Fast Eddie: A Novel in Many Voices - Hardcover

O'Connell, Robert L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688166903 ISBN 13: 9780688166908

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

Synopsis

Fifty years ago Eddie Rickenbacker was a household name. This wild, funny, highly original novel brings him back to life, simultaneously elevating him to the realm of myth and portraying him with all his flaws. A pioneer in the world of automobiles and autoracing, America's World War I flying ace, a major influence on both the aircraft industry and aircraft design, founder of a major airline, he made front-page news across the country during World War II by surviving in a life raft in the Pacific for twenty-one days.

The novel is told in a multitude of voices ranging from Alfred Sloan of General Motors to novelist John Dos Passos and General Billy Mitchell to Rickenbacker's wife and mother -- and, of course, the voice of Eddie himself. But most startling of all is the voice of God, a detached observer who comments frequently and ironically on Rickenbacker's life and machinations.

About this title

About the Author

The author of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggression, Robert L. O'Connell has worked for the federal government in both arms control and intelligence. He and his wife live in Ivy, Virginia, and have two grown daughters.

Reviews

An engagingly offbeat debut novel by an iconoclastic military historian (Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggression), this is an often irreverent, even ribald, fictional biography of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the quixotic WWI flying ace and Medal of Honor winner. O'Connell inventively spins off anecdotes and opinions from the real and fictional friends, lovers, passing acquaintances and enemies who encountered the hard-headed, unflappable hero along his 82 adventurous years; not the least of these observations are frequent sarcastic asides from God. Born in 1890, one of seven siblings left penniless when his mother is widowed, Fast Eddie quits school before his 14th birthday and goes to work in a Columbus, Ohio, glass factory. Moving from one job to another, in 1906 he joins a local auto manufacturer and is quickly racing cars. Before turning 21, he's participated in his first Indy 500, and within a few years, Rickenbacker becomes, arguably, the top race driver in the U.S. When he blusters his way to France in 1917 as General Pershing's driver, he has never flown an "aeroplane," but he runs roughshod over all opposition and wangles flight training from the French, thus beginning his legendary career as a celebrated WWI flying ace. Rickenbacker amasses an incredible 26 victories during the six months before the Armistice. Back home, he na?vely lends his name to a new motor car company, unaware that the undertaking is a front for a clever stock scam. O'Connell's vividly polyvocal narrative details, often with swift humor, the incredible exploits (including surviving for three weeks in a raft adrift on the Pacific during WWII) of the man who was a war hero, commercial aviation pioneer, boudoir gymnast, political pawn, social pariah and American legend. Agent, Brandt & Brandt. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A delightful, pie-in-the-sky fictional oral biography of Edward Vernon ``Fast Eddie'' Rickenbacker, featuring real and fabricated anecdotes about the famous WWI ``Ace of Aces'' from such luminaries as Mae West, Manfred von Richtofen ( the Red Baron), Henry Ford, Damon Runyon, FDR, and even God. Perhaps military historian O'Connell (Of Arms and Men, not reviewed) lost most of his notes and decided to wing it. The result is a rollicking mix of pathos and bathos as the Ohio-born Billy Rickenbacherhe anglicanized his surname to disguise his Germanic heritagecareens from daunting hardship (his father's death in a barroom fight, leaving penniless a wife and family of eight; wartime brushes with death; a celebrated WWII downing in the South Pacific) to sunny triumph as an automobile racer, fighter pilot, and flamboyant chairman of Eastern Airlines. Described by those around him variously as a fraud, a cheapskate, a sexual athlete, a visionary hip-shooter, and a son any mother would love, Rickenbacker becomes a ``Hawaiian shirt of a man, pulled up so high by his own bootstraps that he confuse[s] anoxia with transcendental zoot'' as he is manipulated by a pompously cruel, wisecracking God (to whom O'Connell, following Joseph Heller's precedent, gives the best lines) and ends as a red-baiting egomaniac whose mistrust of jet engines almost destroys Eastern. Along the way, were treated to inside glimpses of the big-business intrigues that launched the automobile and airline industries, plus eerie, beyond-the-grave narratives from dead German fliers and other victims of circumstance wondering why they had to die to feed Rickenbacker's reckless lust for headline-making fame. Even though Rickenbacker died in 1973, this soaring, tragicomic celebration of guts and glory sums up the best and worst of the American century. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Remember Eddie Rickenbacker--early car racer, World War I flying ace, founder of Eastern Airlines, survivor of 24 days adrift in the Pacific during World War II, and right wing cold warrior? No? Good, 'cause then you won't bring preconceptions to this uproarious fictional biography. War historian O'Connell casts his first novel as a documentary or oral history whose speakers include, besides arrogant, aggressive, loudmouthed, undeniably courageous Eddie himself, his mother, wife, sons, secretary, ghostwriter, friends (friends?), enemies (e.g., Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen, FDR, plenty of airline execs), and acquaintances casual (W. C. Fields, Damon Runyan) and very casual (Mae West, Amelia Earhart). Oh, yes, and God, who has all the funniest lines. Thanking "those who took time out from being dead to answer my questions" and allowing "that this book is, in fact, fiction," O'Connell still doesn't twist any history as he tracks the entrepreneurial comet that was Rickenbacker's life; he just fills it in, fleshes it out. So we discover that Eddie was uncommonly well endowed and capable of outdoing the fellow in the folk song about "nine times a night." We learn that air travel has never been a bargain; crafty execs have seen to it that Uncle Sugar made it pay from its '30s takeoff on. We learn God's opinion of major twentieth-century notables and entire nationalities. O'Connell turns none of his "informants" into buffoons, and amidst the hilarity, provokes reflection on whether real-life action heroes like Eddie have to also be colossal pains in the posterior and whether, if God really is running things, He does it primarily for His own amusement. These are not trivial matters, and this is no lightweight novel. It is a peer of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man. Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688166903
• ISBN 13: 9780688166908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288