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Jailbird
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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Jailbird
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Summary
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.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kevin foley
- 11-07-23
Kurt Vonnegut. Jailbird
Another masterpiece, touchingly brilliant, full of wonderful characters and riotous weaving plot lines . Listening to this was line wearing an old pair of comfortable slippers…..ah
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- daveo
- 14-11-24
Great classic Vonnegut
Great thinker, quirky style. The plot and prose does break down a bit in the final quarter. But like Dickens, Vonnegut can do that because of his characters, insight and humour. Yes I did just compare him to Dickens: you can feel their publishers' deadlines forcing them to hurry. So, it's all loose but written from the heart with flair and great empathy for humankind. It's particularly interesting to read Jailbird at this time, November 2024. The book analyses US political history (with a feather-light touch) in a way that seems clairvoyant, given recent elections. What would he say about the current situation I wonder. We need you back Kurt.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- oliver
- 03-07-21
Interesting perspective still relevant today
I love this author but had never found a copy of this story. It contains all the classic dark humour, metaphors and imagery I know and love. I can see how this title may have been slightly underwhelming at the time of publication in late 1970s, but it has aged like a fine wine into a snapshot of a time where the world was just between eras. It was so interesting to get a glimpse of a time when the world was starting to unravel into the current state it is now. If you think modern life is rubbish, highly recommended.
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4 people found this helpful