Everyone's suddenly afraid of flying! Airworld will shed some perspective
Written: Oct 21 '01
Product Rating:
Pros: Sharp observations and a truly original protaganist
Cons: If only it had been a novella instead...
The Bottom Line: A witty and energetic book that examines travel culture and the inner need for our lives to happen in record time. A great start gives way to a limp ending.
omar107's Full Review: Walter Kirn - Up in the Air
Walter Kirn has created a book that has a brilliant, and I mean absolutely brilliant, concept. Ryan Bingham travels a lot. He gave up his home a long time ago and became a permanent resident of the airports he frequents; a place he calls Airworld. Ryan has been living in this world for years, moving from business trip to business trip to occasional personal rendezvous. And now, Ryan is just a hectic five-day itinerary away from reaching a million frequent flyer miles. At that auspicious point in time, Ryan plans to give up this hectic lifestyle and quit his demanding job. He's considering working on a farm or something. The book begins at the start of that week.
You gotta admit, that's a great premise. You're hooked in, aren't you? So was I when I read all the reviews praising this novel to death. They all gushed about how right on the observations about airplane etiquette and travel lifestyle were. They marveled at the interweaving levels of Walter Kirn's protagonist. What they forgot to mention was that this book just doesn't live up to its opening premise. At least not as well as it should.
With a starting chapter that good, I expected something of a much higher quality than the proceeding 250 pages. What I got instead was wonderful, sharp observations, snappy dialogue, and a disconnected story that some would call thought-provoking, but I simply call pretentious.
I'm a writer myself, so as this funny and truly exhilarating book reached its last fifty pages, I imagined the author hunched over his computer, clueless as what should happen next. "I've built it up too much," he probably thought to himself. So instead, he just wrote without thinking, praying that everything would work out cleverly and with meaning. In the end, the novel passes over scenes that the reader had been waiting breathlessly for, and turns them into lifeless acts. If you had blinked, or had stopped paying attention, you might have missed them. Then, when you go back to reread them, you realize you really didn't miss much of anything at all.
Up in the Air is a funny and at times absurdly entertaining novel. The prose during most of the book is written with such energy it'll get your heart racing. Unfortunately, it floods its gas tank too early.
This would have been an amazing novella! Instead, its a disjointed, yet still pleasurable novel. And for those wary of flying in the near future, its a lovely reminder that in Airworld, there may always be a potential danger..but then again, that's true of all worlds.
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