The Mexican Flyboy (Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Américas Series)

Chicana & Chicano Visions of the Américas

by Alfredo Véa

What if we could travel back in time to save our heroes from painful deaths? What if we could rewrite history to protect and reward the innocent victims of injustice? In Alfredo Véa’s daring new novel, one man does just that, taking readers on a series of remarkable journeys.

Abandoned as a child, brooding and haunted as an adult, Simon Vegas, “the Mexican Flyboy,” toils for years to repair a time machine that fell into his hands in Vietnam. With the help of his friend, eccentric Hephaestus Segundo, Simon uses the device to fly through time. Wherever acts of human cruelty take place, in the past or in the present, the machine lets him lift the suffering away and deliver them to a utopian afterlife. Blending magical realism, science fiction, history, and comic-book fantasy, The Mexican Flyboy swoops readers from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the vineyards of Northern California, from Ethel Rosenberg’s execution to Joan of Arc’s pyre, in a tale of justice, trauma, regret, and redemption.

The dead pass through the narrative in a parade at once heartbreaking and hopeful, among them Vincent van Gogh and Malcolm X, Ernest Hemingway and Amadou Diallo. But the living—Simon’s pregnant wife, Elena, his old friend Ezekiel Stein, prisoner Lenny Hudson—all throw doubt onto Simon’s story. Is Simon truly a “magus,” transporting martyrs to a shared community in paradise? Or is he just a man broken by loss, guilt, and the trauma of war, hopelessly lost in an illusion of his own making?

Crossing genres and blending comedy with tragedy, Alfredo Véa imagines a world where we can rewrite our pasts and heal the wounds inflicted by history. Inviting comparisons to the work of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon, this powerful book is like nothing else you have ever read.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Time Travel, American, Novels

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2016

About the author

Alfredo Véa was born in Arizona and worked as a migrant farm worker as a child and a young man. He served in Vietnam and after his discharge worked a series of jobs, ranging from truck driver to carnival mechanic, as he put himself through law school. Now a practicing criminal defense attorney, Vea is also the author of two previous novels, La Maravilla and The Silver Cloud Cafe. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a new Alfredo Vea novel is a bit like encountering a new John Coltrane album. You know the voice, the themes are familiar, and it's absolutely new and illuminating. Like Gods Go Begging, The Mexican Flyboy refuses to accept the brutalities of history as an unalterable given. Improvising on kinda sorta science fiction conventions of time travel, Vea moves back and forth from Jean d'arc's France to the Native American genocide to Vietnam, bringing it all together in the life of his sort kinda autobiographical protagonist. The writing is beautiful, the surprises constant, the vision deeply affirmative.

Good argument to made for Vea as America's greatest living novelist. Not that its a competition.

Check it out.

[Kaye McSpadden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book three days ago, but haven't been able to figure out what to say about it in my review. Like Véa's "Gods Go Begging," which I read ten years ago and loved, "The Mexican Flyboy" is weird, befuddling, challenging, mesmerizing, haunting, and moving. Beautifully written, both intellectual and poetic, and rich with layers of meaning, this is a book to be read and digested slowly, not to be slurped down in a single swallow.

When I read "Gods Go Begging," I benefitted from the fact that it was a family book club selection. Our discussion, which was guided by a literature teacher who was familiar with Véa and the concept of magical realism, really helped me to get a handle on it and I came to appreciate what a masterpiece it is. I could use a discussion like that to help me grapple with "The Mexican Flyboy."

I *think* that at its heart, this book is about the efforts of a man to find balance in the world and heal the pain from his own life traumas, as well as others, as he prepares to become a father. With the aid of a contraption that is a time machine of sorts, Simon travels back in time to prevent people from suffering at the moment of their painful deaths and whisk them off to a nirvana-heaven in Boca Raton. These countless victims include Joan of Arc, Ethel & Julius Rosenberg, Holocaust gas chamber victims, a victim of lynching, and many others throughout human history. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Simon himself is aware of how loony-tunes he is and even describes himself as a "basket case" and a "mediocre poet who suffers from shell shock." But, with each soul he saves from a painful death, the closer he comes to healing his own: "After so many years of pruning, weeding, and harvesting the pain from his soul, pulling it from the vine person by person, the universe had all at once been put level... for just a time... the whole world was in balance."

There were several scenes I especially loved, including:
(1) When wondering about how we end up with the lives we are born into, Simon imagines a "game show in outer space" in which a Vana White type host spins the "zoetrope, the heavy wheel of life."
(2) I loved Simon's live radio shows at the prison -- outrageous and funny.
(3) The description of Simon's pivotal experience in Vietnam -- haunting and unforgettable.
(4) The description of "Sophia's Fall" -- as she falls through the air, not having opened her parachute, she falls through the moments of her life.
(5) The final, mesmerizing, haunting, and incredibly moving scene when Simon's wife gives birth and all the other pieces of his story melt together.

Fans of Véa's work (like me) have had to wait many years for another novel as spectacular as "Gods Go Begging." I think "The Mexican Flyboy" just may be it.

[Ilya Ivanov]

It's the king of a book that you start off scoffing at all the hamfisted references, shameless namedropping and in-your-face preachiness, and end up sobbing like an idiot without much transition. Magic of a printed word at its best.

Это такая книга, когда поначалу презрительно усмехаешься над всем этого квадратно-гнездовым постмодернизмом, апелляциями к высокой культуре (чуть ли не дословно "если человек не читает Толстого, это ж он сам себя обкрадывает") и бесстыдным абсолютно сыпаньем именами, а под конец рыдаешь как дурак, и что самое обидное, даже и не очень понятно, над чем конкретно. Такая вот магия печатного слова.

[Paul Mata · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so sad. This book was so beautifully devastating. I feel like I say that a lot about most of the books I read but I believe it to be true everytime. This book has so much depth. I love magical surrealism and this just hits the nail on the head in every aspect. I haven’t felt such a sense of warmth and sadness at the same time as I usually will relate sadness with a feeling of cold but this changed something for me. I’m not sure how a book can make me feel so happy yet still so devastated at the same time. Simon is an absolutely fascinating character. The plot is so intriguing that you really don’t want to put the book down until you truly figure out what the hell is going on and when you do you might think the weight of the story is lifted off your shoulders. But it’s not❤️ So much love. So much

[Riah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is strange but powerful. It's about a time traveling flying Mexican Vietnam vet fixing the many, many cruelties and injustices of the world with a machine that might be science fiction, might be magic or might be insanity. The book is more concerned with how emotion and memory work than logistics, and it touches on a huge range of dark themes, from prisons and death row to rape and incest to murder and war, but ultimately is more beautiful and hopeful than depressing. It is chock full of an eclectic range of references (including one to my dad!) and some autobiographical details from Véa's life and the beginning was just so strange it took me a couple chapters to latch on to the story, but once I did, I was immersed. Given how awful the world can seem, imagining fixing it and being able to right the wrongs of the past is both timely and inspiring. Just because people before us have been awful doesn't mean we have to be.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

CW: Every kind of violence people can do to each other is referenced in this book.

The Mexican Flyboy is a weird book to rate--and difficult to describe. It's about a time traveler lifting people who suffered cruel, unnecessary deaths from that death, to live the rest of their lives together in a paradise in Florida.

Are these rescues really happening? Difficult to say, as this magical realism doesn't explain at all. It's magic or delusion, you decide. Who hasn't wished they could right some tragedy of their past, though? Or dreamed they could save a person they never met?

With a slow start, and plenty of jumps around in the timeline, and plenty of POVs, this isn't an easy book to understand. But it's unique, and rather hopeful, despite all the suffering it contains, because it rejects that pain entirely.

[Stacey D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning starts off slow and I so I really thought I’d hate this novel. But everything came together for a really fine blend of sci-fi time travel, history and magic realism. The events set in motion with the help of hero Simon Magus Vargas had me singing, “If I Could Turn Back Time” throughout the story. Oh, and to top it off, amazing Chicano artist and muralist George Yepes’ glorious 2016 cover painting captures the essence of this novel perfectly. Keep an open mind and read this book.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vea is worth reading every time.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Maybe if I can hear and see and learn about every cruelty of the past, then maybe...maybe I can be ready to hear cruelty and see cruelty in the here and now. We are all so blind in the present. Maybe I can be ready to point out callousness and call it by its proper name. Maybe I can see the very moment when I am relinquishing my own will--handing it over, lock, stock, and barrel, to my time, my place; to a mob, to a culture, to a queue, to a fashion--to an order being shouted over a walkie-talkie. Only if I know when I'm not free can I set myself free. If I am everybody...then I am nobody."



~~A Florida sunset over water-complete with palm trees and thatched roofs-is a frequent scene used during guided imagery. So imagine how the victims Simon Vegas rescues feel when they are plucked from the clutches of a gruesome and painful death, then flown to his community in paradise. I pictured his utopia looking very much like this photograph, complete with cabins and Hawaiian shirts.

First two sentences: According to the local newspaper, the day the skydiver died had been the windiest day in the history of the valley. Two residents claimed to have seen a funnel cloud touching down near the winery.

Meet Simon Vegas. He mysteriously showed up at a vineyard in southern California in 1961, unwilling or unable to state what happened to his family or where he wandered in from. The grape pickers took him in, despite his odd habits. The cook in particular took him under his wing. Then a skydiving woman fell to her death, near the vineyards. Bearing witness to her violent death had a lasting, pervasive influence on Simon as an adult.

Most of the novel takes place in present day--although the novel was written in 2016 which would make Simon a new father (given his childhood chapters in 1961). Not outside the realm of possibility, but I pictured present day occurring during the 1990's while I read. His wife is heavily pregnant, and worried about Simon who exhibits symptoms of PTSD, as well as staring into space for long periods of time. She snoops around the garage and finds relics from his childhood, as well as a strange machine. Turns out Simon travels through time to try to minimize moments of suffering for those who have had tragic, painful, often violent deaths. If you are easily triggered by violence, then this will be a difficult novel to read. But if you enjoy literal flights of fancy, then this short novel might be worth a read.

My two cents: Simon is clearly haunted. Now, faced with the prospect of becoming a father, he's terrified that he won't be up to the task. He obsessively tries to save more and more humans from their pain. Deep in the novel, Vea explains the root of Simon's compulsion. He was an American soldier in Vietnam, and was forced, by his commander, to shoot at a child. He didn't "step out of line" when given that order. See additional quotes for his full stream of conscious on the subject. The novel brings up excellent topics for book club debates, but it is very dense reading. It's not one to bring to the beach, or a ball game, or anywhere where you can't devote full attention to the pages. I did greatly enjoy the comic relief from the prison radio scenes. Given 3 stars or a rating of "Good." Recommended as a library check-out if you enjoy unusual, fantastical novels.

Other favorite quotes: Then Hephaestus Segundo had washed his hands in vain, fumbled through a box of clutter, and found some extra-thick reading glasses, which he rinsed under a faucet. After a halfhearted attempt to dry them with his filthy shirt, he put his spectacles on, then bent over the anvil to carefully study the blueprints in minute detail. After a few moments, he turned away from Simon and began to cry silently, his shoulders heaving.
"I will do this work! I must do this work! If you offer to pay me, I will be insulted beyond words!"

~~"Did you know," said Kevin with an almost frightening intensity, "that several studies have shown that most of the guys in this prison get by, day after day, using a vocabulary of fewer than two hundred and fifty words?" He gestured toward the prison yard. "Their minds were imprisoned long before they ever got here. Their imaginations have been held prisoner by our vacuous culture and by their tiny ghetto and barrio lives since the day they were born. They have nothing to say. They are all overweight and have big biceps, but their dreams are famished and stunted. All of their expectations have been reduced to skin and bone. If one could photograph their souls, those men would look like victims of a famine."

~~"You have to fight back. Those winds are everywhere. They aren't the winds of change. They change nothing. That's their power. Beat them back, Zeke!"

~~"Nothing deathless but stupidity. No sin but sameness. Nothing evil but surrender--when the will is relinquished. No perdition but the possession of things. Nothing divine but the person stepping out of line. Nothing holy but the inevitability of science and the persistence of art. Nothing sacred but this moment of love. Nothing divine but stepping out of line."

[Scott Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mexican Flyboy has imperfections and is strange but is wonderful. The wife who seems promising as a character in the beginning turns out to be two dimensional and sidelined. Ritchie Valens and his friends aren’t saved, but classic Hollywood stars are. There are tangents and meanders. It’s a book that people screw their face up at the plot when you tell them. They ask, this is a good book? It is.

The Mexican Flyboy has a Mexican jaw: it has a lot of heart. It can take the detractions against it. It is mythical, it seeks healing, it is wish fulfilling. The Mexican Flyboy wants to save all the unjust deaths in the timeline of the world and bring the people to Mexican Heaven in Boca Raton.

The Mexican Flyboy is a Vietnam vet that wants no more suffering.

The book starts with a boy found in a field of farm workers. To tell you where he came from would be a spoiler and in this case I won’t ruin it. Wanting to know and savoring the journey, from the question of how was The Mexican Flyboy involved in the CIA and got the Antikythera device that gets fixed up with Chicano knowhow to travel time, to why is Mexican Heaven in Boca Raton, to who is it that fell out of the sky, to why is the radio show at San Quentin studying the nature of suffering? It’s all a crazy mix, but you buy in because it’s presented well. Flying with the Mexican Flyboy as he saves Joan of Arc and other figures feels mythical, strange and necessary and is powered by someone scarred by war wanting humanity to be better. Read this book, like much of Chicano literature, it defies labels and explanation and more people should know it.

[Josephine McCormick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It isn't for all of us. It's for me. Like I told you, it's for me. It was supernatural once, long ago, before I began to find my props and my tools, before I gathered together my maps, my comics, my cape, and now the Antikytheria machine. How can it be prestidigitation and legerdemain when I am the magician and I am the audience? ...It isn't magic, just my fierce desire to be free--to not be a man of my time." (pg 285)

Really, even for me, this was an odd one. Not sure how to respond or reflect to it. The premise--a traumatized Mexican-Irish Vietnam vet bopping through the winds of time to airlift victims from historical atrocities into a Hawaiian-shirt, orange flip-flop wearing Florida commune heaven--was fascinating and difficult to follow. Took me weeks to read and felt like the second book in a series, as though we were rushing through important background information and getting lost in the action. Local author and local scene was fun. Cover art was awesome. Just wish a few parts were more thought and flushed out so that I could get swept away in the unique romp that this tried to be.

[Janell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trigger warning - if you have *any triggers*, they'll be in this book.

That said, this is a fascinating look at a deeply wounded Mexican-Irish-American man trying to heal himself by healing everybody who's ever been tortured to death, lynched, mass murdered, suicided, etc. ... ever. It's a strangely cathartic magical realism journey that's hard to wrap your head around and hard to describe. Part illusion, part antikythera, part wishful thinking, and part luau party.

I read it for a challenge to find a reference to something from Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" - and through that lens, it's really as though Simon, the main character in the story, saw that the world was burning and tried to put out every bit of flame ever, through some time travel flying magic. And maybe kind of succeeded? It's definitely a hopeful book. 3.5 stars.

[Chuck Kramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is part fantasy, part social criticism, and partly a plea for sanity in American life. The Mexican Flyboy has a time machine and rescues people from the past who’ve died untimely, painful deaths. The Flyboy is a Christ, complete with stigmata. A thoughtful, imaginative, disturbing novel that ends on a hopeful note as the Flyboy’s first child is born.

I saw a lot of Ishmael Reed and "Mumbo Jumbo" in this novel. Not quite as satirical but clearly branching from the same literary tree.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typically impossible-to-pigeonhole stuff here from Véa, using a remarkable "impressionistic" style in which complicated sci-fi/time-travel shenanigans are just hinted at in passing within paragraphs (and even within individual sentences!) yet the whole thing holds together/works somehow as a narrative while all the craziness may actually only be going on in the head of the MC!. Entertaining, enthralling, thought-provoking, moving... why Véa isn't hailed as a great contemporary talent in American literature is a mystery to me.

[Patty Parette · Rating 5 out of 5]

An uncanny story of family, adventure, tragedy, heroism and redemption. An orphaned boy grows up to be a superhero, with ample intrigue, fantasy, and magic. I will read more from this author.

[Eileen Neeley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish

[Anna Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time travel and righting wrongs, a sensitive boy grows up into a man with a hidden enemy.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and beautiful story. Intricate plotting and a feel-good ending. Really enjoyed this.

[Jennifer Howey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for Grad School- at first I didn’t love it but then the story began revealing more and more details and it all came together in a weird twisted way. Interesting style of writing.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely one of the most beautiful endings I have ever read, including the epilogue.

[Elissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although an interesting premise and chock-full of obviously well-researched historical information, magical realism just isn’t for me. And it felt too frantic for an enjoyable read, even though that captured Simon’s sense of urgency. I finished it, but just wanted to be done with it.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely book featuring time-travel with beautiful writing, original storytelling, and wonderful characters. I've never read anything quite like this before. I hope it gets lots of attention.

[Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magical realism or maybe just childhood trauma? A very engaging read from one of my favorite authors.

[World Literature Today]

WLT's Executive Director Robert Con Davis-Undiano's Director's Pick for Summer 2016!

"A hybrid steam-punk, sci-fi, comic-book fantasy, detective fiction of a novel that is at moments hilarious and also deeply moving, The Mexican Flyboy follows the exploits of Simon Vegas, a man obsessed with martyrs and innocent people who over time have suffered needlessly...

The Mexican Flyboy has the potential to elevate [Alfredo] Véa’s standing to another level among such names such as Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, and contemporaries Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya, and Junot Díaz as a writer of the first rank coming into his prime."

Read Davis's full thoughts on the book at http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[World Literature Today]

"The Mexican Flyboy reads like a surrealist dream: it is a fairy tale for adults, a novel where clairvoyant superheroes (Mandrake the Magician) and historical figures (Joan of Arc, Jesse Washington, and Ethel Rosenberg, among others) are brought to life by an incantatory language that animates and reenacts a history of unparalleled horrors, unrelenting fanaticism, and crowd complicity." - Roberto Cantú

This book was reviewed in the September/October 2016 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A time travel science fiction with a human rights twist, but also so much more. The Mexican Flyboy by Alfredo Véa is incredibly imaginative and beautifully written. I highly recommend it.

I won this book via a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

[Kookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last few pages were hard to read. Words blurry. Pages wet with tears. Unbelievably moving. I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Mary Sivila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting premise to go back in time and save deserving people from horrible destinies.

[Mark Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical Realism at its best.

[Laura ✸ · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite books in the world. i do not get tired of reading it.