false 30680 4 The hero of Walter Kirn's novel <I>Up in the Air</I> inhabits an entirely new state: Airworld, where the hometown paper is <I>USA Today</I>, the indigenous cuisine wilts under heat lamps, and the citizenry speaks a Byzantine dialect of upgrades, expense accounts, and market share. Airworld even has its own nontaxable, inflation-free currency in the shape of bonus miles, which Ryan Bingham calls "private property in its purest form." Officially, Bingham is a management consultant, specializing in the lugubrious field of career transition counseling (i.e., he fires people for a living). But what Kirn's airborne protagonist is <I>really</I> doing is pursuing his own private passion, his great white whale: accumulating one million miles in his frequent-flyer account. As <I>Up in the Air</I> opens, Bingham has set out on a final, epic traveling jag. He intends to visit eight cities in six days, thereby achieving his own vision of Nirvana somewhere over Sioux Falls, South Dakota.<p> Mocking the euphemisms of business speak is as easy as shooting fish in a designer barrel. But Kirn also takes on the corporate world's weirdly mystical and paranoid side, its rhetoric of personal empowerment and its messianic devotion to gurus. "Business is folk wisdom, cave-born, dark, Masonic, and the best consultants are outright shamans who sprinkle on the science like so much fairy dust," declares Bingham. (This doesn't stop him from working on his own book about "the transformational journey of one mind wholly at peace with its core competencies.") Meanwhile, his junket becomes progressively more surreal, complete with an evil nemesis as well as a mysteriously powerful firm called MythTech that's working behind the scenes. And what's worse, someone seems to have stolen his identity, assuming control of his credit cards and his all-important miles.<p> Is this model consumer being tracked as he makes his purchasing decisions, like an elk tagged by wildlife biologists? Or is he merely losing his mind? The ending answers these questions perhaps a little too neatly, but Kirn's disturbing satire packs a mighty wallop nonetheless. The writing is as sharp as a tack, punctuated by character sketches as brilliant as they are quick. Bingham and his ilk are modern nomads, dispossessed of physicality but not quite of their bodies. His simulated environment is not mimicking an actual place but replacing it--and that, to the author, is the scariest part of Airworld: "This is the place to see America, not down there, where the show is almost over." <I>--Mary Park</I> 1363960 2001 Up in the Air total:130|5:12|4:29|3:53|2:27|1:9| 130 398 230 21 3 2 false false Fri Aug 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 04:42:12 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 04:50:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Oct 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 09:35:01 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 10:37:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Oct 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 15 11:10:04 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 15 11:25:54 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Oct 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 06:44:08 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 24 08:47:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Jun 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 19 08:02:14 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 23 13:25:18 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Oct 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 09:30:04 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 12 15:42:05 -0700 2009
At about page 225 I think he starts having a breakdown but its kinda hard to tell (the writing), then he's gets to Vegas, for a tryst, and gets high on prescription pills. I was not expecti...more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Apr 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 02 20:08:52 -0700 2009 Sat May 02 20:10:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 16:59:45 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 10:48:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu May 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 01 18:07:03 -0700 2008 Fri May 29 13:20:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Jul 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 18 13:20:47 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 18 13:22:11 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 14 13:33:04 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 17:51:01 -0700 2009 2 0 true false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 01 10:06:16 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 10:31:06 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Sat Oct 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 09 07:41:09 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 09 07:52:43 -0700 2008 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Oct 09 18:45:29 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 18:51:29 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 11 11:36:43 -0800 2007 Sun Feb 10 15:33:35 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Dec 09 14:05:18 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 14:08:51 -0800 2007 2 0 false false Tue Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Sun Apr 27 13:58:39 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 27 13:58:56 -0700 2008 1 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 06 16:29:16 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 10:52:26 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jan 14 17:35:29 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 04 20:33:34 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 14 15:04:51 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 14 15:04:51 -0700 2007 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=30680