Imagine a City: A Pilot's Journey Across the Urban World
What makes this captain of the heavens so appealing is a kind of all-American innocence that helps him savor 'the palmistry of lit streets' in Salt Lake City, seen from 38,000 feet above, as eagerly as he devours the poets of Delhi when touching down for 48 hours. Linking the places he flies between through snow, or gates, or the color blue, Vanhoenacker, meticulous enough to offer a 16-page bibliography, seems to have a near-bottomless appetite for fresh sights and guidebook curiosities ... In his first book, Skyfaring, Vanhoenacker gave us the simple rapture of watching the skies fill with color, as seen from a snug cabin that sometimes felt a bit like a jet-age Thoreau’s. In this new work, he plunges deeper into his own past growing up in Pittsfield as a gay man who perhaps always felt a little on the outside of things, seeing them from a different angle ... His autobiographical vignettes are searching and touching, delivered with an affectionate lyricism that brings home to us how his small town has become a kind of anchor in a mobile life and maybe even the place to which he’ll return when he retires. But for me the real distinctness of his work comes from the life he enjoys at cruising altitude ... There’ve been plenty of books about cabin attendants’ adventures as part of a globe-trotting sorority bringing the mile-high club down to earth; Imagine a City is a much more intimate and thoughtful work.
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Mark Vanhoenacker has crafted an eloquent personal tribute to [cities] ... This is not a scholarly book on cities, yet Mr. Vanhoenacker does enjoy digging into the literature on the cities he loves ... His own observations, as well as his research on cities, are always highly particular ... While Imagine a City never reflects on the loneliness of the life of commercial pilots, that theme does come across between the lines ... He writes as someone who, from a very early age—looking at a metal globe—wanted to explore the world, to get to know it all, to touch it, so to speak, everywhere. I share that urge. Many of us still do. And for those of us who do, Imagine a City will hold us in a warm, welcome embrace.
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Imagine a City is, to be sure, a travelogue ... It also is a primer on piloting a massive aircraft ... It is, too, an examination of the obverse side of getting the urge for going; sometimes it is the urge for going home, even if you can never go home again. It is, in addition, a coming-of age memoir ... Vanhoenacker offers a lyrical look at what life is like behind those bolted cabin doors ... Who knew that in command of one of humankind’s most remarkable modes of transport was a historian of humankind’s ancient history? Which of course is the charm of this book ... At the keyboard, Vanhoenacker has danced, and on his pages there is tumbling mirth indeed.
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