Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Book Review
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is a 144-page novella published in this form by Scribner on October 21, 2014 as The Complete Edition, which restores a fourth part to the three-part story Macmillan first printed in 1970. It is a fable about a seagull who cares about flying rather than eating, and about the flock that throws him out for it. Kevin Trudeau's recommended reading list carries it, which is why it gets reviewed here. Read it if you want a short parable about refusing the limits a group hands you. Skip it if you want argument, evidence, or a method you can follow on Monday morning.
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This is fiction, and this review treats it as fiction first. The parable reading comes second.
Which Edition This Review Covers
Start here, because two different books share this title and most reviews never say which they read. The original, published by Macmillan in 1970, runs three parts with black and white photographs by Russell Munson. Most secondhand copies are that version.
The edition linked here is different. Wikipedia records that in 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition, adding a 17-page fourth part. The Scribner paperback is 144 pages, dated October 21, 2014, and its cover copy promises that fourth part plus closing words from the author. Buy the current edition and you get a different book from the one that sold through the 1970s.
Why the delay. Bach had the fourth part early and left it unpublished. On August 31, 2012 he crashed a light aircraft near Friday Harbor, Washington after the landing gear clipped power lines, and came out of it with a head injury, a broken shoulder and four months in hospital. He finished the fourth part during that recovery. Quoted by RTE in February 2014: "There's no blessing that can't be a disaster, and no disaster that can't be a blessing."
This review covers the four-part edition. If your copy stops with Jonathan vanishing into empty air, you have the 1970 text.
What Happens in Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Part One: The Outcast
Jonathan is a young gull who will not accept that flying is only a way to reach food. The other gulls squabble over scraps off fishing boats and never fly higher or faster than eating requires. Bach states the split in a line: "For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight."
Jonathan practices alone. He breaks his own records, stalls, falls, tries again, works out low-altitude passes and terminal-velocity dives. The Flock calls a council and casts him out, and the charge is not that he failed. The charge is that he pursued flying for its own sake. He is named Outcast and sent to the Far Cliffs, where the strange thing is that he is happier.
Part Two: Chiang and the Question of Limits
Two gulls arrive and take Jonathan to another level of existence, where every bird cares about flight the way he does. He is not the best there. He is a beginner again, training under a gull called Sullivan.
Then he meets Chiang, the elder, and the book's central idea arrives. Chiang teaches that speed as a number is beside the point, because numbers are limits: "Perfect speed, my son, is being there." Jonathan learns to move between places instantly, by understanding that his nature is not bound to one point in space or time.
Here the fable stops being about practice and starts being about metaphysics. Whether that trade is worth it is the question a reader answers alone.
Part Three: Fletcher and the Return
Jonathan goes back to the Flock that threw him out and finds another young outcast, Fletcher Lynd Seagull. He teaches Fletcher and a handful of other gulls, technique first: the students learn flying before they hear a word of philosophy.
Fletcher hits a cliff at speed, dies, and comes back. Jonathan tells him the line the book has been building toward, that each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Then Jonathan fades away and leaves the teaching to Fletcher, who now stands exactly where his teacher stood.
Part Four, and What It Changes
The fourth part jumps several hundred years. Jonathan's students are long gone and the teaching has hardened into ritual. The gulls hold ceremonies, quote Jonathan and treat his name as sacred, and almost none go flying for the sake of flying. The practice became a religion, and the religion replaced the practice.
Into that world comes a young gull named Anthony, who finds the apparatus hollow and cannot see what it is for. At the end of his patience, he meets a mysterious white seagull who shows him what the ceremonies were about.
This is the most interesting thing in the book, and the part most readers have never seen. Bach wrote a sequel that turns on his own audience. Millions had made Jonathan Livingston Seagull a totem, quoted it, printed it on posters, and changed almost nothing. Part Four is about that exact failure, and whether Bach intended the self-criticism or not, it lands.
It is also the weakest writing here. The first three parts move; Part Four explains. Seventeen pages is not room for the reversal it attempts.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull at a Glance
| Detail | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard Bach, born June 23, 1936 in Oak Park, Illinois, former Air Force and Air National Guard pilot |
| Form | Novella, a fable told in parts, illustrated with black and white photographs |
| Photographs | Russell Munson |
| First published | 1970, by Macmillan, in three parts |
| Edition linked here | Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition, Scribner, October 21, 2014, 144 pages, ISBN 9781476793313 |
| What the 2014 edition adds | A 17-page fourth part, plus closing words from the author |
| First printing | 3,000 copies |
| Advance paid | 2,000 dollars, championed at Macmillan by editor Eleanor Friede |
| Bestseller run | Entered the New York Times list on April 20, 1972 and stayed 37 weeks, according to Wikipedia |
| Rejections before publication | 18, according to Bach's official biography |
| Named characters | Jonathan, Sullivan, Chiang, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, and Anthony in Part Four |
| Film | 1973, directed by Hall Bartlett, soundtrack by Neil Diamond |
| Our rating | 3.5 out of 5 |
Author Richard Bach, and Where the Story Came From
Author Richard Bach was a pilot before he was a writer, and it shows on every page where a bird is in the air. Born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1936, he flew F-86s in the Air Force, went back on active duty flying F-84Fs in France in the early 1960s, and barnstormed after that. Nobody writes a stall that cleanly without having done it.
His account of how the story arrived is unusual, and he has told it consistently. In 1959, walking home, he heard a voice say the words "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." Nobody was there. He went to his desk and, in his telling, watched the story play out in front of him and wrote down what he saw. It stopped partway, and he left it in a drawer for eight years until the ending came the same way.
What came next is the part every rejected writer should know. Bach's official biography states the manuscript was turned down 18 times before Eleanor Friede took it at Macmillan, that the advance was 2,000 dollars, the first printing 3,000 copies, and that the book has now sold 44 million. It reached the New York Times list on April 20, 1972, carried by readers telling other readers.
Richard Bach's Other Books, and Why They Matter Here
Two later titles run on the same rails. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah appeared in 1977, and its sequel, Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student, in 2014. The pairing tells you what Richard Bach is interested in: the teacher, the reluctant student, and the moment one becomes the other.
Russell Munson's Photographs Are Part of the Book
The images are not decoration. Russell Munson shot the black and white pictures of gulls flying that run through the text, and they do work the prose does not have to. Bach writes one sentence about a wingtip because the facing page is showing the bird. Any edition that drops the photographs is a different book.
Common Criticisms of Jonathan Livingston Seagull
This novella has taken a beating from serious critics for fifty years, and an honest book review carries those objections rather than hiding them.
The banality charge
Roger Ebert, reviewing the 1973 film for the Chicago Sun-Times on November 8, wrote that it was "based, to begin with, on a book so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it." Bach was no fan of the film either: he sued Paramount before its release, and the court ordered his name removed from the screenplay credit with a card noting his disapproval.
Simple wisdom standing in for real wisdom
Heather Havrilesky reviewed The Complete Edition for Slate on March 3, 2014 under the headline "Freedom Is Good, Dude." She called Bach's message "spiritual gobbledygook," wrote that the book offers "reductive dichotomies in the place of real insights or wisdom," and judged Part Four "a logical extension of the author's original clumsy, overbroad message." Her sharpest point is the split Bach keeps drawing between birds who love hard work and birds who prefer excuses.
The birdwatchers were annoyed too
Bill Oddie objected on grounds nobody else raised. In Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book in 1980 he complained about the title's "offensive imprecision," since no half-serious birdwatcher would write about a bird called simply a seagull. A small point, and a real one: there is no such species.
Nothing in the story costs anything
The structural objection is this review's own. Jonathan practices and improves. Fletcher practices and improves. Fletcher dies and comes back. No gull works hard and simply fails, so the claim that limits are illusions is never tested against a bird for whom it does not hold.
The criticisms at a glance
| What the book offers | The objection | Who made it |
|---|---|---|
| A fable adults can read as philosophy | "So banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it" | Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, November 8, 1973 |
| A message about freedom and perfection | "Spiritual gobbledygook" and "reductive dichotomies in the place of real insights" | Heather Havrilesky, Slate, March 3, 2014 |
| Part Four as a completion of the story | "A logical extension of the author's original clumsy, overbroad message" | Heather Havrilesky, Slate, March 3, 2014 |
| A seagull as the central character | The title's "offensive imprecision"; there is no species called a seagull | Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, 1980 |
| The claim that limits are self-imposed | Never tested; no character works hard and still fails | This review |
| The 1973 film as an extension of the book | Bach sued Paramount and had his name taken off the screenplay credit | Richard Bach, before the film's release |
Book Review: Jonathan Livingston Seagull as a Parable, Not a Manual
Most of the disappointment around this novella comes from reading it as the wrong kind of book. It is not a how-to, it names no steps, and it will not tell you what to do in the morning. It is a parable, and parables leave the application to you. Four things hold up read that way.
- The flock punishes deviation, not failure. Jonathan is cast out at his best, not his worst. Anyone who has tried something unusual around people trying nothing will recognize it.
- Skill comes before meaning. Jonathan does thousands of hours of ugly practice before any mystical material arrives, and teaches Fletcher flying first.
- Teaching is the last stage, not a side project. The book ends with the student becoming the teacher, and treats that as the completion of the arc.
- The ritual outlives the practice. Part Four says a real teaching, left alone long enough, becomes a ceremony people perform instead of a thing people do.
Read it as a manual and you get a bird who wanted it enough. Read it as a parable and you get four observations about groups, practice and teaching that survive adult life.
Why Kevin Trudeau Points Readers Toward This Novella
Jonathan Livingston Seagull sits at number 24 on the recommended reading list published by the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club, which describes the list as coming directly from Kevin Trudeau.
The fit is not the mysticism. It is the flock. Trudeau's material returns constantly to the claim that most of what a person believes about their own ceiling was installed by the people around them, and that those beliefs run quietly against whatever the person says they want. He calls them counterintentions. Bach dramatizes the same idea without naming it: a Flock that has agreed flying is for eating, and one bird who did not sign.
Two other connections are worth naming. Jonathan is the reader Trudeau describes in the Teachability Index, willingness to learn multiplied by willingness to change. He is off the scale on both, which is why the story satisfies and does not instruct: nobody reads a book because they are already Jonathan. The teacher relationship in Parts Two and Three is structurally the story Trudeau tells about the Brotherhood he says taught him.
A novella cannot do what a method does. Bach shows a bird who broke the limits and does not tell you how, because that is not what fiction is for.
Where It Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private membership club, on his claim that the most useful knowledge about wealth and success was kept out of circulation. His own material, including Your Wish Is Your Command, the Training Balance Scale and the THETA state, is arranged as a sequence with steps.
The two do different jobs. The novella supplies the picture, a bird who refuses the ceiling. Trudeau's material claims to supply the mechanics. Reading only the picture is how people finish this book moved and change nothing, the failure Part Four describes.
For fiction that carries a method inside the story, The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne is the closer comparison. For the non-fiction version of Bach's claim about thought and limits, see As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
Who Should Read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you want something short and well made. It takes about an hour, the flying is superbly written, and Munson's photographs earn their place. Read it if you are doing something the people around you think is odd, because the Flock chapters will feel less like fiction than you expect. Read it with kids of ten and up: the language is simple, the questions are not.
Skip it if you want a method, because there is nothing to apply. Skip it if the Part Two shift into instant travel and other planes of existence will lose you, since the second half is built on it. And skip it if you have met this idea with more machinery attached.
One buying note. Some cheap reprints drop Munson's photographs, and used copies from the 1970s stop at three parts.
Our rating: 3.5 out of 5. Full marks for craft, brevity and the flying. Deductions for a philosophy that asserts rather than argues, for a story where nothing costs anything, and for a Part Four whose idea beats its execution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach worth reading?
Yes, as a parable and not as a manual. It takes about an hour, the flying sequences are the best writing Bach ever did, and the story of a flock punishing a bird for excellence is sharper than its reputation suggests. It is worth less if you want an argument, since the book asserts its philosophy rather than defending it.
What is Jonathan Livingston Seagull about?
A young gull who cares about flying rather than eating. The Flock casts him out for pursuing flight for its own sake. He trains alone, then moves to a higher level of existence where an elder named Chiang teaches him that limits are self-imposed. He returns to teach a young outcast, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, and hands the teaching on.
How many parts does Jonathan Livingston Seagull have?
That depends on your edition. The 1970 Macmillan original has three parts. The Complete Edition published by Scribner in 2014 adds a 17-page fourth part plus closing words from the author, and runs 144 pages. Check the cover before you buy, because most secondhand copies are the three-part text.
What is Part Four of Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
It is set several hundred years after the original story. Jonathan's teaching has hardened into ceremony, the birds quote him constantly and almost none of them fly for the sake of flying. A young gull named Anthony finds it hollow, and a mysterious white seagull shows him what the ritual was originally about.
Why was Part Four not published until 2014?
Bach had written it and left it unpublished for decades. He finished it while recovering from a plane crash near Friday Harbor, Washington on August 31, 2012, which left him with a head injury, a broken shoulder and four months in hospital. Quoted by RTE in 2014, he said no disaster cannot also be a blessing.
Is Jonathan Livingston Seagull a children's book?
No, although children can read it. The language is simple and the story is short, so it works well with readers of about ten and up. The material in Part Two, where Jonathan moves between places instantly and learns that his nature is not bound to one point in space or time, was written for adults.
What are the main criticisms of Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
Three recur. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times in November 1973 that the book was so banal it had to be sold to adults. Heather Havrilesky called the message spiritual gobbledygook in Slate in March 2014. Bill Oddie objected to the title's imprecision in 1980. A fourth is structural: no character works hard and still fails.
Why does Kevin Trudeau recommend Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
The book appears on the recommended reading list published by the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club. The fit is the Flock rather than the mysticism. Trudeau teaches that most limits a person accepts were installed by the people around them and then run against what that person says they want, which is the situation Bach dramatizes in Part One.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Book Review: The Short Version
A one-hour fable about a bird thrown out of his flock for taking flying seriously. Three parts in 1970, four in the Scribner Complete Edition of 2014, with Russell Munson's photographs doing half the work. The flying is superb, the metaphysics in Part Two will lose some readers, and nobody in the story tries and fails. Read it as a parable about groups, practice and teaching, not as instructions, and do not expect your parents' copy to have Part Four in it.