Title:: [[Jailbird]] Authors:: [[Kurt Vonnegut]] Tags:: #fiction #vonnegut Read:: [[2022-10-24]] ## Editions - Edition:: Delacorte Press, 1979 - Original Copyright:: 1979 - Pages:: 241 ## Annotations On the first page of an uncharacteristically long preface, Vonnegut mentions a letter he received from a “law-abiding young high school student” named John Figler. Figler writes that he has read pretty much all of the author’s work and shares what he thinks is the single idea threaded through all of it: “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.” Vonnegut writes “this seems true to me—and complete,” and jokes about not having to have bothered writing any more books.  I looked up John Figler as I am wont to do, and discovered he passed away a few years back. Reading remembrances of him, it was nice to learn that the type of person, wise and curious, who would write Vonnegut as a teenager lived on without ever losing those traits.  I love that Vonnegut includes this and shares Figler’s name, proving his point to the future.  (The book is wonderful and funny, I recommend).