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Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories about Flying
Over the last century air travel has evolved from a high-risk experiment involving a few visionary pioneers to an efficient—and often irritating—means for distributing masses of people to the far reaches of the globe. During the hundred-year history of human air travel, it has yielded writing that is, by turns, heroic, dreamy, subversive, and utterly dire. This anthology traces this trajectory from the early letters and memoirs of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to the diaries of Amelia Earhart. Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s heroism gives way to the darkly magical storytelling of Roald Dahl, and the spare, elegiac prose of master stylist James Salter. More recent stories by Erica Jong, Mary Gaitskill, Thomas Beller, Mike Albo, Maxine Swann, and David Sedaris examine an array of contemporary subjects, from the addictiveness of mile-high sex, to etiquette for cramped seating and accounts of racial profiling post�9/11. Flight Patterns promises an entertaining refuge for frequent fliers, and a gateway to dreams for nighttime readers. These writings exude the primal fear and cool perspective that can only come from seeing the world—and one’s own life—from a great distance. Flight Patterns renders airplane travel a time capsule of modern life.
550 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 25, 2010
This is a great little collection of essays, sort of a compendium from the beginning of flying (it opens with the Wright flight) to now; I sort of read it on the go - it's worth the price if you'd like something sort of whimsical yet really touching, and great writing (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's contribution is beautiful) that won't demand more than a summer's commitment. I'm enjoying this book.
November 30, 2020
Some of the stories is quite good. Especially the more historic ones.
February 19, 2016
Meh. A compilation of short stories (a loose term) roughly linked by flying as a general topic. A mixture of fiction and non-fiction, which is irritating, not knowing which stories are which. Some stories are 4 pages, others over 40. Not great, overall.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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