"Don't you find that your emotions are heightened in the air?" I was
at a dinner party and the conversation went back and forth with one guy
saying that although he never cried in movies on terra firma, in the air he
sobbed uncontrollably. A woman interjected that she found reading on a plane
so engrossing that she always remembered everything that she'd read. I was
intrigued - although I wasn't sure I agreed. I cry easily at movies on the
ground but I'm not sure that I've cried watching a film in the air. And as
for retaining what I read - do I ever? As one friend put it: "No need
to retain what I read. I am not studying for an exam".
I decided to do an unscientific survey to see whether this would be borne out
by other people and the following is the result of a straw poll of around 50
people who kindly answered my questions. I asked whether or not they felt
that their emotions were heightened in the air, if they found it easy to
read, what they read, whether they retained it (the answer a resounding no)
and whether there was a particularly memorable book they'd read while
flying.
The range of books and magazines read and enjoyed was huge - Vanity Fair
was the most favoured magazine - bought as a treat for the flight by many
and kept for take-off and landing. Biographies were popular; Mary S.
Lovell's The Mitford Girls and Martin Gilbert's Churchill: A
Life, being two memorable books. Other people answered that they
vividly recalled Cry the Beloved Country, Helen Oyeyemi's The
Icarus Girl, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Jewel in
the Crown, Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor, The Day of the
Jackal, Tim Moore's Continental Drift and The Clockwork
Orange years after they were read.
Somebody left a book about Solzhenitsyn on a plane at Kiev and was so annoyed
that amazingly he managed to talk his way back onto the plane to collect it
- and that in the days when Solzhenitsyn was banned. One woman after years
of being too terrified to fly had just managed to get back on a plane again
only to immerse herself in Ian McEwan's Saturday which opens with a
plane crash - was fate telling her something? She panicked. One friend says
that he agrees with Annie Proulx that what you see out of the window is of
far more interest than anything in a book; he also feels he has to look out
of the window to keep the plane up, whereas another feels that if she looks
out of the window she'll see that the wing is on fire; she reads Trollope.
There is certainly snobbery about reading in the air - some said it's the
obvious time to get immersed in Dan Brown whereas others said that they
couldn't understand why they should want to read The Da Vinci Code
in the air if they didn't on the ground. Friendships can be forged by what
one's neighbour is reading - a friend was sitting next to someone reading a
comedy crime novel by Janet Evanovich whom she'd just interviewed - they
became firm long-term friends. Of course people like me are always going to
look and see what others are reading so someone else, also aware of this,
said that she would avoid books like How to spice up your sex life.
P.G. Wodehouse enabled one man to laugh out loud as his plane was being shot
at in Zimbabwe in the 1970s.
Remarkably few people read about their destination (myself included): George
Eliot's Romola accompanied someone to Florence three times without
being opened. Only one person said that she was an avid reader of airline
magazines - many do not watch movies but one woman watched The Royal
Tannenbaums four times on a flight back from Australia and she says
that as a result of this, had no jet lag!
Thrillers, mystery novels and Alexander McCall Smith play a large part.
Someone wrote that she is so addled with tranquillizers by the time she
boards that she can't take in anything that requires a brain - her
concentration improving as the flight goes on and the drugs wear off. The
general consensus among those polled was that if the emotions are heightened
its probably to do with alcohol or exhaustion rather than the pressurized
cabin. Someone wrote that she wished she could read every book on an
aeroplane as she seems to have a more charitable view of books up in the air
- not that she feels her critical judgement is suspended, as she has tossed
many crap books away. One of the polled said that his only heightened
emotion was one of irritation, although another said that he felt that a
plane flight is a bardo - a door between the life you had and the new life
when you touch down. But this from someone who has written a book of
meditations, sadly not published, specifically for someone on an air flight.
A few said that they found it difficult to concentrate because of the ambient
noise (this has never bothered me) and the constant movement (well yes,
planes do move). Many said that the only time they get time to read
uninterruptedly is on a plane and that planes are the very best places for
reading - no mobiles, no appointments or obligations to interfere. One woman
went so far as to say that if it weren't for deep vein thrombosis she would
cheerfully board train or plane for a few days every six weeks just to think
and read. She had thought of asking for a grant just to travel in
interstital space for the luxury of reading, researching and thinking since
everything in print felt clear and memory wasn't a problem.
So life in the air produces widely divergent views and varied reading matter,
in that respect no different from life on the ground, except that in the air
people often break from their normal habits and seem to read what they
really want.
