Word: jailbird
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...JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut Delacorte; 277 pages...
...inexplicable kink in the collective psyche: blind trust in science and scientists (Cat's Cradle); faith in war as a rational activity (Slaughterhouse-Five). After a lengthy period of mellowed-out serenity (and two mediocre novels, Breakfast of Champions and Slapstick), Vonnegut is mad again. His target in Jailbird is money, specifically the odd systems that people have invented for distributing and withholding...
...possible to say both words, with equal emphasis, about much of Vonnegut's fiction. Jailbird is no exception. Still, it is his best book in years and may prompt a new generation of college kids to adopt the author and the novel. That act will, at the very least, teach them one important fact: reading...
Imagine a Harvard grad ('35) and Washington bureaucrat named Walter Starbuck so scandalously long playing that he gets involved first in Hiss-Chambers and then three decades later in Watergate. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut did, turning the tale into Jailbird, his first book in three years, which will be published this fall. His next book may well take longer to write since Vonnegut, summering on Long Island, has taken to canoeing just as he did as a boy on an Indiana lake. "It is especially pleasant," he explains, resting on his literary oar, "not to paddle...
...turns out, then, that the city laws of Longhorn include an ordinance that provides a last-minute out for the condemned. If one of the Longhorn ladies can muster up enough courage to take a fellow like Henry Moone as her lawfully wedded husband, she can literally give the jailbird a new lease on life. "Ordinance wives" they call 'em in Longhorn, and much to the good fortune of one Henry Moone, he hears a fragile voice call out "I'll take him" as the black hood comes down over his head...