Big Flight
by and [Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown, $2.00]
IT is a great pity to have to classify this volume as a novel, although it is that and a bully one, too. But it is a great deal more. The typical modern novel excites, or charms, or bores us by the delineation of imaginary characters — their growth and development, their crises or more leisurely experiences. The background may initiate faint sensations of life in Paris or Four Corners, or recall them to mind, but this is usually quite incidental.
There is a very old-fashioned type of book which nowadays arouses only amusement or scorn: the conveying of knowledge through dialogue. Yet the fundamental idea is sound, and in an altered form, and especially when unintentional, provides an element of great and rare value in occasional writings.
‘Uncle George,’ said Rollo, ‘why does that little girl wear shoes that are made of wood and in what manner are they made?’
Then, three fourths of a century later: —
‘Howard grinned back. “There is n’t going to be any stop, see? S’ long, fellas, thanks a heap! ’Bye, Joey, honey — I’ll wire you.”
‘She had a stinging impression of him sitting there, holding the shimmering Mercury back on its brakes while he gunned open, it was still raining. The electrics in the hangar gleamed on the wet fuselage. She saw the wing navigating lights switch on. Then, suddenly, he let the brakes go. Her eyes strained after him into the darkness. A few seconds, and she picked out the navigating lights again. He was circling back, bringing the Mercury along, wide open, towards the hangars. Then he pulled back on his stick, zoomed clear, and vanished through the wet night.’
My point is not the direct comparison of the Drakes’ book with the Rollo books, but to illustrate the excellence of an antiquated idea used intelligently and in connection with first-hand experience.
Big Flight can be read as sheer, sparkling, dramatic action and dialogue, with the slang, wise-cracks, wisdom, and honest emotions of a dozen characters. When we are through, however, we shall realize that the authors have all unconsciously subjected us to a thorough course in aviation. We run the gamut from the first wobbly taxiing to that slow, final count when the brain spasmodically orders the tense arm muscles to drag with all the strength of being upon the tiny parachute ring, which will shift the death pull of gravitation into a gentle earthward drift — a crooked finger changing projectile into pappus.
for many of us this realization can have but one result ; we must turn back to page one and read through again to absorb the details and appreciate the nuances of aviation, which, the first time, were dimmed by the mist of the mind’s emotion.
An R. F. C. major and a dramatic critic have pooled their abilities to most excellent purpose. Big Flight should be read and enjoyed by every man and woman who have not yet flown, together with all the rest who know what earth and sea look like from mid-air.
WILLIAM BEEBE