The Aerodrome: A Love Story [Paperback]

Rex Warner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1993

First published in 1941, The Aerodrome is one of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy—and to transmute their deadly opposition into terms of enduring art. Mr. Warner brilliantly invents, on one side, a thoroughly degenerate Village representing fallen man, and on the other side a great Aerodrome dedicated to ruthless efficiency. The ideological struggle between the idealistic Air Vice-Marshal and the hero-narrator from the Village is portrayed with poetry, narrative speed, and great simplicity of language. It is a great symbolic novel of our time. "The value of The Aerodrome as literature becomes increasingly apparent at each rereading ... an intensely original work."—Anthony Burgess. "A moral dialogue thrown into narrative form. It is humanity versus power, sprawling fife versus death-dealing regimentation.... A parable worth reading."—New York Times. "The beauty of his prose, unsurpassed by any living English writer, has nothing to do with `fine writing' but springs from a sound moral core and from an intelligence with the keenest edge."—C. Day Lewis.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Eight years older than 1984 , its claim to be regarded as a modern classic is as sound as that of Orwell's novel," writes Anthony Burgess in his introduction to this edition of The Aerodrome . Written as an allegory on fascism, the 1941 novel tells of the ruination of a rural village by the building of an aerodrome in its vicinity. Large fiction collections should consider it.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The beauty of his prose, unsurpassed by any living English writer, has nothing to do with fine writing but springs from a sound moral core and from an intelligence with the keenest edge. (C. Day Lewis )

The value of The Aerodrome as literature becomes increasingly apparent at each rereading...an intensely original work. (Anthony Burgess )

A moral dialogue thrown into narrative form...humanity versus power, sprawling life versus death-dealing regimentation. (New York Times )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (September 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566630258
• ISBN-13: 978-1566630252
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #840,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ranks with Orwell & Koestler, June 7, 2001

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Aerodrome: A Love Story (Paperback)

Much as I hate to admit it now, I'd never heard of this book nor of Rex Warner until stumbling upon a list Anthony Burgess did for the New York Times Book Review of his Top 99 Modern Novels. The copy of the book I have just happens to include a forward by Burgess, so it seems safe to say that he did his part to maintain the reputation and readership of this fine book. And it was heartening to see that it is still in print. Heartening because this is a novel that deserves to be read and should have made many more "Best of" lists.

One strange deficiency in the literature of the 20th Century is the relative paucity of novels about fascism, its attractions and its awful consequences for those who believed. Sure, there are plenty of books about the Holocaust, but almost all are written from the victims' perspective. But while we have a rich literature depicting the mindset of Communists (Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, etc.), there aren't many similar books describing how someone, a young idealist perhaps, might have been drawn to fascism, even Nazism, but then been disillusioned, or even eaten by the revolution they helped to foment.

In at least this regard, Rex Warner's Aerodrome may well be the best novel ever written about fascism. The book is a pretty simple allegory--which though the critics I was able to find say was influenced mainly by Kafka, seemed to me to owe much more to Orwell's Coming Up for Air. The narrator, Roy, has grown up in The Village, a bucolic country town with more than its share of drunkenness, adultery, and incest. Bordering on the Village is the Aerodrome, clean, orderly, modern, technological, it represents everything that the Village is not.

Amidst a burgeoning mystery over who his real parents are, Roy joins the Air Force, drawn by its orderliness, attempting to please his girlfriend, and deeply impressed by the rigid but charismatic Air Vice-Marshal. The Vice-Marshal is determined to expand the Aerodrome and bring the Village under his control, remaking it in the same sterile image as the Aerodrome.

Roy meanwhile comes to realize that for all the disorder and human frailty on display in his home town, it is at least alive with possibilities :

I began to see that this life, in spite of its drunkenness and its inefficiency, was wider and deeper than the activity in which we were constricted by the iron compulsion of the Air Vice-Marshal's ambition. It was a life whose very vagueness concealed a wealth of opportunity, whose uncertainty called for adventure, whose aspects were innumerable and varied as the changes of light and colour throughout the year. It was a life whose unwieldiness was the consequence of its immensity. No skill could precisely calculate the effects of any action, and all action was dangerous.

There, in a nutshell, is the human dilemma : on the one hand we long for a world that would be safe and predictable and would yield to calculation, but, on the other, such calculations are beyond our meager mortal powers, so that whenever folks seek to impose order, they succeed merely in eliminating freedom and stifling progress. The appeal of fascism--or communism, or Nazism, or all the other -isms--is precisely that it holds out the promise of having finally invented the human calculus which will provide security, without any of the nasty side effects. That this appeal has always proven false does not seem to dampen the human need for, nor the responsiveness to, such promises.

Perhaps the best aspect of this novel is its timelessness. Though it is clearly a comment upon the 1930s and 40s, the Village, with its verdant fields, its convoluted genealogies, its interfamilial murders, and lurking just across the way the orderly utopia of the Aerodrome, suggests Man after the Fall as much as it does Britain just before WWII. The themes that Warner is dealing with are eternal. That he manages to present them in such a natural and readable way makes the book one that everyone should read.

GRADE : A+

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heaven and hell, June 3, 2003

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Wavertree "phumphreys" (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Aerodrome: A Love Story (Paperback)

Having read so much 20th. Century literature in English, I was amazed and embarrased not to have come across this important book before now. This is doubly so having read Orwell since my teenage years, yet I believe this book is far clearer in its critique of state facism than 1984. The leisurely pace and clear prose, set in the beautiful English countryside is deceptive. The story builds up to a threatening climax. It is a story of authoritarianism and love, of clear and singular vision and muddled human reality. A real must to read. Primo Levi would understood this book all too well.