Customer Reviews

Flying

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Eric Kraft is unique in American letters. He combines the sophisticated comic sensibility of Samuel Beckett with the warm nostalgic memories of Mark Twain, the observational humor of George Carlin and the slightly warped comedy of Ambrose Bierce (without the cynicism). There is also something of Stephen Hawkings as a stand-up comedian.

Flying completes the trilogy of Peter Leroy as the Birdboy of Babbington, who "flies" from Long Island to summer school in New Mexico on a aerocycle he built by himself. Flying combines all three novels in a single volume. The first covers his construction of the aerocycle, the second his trip to New Mexico and the final novel covers his adventures at school. Chapters alternate between his adventures as a fifteen year old and years later on a road trip with his super tolerant wife, Albertine.

If you aren't familiar with Eric Kraft, you're in for a treat.

Eric Kraft's funny and fantastical "Flying" is really three tightly interlocked novels: Part One, "Taking Off," Part Two, "On the Wing," and Part Three, "Flying Home." The quixotic adventure story plays with many, various, (and often hilarious) 20th century preoccupations, skewing the era's pities, and is laugh out loud funny.
Using ingenuity, timing, illustration, pop culture, and high culture: Kraft's hero, Peter Leroy travels erratically through time and space, almost airborne in one comic story after another. Many of his imagined machines and fads and communal enthusiasms seem prescient even when they're playing with recent history.
Reading this was great fun.

This was a book selected by our book club and it had good reviews. But, a few of us couldn't get through the book. This book is a compilation of 3 of the authors books on this subject. The character goes back and forth between the past and present, reliving some childhood adventure that made him a hero of a small town. It dragged on with really no great plot, but of course I just could not read it to the end. Another member of our group said there really was no surprise to the end either but she enjoyed it.

What is a reader to do with an unreliable narrator? How about an unreliable narrator who admits he is one? Eric Kraft's novel "Flying" is part travelogue, part notional memoir and part love story. Kraft's narrator, Peter Leroy, gained fame as a teenager, having constructed and flown an aerocyle (a winged motorcycle) from his hometown of Babbington, New York to New Mexico. The problem with this fame, and the driving cause to the book, is that there is one slight hitch: the aerocycle never flew. The now grown Leroy sees what the continuation of the falsehood (lie? myth? fable?) of his trip has done to himself and his hometown, and decides to set the record straight. Kraft does a couple of things with this book: he questions the nature of memory and the need for fame and heroes. There's a lot going on in the 500 plus pages of this book. There's a current day excursion, remapping the route of his teenaged journey, the recollection of the original journey, and, thrown in for good measure, the reading by Leroy of a book on pataphysics in the original French. Confused? Never fear; the book glides gently from one theme to the next.

For anyone familiar with Eric Kraft, Flying will be a welcome addition to his Peter Leroy series. If you're not familiar with Erik Kraft, you're in for a treat -- and Flying is a fine introduction to Peter's loopy, hilarious, thought-provoking world. The latest installment is a dazzling and deeply satisfying work. Once again Eric Kraft has deftly completed yet another man on a highwire act -- and given us all the obssesssions, foibles and endearing qualities we've come to expect from Peter's world.

Flying is a novel in three parts and two eras, a high-school aged boy from Long Island on his cross-country adventure via aerocycle, and the middle-aged man with his wife retracing his path. The first part, Taking Off, was brilliant, insightful, and hilarious, with thoughts on nostalgia, small towns, and fame. Kraft's writing here was clever, with great anecdotes, and thoughtful ideas. But after this first 175 pages, the novel starts to drag. The anecdotes become heavy-handed and long-winded, the plot starts to feel flat, and the reader just wishes the book were 200 pages shorter. Or maybe 300 pages shorter. Fortunately, the last section of the novel, with the protagonist in New Mexico, winds up the novel on an amusing note about the teenage years for geeky kids.

This novel felt like it should have been split up. There were too many ideas, themes, and most of all, too many words for one book. A heavier hand by the editor would have been valuable as well. Still, for readers with time on their hands and the willingness to slog through some excess prose, the best parts of this novel are well worth it.

3.5 stars

I had previously read four of Eric Kraft's books and enjoyed them very much. But this latest installment in the imaginary memoirs of Peter Leroy was a major disappointment. It was like spending many hours trapped on a transcontinental railroad sitting next to a boring, self-absorbed, self-indulgent traveling companion who will not SHUT UP.
Previously entries in this series have been charming, whimsical and sweetly innocent. But now we're weighed down by our protagonist's (and author's) delusions of grandeur. I lost count of the references to Proust and Kafka. Leroy (Kraft) seems to have drunk the kool aid and come to the conclusion that he is a literary personage of real importance, and as such, every one of his tiresome observations suddenly takes on cosmic importance. He's not and they don't.
The slight tale concerns how Peter pedals a bike with wings that's supposed to fly but does not across Amerika (in the Kafkaeque sense because this country bears no resemblance to the real America).
Interspersed with this, the present-day Peter, even more loquacious than he was a youth, accompanied by his wife Albertine (how Proustian) recreate the trip in an electric car.
Along the way, he has various and sundry picaresque experiences -- but more often he just drones on about anything that enters his head.
This is a very sad development and I take no pleasure in writing these words. As long as he didn't take himself too seriously, Kraft was a delight and a treasure. But in this book he and his hero have both become pretentious bores.