Flying the Friendly Skies (With John Updike)

As someone who's flown more than 1,000 times, I feel sympathy for the Jet Blue flight attendant who went a little crazy the other day after a confrontation with a passenger. I'm not taking sides here, and Steven Slater may be totally in the wrong--or not. Whatever the case, his exit from the plane via the emergency slide--with a can of beer in one hand--was nothing short of inspired (yes, I realize the potential danger in such a stunt, but no one was hurt--and what a way to go).
I flew for the first time when I was five, in 1956 (New York/Chicago). Everyone was well-dressed, a holdover from the elegant days of the great ocean liners like the Queen Mary. I wore a tie and jacket--a stewardess (as they were called back then) pinned a set of wings to my lapel after she took me into the cockpit (this is true) to meet the flight crew. It was a thrill.
But over the years, flying turned into a drag: people dressed like they just got out of bed, and all were packed into too many small seats, eating dreadful food, some acting boorishly. I understood why flight attendants occasionally lost their cool. Who wouldn't?
The writer who best described contemporary air travel was John Updike, himself a frequent flyer. In his 2001 collection of poems, "Americana," Updike touched a truth, at least with me.
Hoping the good folks at Knopf will grant me fair use (in the unlikelihood they'd ever come across this blog), here's Updike's very funny--and very accurate--poem:

"The Overhead Rack"
Worst of all, and most hated by me
as I sit docilely crammed into my seat,
crammed and strapped like a psychotic in restraints,
are these bland-faced complacent graduates
of business school, trained to give each other
and the rest of the poor world the business,
who attempt to stuff their not one but two folding bags
big enough to hold an army of business suits
into the overhead rack, already crammed
with traveling crap like a constipated ox’s
intestine. The blond doors cannot lower,
the hats and bags of earlier arrivals
are crushed. Why don’t the smug smooth bastards check
their preening polyester wardrobes and
proliferating printouts, sheaf on sheaf,
at the ticket counter, or, better yet,
stay home and attend to their neglected wives
and morose, TV-mesmerized offspring
instead of crowding their slick and swollen bags
and egos onto my airplane, my tube in space, my
clean shot home? Like slats of a chicken coop
overrunning with dung are the overhead racks.
If we crash, thus overloaded, the world
will yield up a grateful sigh at the headlines:
one less batch of entrepreneurs to dread.
Oh, kill, kill, kill, I think, watching the filth
strap itself in, exhaling export beer
and nasal exchanges of professional dirt,
these fat corpuscles in the nation’s bloodstream:
oh, would I were a flying macrophage
to eat them all, their bags and all, and excrete
the vaporizing lava into space!

The TLS and I

It’s not unusual for the mail carrier in Berkeley to get to our house just as I’ve poured my first martini into a suitably frosty glass. No, I’m not an alcoholic clandestinely quaffing at noon. The fact is it’s not uncommon for the mail to slip through the slot at 6 p.m., or thereabouts.
Last week, the TLS arrived as I took my first sip. As I always do, I checked out the last page for the column NB, a wide-ranging, wry must-read column--at least for me. Written and edited by the gifted James Campbell, NB takes a witty, dry-as-my-martini view of the literary landscape—present and past.
As I read the July 23 edition, I nearly choked on my olive, for there in the middle of NB were the words “Vince Cosgrove of Berkeley.”
I had finally merited a mention in the London Times Literary Supplement.
I say “finally” because I’d come close two years ago when I found an error in a review, and e-mailed a correction. But the letters editor was on vacation, and several weeks later I received an e-mail acknowledging the mistake. But the letters editor deemed the time lapse too long to run my letter. So it goes.
But back to my triumphant appearance in NB: for several weeks, James Campbell had been running a funny commentary on authors who review their own books, usually under cloak of pen name or anonymity. In some odd cases, the writers gave themselves bad notices (“So. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?”)
I had an example of positive self-reviewing: on the 1964 paperback cover of “Death In the Fifth Position,” a mystery by Edgar Box, Gore Vidal offered a glowing quote: “The work that Dr. Kinsey began with statistics, Edgar Box completed with wit in the mystery novel.” As you’ve figured, Edgar Box was the name Vidal used in the 1950s when he was short of cash and dashed off three very readable whodunits featuring an amateur sleuth named Peter Cutler Sargeant ll, a public relations specialist.
I knew that James Campbell planned to use the item, but what thrilled me was getting my name in the column. As I’ve said, I admire the style of NB. And let’s face it, there was no other way I’d ever get my name in the TLS. The TLS casts its eye on serious subjects (Some topics covered in the July 23 issue: Arthur Koestler, Ballooning in Europe (1783—1820), and five unknown poems by Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke). Even if I wrote another book, the author of “The Hemingway Papers” and “Tin For Sale” was never going to be reviewed in the TLS.
So thank you, James Campbell. I plan to frame the column.
Bartender, another martini, if you please.