On the Wing: Book Two of Flying: A Trilogy - Hardcover

Kraft, Eric

3.73

11 ratings by Goodreads

9780312363741: On the Wing: Book Two of Flying: A Trilogy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312363745 ISBN 13: 9780312363741

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2007

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In Taking Off, the first installment of Eric Kraft's beguiling trilogy, Peter Leroy built an aerocycle in his parents' garage, working from designs he found in Impractical Craftsman magazine. Cheered on by the gathered residents of his small Long Island beach community, Peter readied his contraption for the adventure of a lifetime: a solo cross-country flight to New Mexico and back.

Now Peter is ready to fly---and in On the Wing, he tells the hilarious tale of his journey across a mid-century America populated by eccentrics, crackerbarrel philosophers, and figments of the national imagination. In small hops, mostly consisting of "taxiing" and "landing," he visits roadside attractions and unusual towns: one where every casual expression and idiom is questioned (hence a diner offering "Real Diner Cooking" rather than real home cooking); another where he is chased with pitchforks and shotguns by citizens still traumatized by Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds"; a remote crossroads where he finds himself under attack by a low-flying plane; and finally a town near Roswell, New Mexico, where Peter becomes a phenomenon to rival Roswell's reputation for alien invasion. Along the way, Peter encounters other on-the-roaders, and finds himself pursued by a mysterious dark-haired girl, who continues to appear in different guises and seems strangely familiar, though he can't quite place her face.

And, in a parallel contemporary journey undertaken with his wife, Albertine, the adult Peter revisits his long-ago journey, navigating as Albertine drives a vintage automobile through a much-changed America, and misremembering every step of the way.

On the Wing is a playful but profound novel about an Icarus who does not crash and burn, but grows older, wiser, and productively forgetful as he reimagines his boyhood to create the story of his life.

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About the Author:

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, graduated from Harvard College, and holds a master's degree in teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has taught school and written textbooks, and he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, was chairman of PEN New England, and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He and his wife, Madeline, live in New Rochelle, New York. Visit www.erickraft.com.

From Booklist:

In Taking Off (2006), Kraft's perennial hero, the romantic yet piercingly satirical memoirist Peter Leroy (star of a long-running, marvelously varied series unique in American adult fiction), recounts his boyhood exploits building an aerocycle, becoming the Birdboy of Babbington, Long Island, and attempting to fly to New Mexico. In the second "flying" installment, Kraft fashions a double tale as, in the present, Peter's admirably serene and wry wife, Albertine, convinces Peter to re-create his earlier odyssey, while in the past, the Birdboy can't get off the ground yet covers lots of territory. Writing with his usual blend of literary allusions, a keen sense of the absurd, and a wily appreciation for the gap between memory and reality, Kraft tells a charming and hilarious picaresque tale that combines an archetypal quest story with a spoof of the commercialization of American culture. At each stop, from theme motels run amok to a gathering of UFO kooks, the two Peters collect such pearls of wisdom as "Gravy covers a lot of sins" and "Don't go through life making water towers into castles." Seaman, Donna

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