Dear American Airlines: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jonathan Miles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2008

Sometimes the planes don't fly on time.

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter's wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O'Hare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. A man both sinned against and sinning, Bennie writes in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heart-on-sleeve emotion, and wide-ranging erudition, underlined by a consistent groundnote of regret for the actions of a lifetime -- and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right.

A margarita blend of outrage, wicked humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term "airport novel" and announces the emergence of major new talent in American fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Elizabeth Gilbert on Dear American Airlines
Elizabeth Gilbert's first three books, Pilgrims, Stern Men, and the National Book Award nominee The Last American Man, received awards and acclaim, but her fourth, Eat, Pray, Love, a chronicle of her spiritual search and redemption following a difficult divorce, has put her on the bedside tables of millions of readers across the world. Her next book, Weddings and Evictions, a memoir about her unexpected journey into second marriage, will be published in 2009.

I'm one of those readers who can't get enough of Martin Amis novels, since Amis--a savage misanthrope who sometimes writes, it seems, with a drill bit--is a guilty pleasure of mine from way back. So it's no wonder that I fell so hard for the bitter, hilarious, dark, twisted, and wonderfully written delights of Dear American Airlines--the most Amis-like novel I've ever read. Jonathan Miles is a first-time novelist (and--full disclosure--friend of mine) whose journalism I've long admired for its clear, humane prose. I never suspected that he had a book like this in him, and--frankly--now that I do know, I'm a little worried for his mental state (even as I'm totally impressed with his writing.)

The novel relays the tale of Bennie Ford, a man who is marinating like a cocktail olive in the sour middle-aged juices of his own mistakes, but who has decided to redeem himself completely by attending the wedding of his estranged daughter. Now, as some of us have learned from painful personal experience, it's not always easy to redeem a lifetime of screw-ups in one weekend, but that doesn't deter Bennie from heading to the airport to fly off to what he has decided is the most important event in his life. (The fact that he doesn't seem to notice that the wedding should actually be the most important event in his DAUGHTER'S life, not his, is an early clue of his particular breed of hilarious narcissism.) But at the airport is where his troubles begin, as American Airlines cancels his flight and thus--as far as he is concerned--destroys his life. What follows is a complaint letter raised to the level of high narrative art. I have never before encountered a novel written in the form of a complaint letter, and we can safely assume there will never be another such after this one, just because Miles has created an inimitable story here--one which, despite all the dark wit of its narrator--leaves room in the sad margins for real heartbreak, real feeling, real life. (This is something Amis himself wasn't able to do until many years into his career.) This is the most entertaining first novel I've read in a long while, as well as a searing cautionary tale. Bring it to the airport with you next time you fly somewhere to change your life...

From Publishers Weekly

This crisp yowl of a first novel from Miles, who covers books for Men's Journal and cocktails for the New York Times, finds despairing yet effusive litterateur Benjamin Ford midair in midlife crisis. Bennie is en route from New York, where he shares a cramped apartment with his stroke-disabled mother and her caretaker, to L.A., where he will attend his daughter Stella's wedding. He gets stranded at O'Hare when his connecting flight—along with all others—is unaccountably canceled. In the long, empty hours amid a marooned crowd, Bennie's demand for a refund quickly becomes a scathing yet oddly joyful reflection on his difficult life, and on the Polish novel he is translating. Bennie writes lightly of his dark years of drinking, of his failed marriages, about his mother's descent into suicidal madness and about her marriage to Bennie's father, a survivor of a Nazi labor camp. Bennie's father recited Polish poetry for solace during Bennie's childhood, inadvertently setting Bennie's life course; Bennie's command of language as he describes his fellow strandees and his riotous embrace of his own feelings will have readers rooting for him. By the time flights resume, Miles has masterfully taken Bennie from grim resignation to the dazzling exhilaration of the possible. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co; 1 edition (June 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547054017
• ISBN-13: 978-0547054018
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #812,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JONATHAN MILES is the author of Dear American Airlines, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Amazon.com. It was also a finalist for the QPB New Voices Award, the Borders Original Voices Award, and the Great Lakes Book Award, and has been translated into five languages.

He is a former columnist for the New York Times, and his journalism, essays, and literary criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, GQ, Details, Men's Journal, the New York Observer, Field & Stream, Outside, Garden & Gun, Food & Wine, and many other magazines. His work has been included numerous times in the annual Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime writing anthologies.

A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives in New York. For more information, visit his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jonathan-Miles/10150135297610099.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars When a flight is cancelled, let your imagination fly June 3, 2008

By Yesh Prabhu, author of The Beech Tree VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Benjamin Ford, the protagonist of this novel, is flying from New York to Los Angeles to attend his daughter Stella's wedding. But in transit, at the O'Hare airport, his connecting flight is suddenly cancelled, stranding him. He begins to worry that he will be late for the wedding. While waiting for more than eight hours at the air port - and smoking seventeen cigarettes - for the next flight, he starts writing a letter of complaint to the American Airlines, demanding a refund of $392.68, the price of the round trip airfare. This letter of complaint grows in length, and matures into a funny, witty, mesmerizing novel.

Benjamin, middle-aged, is a poet and writer; he translates Polish novels into English. While writing the letter of complaint, he ponders about his failed marriages, his misdirected and ruined life, the time he wasted drinking heavily, his estranged daughter, his bed-ridden mother and the cramped apartment he shares with her. He also dwells on Walenty Mozelewski, the protagonist of the novel "The Free State of Trieste," which he has been translating from Polish. Walenty has lost a leg to mortar shell in a war, and so he is physically crippled. Benjamin is crippled too; he is emotionally crippled, a victim mostly of self-inflicted wounds.

When someone you know begins to whine, generally you would try to get away from the whiner at the very first chance you get. But the author's whining here, in the form of a very long letter of complaint, I read as if I were glued to my seat, forgetting even to reach for my cup of coffee in the microwave. This novel is funny, witty, acerbic, and at times vitriolic, mesmerizing, hilarious, hypnotic, dazzling, sad, and in turn heart-breaking and very touching, all at once! How did Jonathan Miles accomplish this feat? Through the flight of his imagination and magic of his pen, I suppose.

Written in lively, abrasive, masculine, snappy, and yet strangely affecting prose, this book will delight, provoke, entertain and sadden the reader:

"In that eightish-hour period I've smoked seventeen cigarettes which wouldn't be notable save for the fact that the dandy Hudson News outlets here don't stock my brand so I'll soon be forced to switch to another, and while that shouldn't upset me it does. In fact, it enrages me. Here's my life in dangly tatters and I can't even enjoy this merest of my pleasures. Several hours ago a kid in a Cubs windbreaker bummed one of mine and I swear if I spy him again I'll smash him like a Timex. Cough it up, you turd. But then all this talk of smoking is giving me the familiar itch, so if you'll excuse me for a moment I'm off to the sidewalk, as required by law, to scratch it."

It is very rare to come across a first novel as charming and impressive as this. Jonathan Miles is an astonishing writer.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Witnessing A Disgruntled Air Traveler on the Verge of a Catharsis June 30, 2008

By Ed Uyeshima HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

For anyone who has been disgruntled by American Airlines' massive service disruption recently and the general malaise of the flight industry as a whole, this is a dexterously comic and surprisingly poignant first-time novel that will resonate. Jonathan Miles, a freelance magazine writer who has an enviable job as the cocktails columnist for The New York Times, has penned a story that takes the form of an exasperated and ultimately cathartic 180-page letter of complaint from Benjamin ("Bennie") Ford, a passenger demanding a full refund of $392.68 as he remains stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a concentration of congestion aptly described as "the sacrificial goat of air travel". What has triggered his scathing indictment is that a cancelled flight has meant he will miss the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding.

The situation is complicated by the fact that his daughter is gay, that the wedding is really a commitment ceremony and that he hasn't seen her since she was an infant. The reasons for the dysfunctional nature of the relationship are delved into by the sharp-tongued author as Bennie reveals himself as an alcoholic ex-poet and ex-bartender from New Orleans, the product of a schizophrenic painter mother and a Polish immigrant who ended up becoming an exterminator. He went through two failed marriages and now cares for his mother in a New York apartment as he earns a living as a translator of Polish fiction. Bennie's translation-in-progress is called "The Free State of Trieste", and it runs parallel with his own story. Miles goes back and forth between the epic tale of an injured Polish soldier in the aftermath of World War II and Bennie's own frustrating saga.

What is most relatable in the book is the way the author covers the expected inconveniences of flying, whether it's the burden of post-9/11 security or the idle time chatting with fellow stranded travelers. The minutiae of Bennie's experience can start to feel repetitive at times, but I have to admit the best parts of the book are Bennie waxing philosophically as he rants to the poor American Airlines customer service agent to whom his letter is directed. Sometimes it comes across like a more thoughtful and thought-provoking version of Neil Simon's The Out-of-Towners. But more than that, what Miles does especially well is take a well-worn literary archetype - the bad father and husband seeking forgiveness - and turned him into a fresh, complex character worth discovering. The brief story evolves into a direction that is both bittersweet and satisfying, no small feat for a rookie novelist with obvious talent to burn.

62 of 81 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "WE KNOW YOU HAD A CHOICE OF AIRLINES..."BUH-BUY"!" July 5, 2008

By Rick Shaq Goldstein

Format:Hardcover

The first thing prospective readers should know, is that even though the story places the protagonist/author Benjamin "Benny" Ford in O'Hare Airport, eighty-percent of the story has nothing to do with the agonies of a delayed flight. As a constant nationwide traveler myself, when I heard about this book, I immediately imagined unlimited humorous plots and sub-plots all at the expense of the un-caring Airline industry and its echoing tentacles that encompass security, parking, bathrooms, etc. I envisioned myself (and other travelers like me) laughing, yelling, and pointing accusatory fingers at the hapless and sadistic airline characters portrayed in the book as I shrieked: "I told you I wasn't the only one who asked for a pillow"... "I wasn't the only one who wondered why the airlines wouldn't tell you where your connecting gates were located as the plane is pulling into a gate"... "or betting the passenger seated next to me that the attendant they promised would be waiting at the gate to help you with connections wouldn't be there..." etc. As I said, maybe twenty-per-cent of the story relates to the actual flight and airport.

But what the author does do, very intelligently and cleverly, is use the excuse of a delayed flight to start writing a letter to American Airlines to ask for his $392.68 to be refunded, since during the delay he figured he would not be able to get to Los Angeles in time for his daughter's wedding. His flight which started in New York and was supposed to have a forty-five minute layover in Chicago, instead was forced to land in Peoria and taken by bus to O'Hare Airport where the delay lasted for indeterminable hours through the night. The letter starts off "requesting" a refund, but quickly changes to "demanding" a refund. And from there is where the author (through the letter) proceeds to tell his entire sordid life story, despite being stuck in an airport, which he returns the reader to not frequently enough. Benny is a recovering alcoholic, failed poet, whose drinking ended his first marriage, which had produced the child whose wedding he is attempting to go to in Los Angeles, despite the fact that until he received the announcement, he hadn't seen or talked to his daughter since she was an infant and her mother grabbed her and fled in an attempt to escape the alcoholic destruction that Benny called a life. Along with the date and location of the wedding, Benny also was informed that his estranged daughter was marrying a woman.

If you have ever met a person at a bar or at a party, who is not only drunk, but "amped-up" on cocaine or any type of speed, and by simply saying hello, you have activated a non-stop-high-speed, at times extremely interesting and somewhat amusing, story of their life... but every decade or so of his story... he veers off the road... or takes the wrong off ramp... or finds (to him) interesting tangents that may involve a blemish on the wall... well... if you have... then the author's writing style will seem familiar to you. Don't get me wrong, there are some lyrically beautiful and cleverly written passages such as the first time he talks on the phone to his adult daughter: "WE LAUGHED TOGETHER AT THAT ONE, WHICH FELT GOOD - A SQUIRT OF OIL IN THE DECAYED AND RUSTED JOINTS OF OUR BOND." Or after he received the invitation in the mail which was the first connection between Father and daughter since infancy: "...AS IF I'D FOUND THE PALE CRUMB OF A TRAIL LEADING BACK TO MY LIFE. "Or after the first phone call between them had ended he summarized to himself: "AT TIMES OUR CONVERSATION WAS SO LIGHT AND EASY THAT IT DISTURBED ME; WITH THAT MUCH WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, IT, WAS HARD TO BELIEVE THE BRIDGE COULD STILL BE STANDING." What derails the adrenaline fueled poetry is the author periodically (actually a little more than periodic) changing gears completely by leaving the currently discussed time and place crisis in his life story, and then he starts TRANSLATING A POLISH BOOK about Walenty Mozelewski and his war injury induced wooden leg.

This is obviously a very talented writer, but I feel wholeheartedly that this book could have been much better. He had a "sitting-duck" in the airline industry that he could have pulverized, but he barely touched them, and when the reader's emotions were vulnerable and in the palm of his hand, he would abruptly switch to Polish translation regarding Walenty and his wooden leg.