Aviation and Space Travel

[Patrick Murtha]

These are subjects I really enjoy reading about.

Ed Cobleigh, The Pilot: Fighter Planes and Paris (see post below)

David C. Cooke, Who Really Invented the Airplane? (see post below)

Joseph J. Corn, The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation (excellent cultural study)

Peter Demetz, The Air Show at Brescia, 1909 (fine micro-history)

Craig Nelson, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon (terrific account)

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight (classic)

Andrew Smith, Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth (see post below)

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Ed Cobleigh’s The Pilot: Fighter Planes and Paris is an interestingly structured novel with both popular and literary elements, that reveals how the cocky fighter pilot type thinks of himself (admiringly, no surprise there). In a series of chapters that take place both in the present and over the past hundred years, the archetypal Pilot has many aviation and erotic adventures. The women only exist in relation to the guy, which could be considered a deficit (but represents his p.o.v. honestly). Of greater fascination is the influence of magical realism, since the Pilot seems to have a continuous personality and perceptions even though he stays the same age throughout the century. This novel could make a terrific film, but would need a pretty big budget.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

David C. Cooke, Who Really Invented the Airplane? - I got interested in early aviation as a kid when I read this book - still an excellent introduction - from my local public library, circa 1968.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

It has become all too common for non-fiction narratives to be written in the form of the author's "quest for the story" (and, coincidentally, for him/herself). Probably the whole format ought to be banished for anything but extremely occasional use; but I have to admit that Andrew Smith's Moondust offers an instance where it really works, because some of the surviving moonwalkers were quite hard for Smith to snare, and their elusiveness is actually central rather than incidental. (Where have you gone, Neil Armstrong?) The quest for the story here is fascinating, step by step, and the material that comes out of it is enthralling. A book justifies its structure by delivering the goods, and Moondust does just that.