The book review is sponsored by the RAMJAC corportation.
Satire and social commentary is what Kurt Vonnegut knows how to do and does well. So it is to no one's surprise that Jailbird is filled with witty satire and social commentary that is so ever poignant.
Walter F. Starbuck, the narrator of this book, is a recently released man from a minimum security federal prison 35 miles outside of Atlanta Georgia. One of his guards is third cousins with Jimmy Carter, Bob Fender (the man behind the Kilgore Trout novels) is his fellow inmate, and every so often an American fighter jet takes off from the nearby base.
He is released with three hundred and some dollars, and no one to go to. His wife has died, his son wants nothing to do with him, and he has no job lined up. But, hey, at least he quit smoking.
Starbuck is a former government bureaucrat who went down with the Watergate ship. His job? Being some low level member of the Nixon administration stuck in a basement writing reports that are never read about the current state of America's youths.
His upbringing was in the rich mansion of one stuttering Clevelandite, Alexander Hamilton McCone. A man who played chess with Starbuck, taught him to embrace capitaism, and helped him to become a Harvard man.
Starbuck, however, became a card carrying member of the communist party and has great sympathies for the American laborer.
Que the themes of this novel.
Labor, fairness, forgiveness, communisim, McCarthyism, and love.
Vonnegut's satire is right on point in this novel and the themes in the novel carry on through the book and into present day America. We are currently seeing people fight for unions, what often appear to be monopolies, crazy people advocating for communism, and yet still we see grat forgiveness, and love.
7.0/10 Good book
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