear narrator voice that sounded much how I thought the main character should sound. It was a little bit slow for me so I sped it up to 1.15x speed. As for the story itself it's another Kurt Vonnegut classic, questioning our societal construct through a story with relatabe characters.

Excellent

Fantastic story! Loved the creative characterizations & in depth backgrounds of all the characters. Definitely some great quotes!

a fool and his self respect are soon parted

“I was making my mind as blank as possible, you see, since the past was so embarrassing and the future so terrifying.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

Sometimes, I'm not sure if we are running recklessly toward a Philip K Dick future or a Kurt Vonnegut future. Sometimes, it sure seems like a bit of both. Both authors like to play with ideas of fascism. I think part of the draw, for me, of these two authors right now is how they sensed (Vonnegut especially in this book) the absolute absurdity and reality of economic greed, political malfeasance, incompetence, power, and the inability of the huddled, socialist masses to make much of a damn bit of difference.

Part of Vonnegut's appeal is his everyman's view of things. He doesn't write his books from some ivory tower. His perch seems to be closer to a cranky uncle on a beat up couch, with cigarette burns in his pants, gravy on his shirt, and a wink in his eye.

This is the second book I've read after challenging, bribing my 15-year-old son to read some of my Vonnegut paperbacks. I'm now two books into my own Vonnegut revisit. Peace.

Even Boring Vonnegut is Masterful

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the greatest writers of the last two centuries. this, however, is not his best. Even still, better than most.