Journalist Shana Alexander considered the airplane “a bad place for an all-out sleep but a good place to begin rest and recovery…a decompression chamber between Here and There.” While I personally have no problem sleeping on planes (I’m usually out before takeoff), a good book has been known to help with decompression. “Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories About Flying,” edited by Dorothy Spears, is a deft new anthology of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that deserves a place in every carry-on.
“Flight Patterns” begins with visionary Orville Wright’s spirited essay “How I Learned to Fly” and ends with “Pilot, Co-Pilot, Writer,” Manuel Gonzales’s surreal short story of a hijacked plane stuck in a 20-year holding pattern. Between those pieces are 30+ selections that chart the chronological evolution of air travel. From Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh to Mary Gaitskill, Barry Hannah, and James Dickey, “Flight Patterns” covers flying from the perspective of pilot, passenger, and crew. Bill Broun’s “Heart Machine Time” (first published in Open City 11) is a brilliant glimpse into the life of a baggage handler; new work from Saïd Sayrafiezadeh offers a sardonic take on racial profiling in a post-9/11 world. With topics ranging from drug smuggling (Linda Yablonsky) to traveling with an 11-year-old (Joan Didion) to the Mile High Club (Jerry Stahl), Spears has achieved in “Flight Patterns” the ultimate goal, anthology-wise: it’s got something for everyone, whether Here, There or in-between.
See Open City for more information.
