Airplane Novel

by Paul A. Toth

Paul A. Toth’s Airplane Novel is the Guernica of 9/11 novels, a literary mural that provides the one view of events never before depicted: inside-out.

Toth employs the South Tower as his narrator, a crucial conceit that allows the tower’s computer infrastructure, height and thousands of windows to provide the first truly-panoramic 9/11 novel. Rather than focusing on a single family or individual, Airplane Novel pursues the WTC’s past and future to the moment of their collision. Yet the narrator also follows characters representative of all that it has and will endure.

Adding yet another angle, the South Tower addresses its audience as readers of "airplane novels" in flight to various destinations. The distance between readers and the center of the catastrophe thus decreases until all must answer a key question: Are they reading a fictional account of a historical event...or participating in that event?

Comic and tragic, wailing and railing, fantastic and hyper-realistic, Airplane Novel portrays the South Tower to be “more human than human” and the perfect spectator of its own spectacle.

Genres: Fiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published July 3, 2011

About the author

Paul A. Toth's next major work, Airplane Novel, will prove to be THE 9/11 novel and is now available from Amazon and other retailers. See http://www.airplanenovel.com for more info, media and ordering links. Toth's first three published novels form a nonlinear trilogy consisting of Fizz, Fishnet and Finale.

Reviews

[Mitchell Waldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Passengers, please, buckle your seat belts, we've hit some turbulence that will make the ride a little bumpy from here on out….Welcome to Airplane Novel by Paul A. Toth.

Just as the subject of this novel centers around one of the major criminal acts of the modern era - 9/11 - so, too, may it be said that author Toth has committed a major act of fiction in this new novel, due out in July. The author of such prior novels as Fishnet, Finale, and Fizz, Toth is a wildly original writer. Consider that the narrator is as unlikely a narrator as we have seen in recent times, none other than the World Trade Center's South Tower, itself. Overall, this book is most likely unlike any other books you have recently read.

Toth's story begins with the building's addressing its audience -- readers on an airplane headed for who-knows-where. His story introduces us not only to the personalities of the South Tower (which likes to refer to itself as Cary Grant) and its neighboring North Tower (Gary Cooper), but to the lives of an assortment of characters (people who are referred to as a group by the Tower as "spider monkeys") who inhabited or had dealings with the Towers at various times. These persons include a worker who is obsessed with pornographic movie theatres, a veteran who lives in the suburbs and hates his life and everyone in it, everyone, an Arab who emigrates to the United States, a Jew who becomes particularly hateful of a Muslim man who lives in his apartment complex, a high wire trapeze artist, a man who climbs one of the towers, and others whose individual stories relate to the Towers.

The story promises us an ending we are all very aware of, but keeps us moving toward that inevitable day with visions of the lives of some of these "spider monkeys," the narrator letting us in on his story building all the way through - the need to build tension, the need to develop sympathetic characters (the narrator, itself, asking us, at one point, "Am I sympathetic? I must know, since this story requires me to be the most sympathetic character of all? Have I held your interest and caused the appropriate rate of pages turned per minute?...") All the while the author/narrator jettisons the so-called rules of fiction writing and writes the story the way he wants to, paving his tale with various creative and often humorous building blocks, giving us the often odd but ultimately sympathetic perspective of the South Tower, flowing in and out with historical information, the lives of his characters, and the unique perspective, thoughts and feelings (yes, the building does become a feeling structure itself) of the Tower itself.

In short, Toth's inventions and writing in AIRPLANE NOVEL are a breath of fresh air in the sometimes stagnant landscape of modern fiction. Toth is a unique, gifted stylist whose prose is at times sharp, unpredictable, humorous, and always engaging. There have been a lot of books about 9/11 but I promise you none like this. So, sit back and enjoy the ride in the sometimes not so friendly skies and enjoy a very nontraditional novel that will keep you reading till the very last moment.

--As reviewed in Midwest Book Reviews.

[Emory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winston Churchill said “History is written by the victors.” This is true enough, but such an account is only half of the story. What of the victims? Is their story not integral to the narrative of history? What of their motivations? Their desires? Their drives? What of the narrator? Is their perception of events any less valid because they stand outside? Paul A. Toth answers these charges with “Airplane Novel”.
Are the answers simple? No. The narrator makes no effort to disguise possible contradictions. It is a novel and it may not be a novel. The characters may be real and they may be fictions. Many of the events described happened or they did not. Tying this collection of contradictory assertions together is what may be the most marvelous use of personification in writing. Our narrator is not a person. It is a building, more specifically the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and it refers to itself as Cary Grant.
Perhaps the most incredible part of this tale is not the gentle twisting of literary conventions. Rather it is how Mr. Toth has taken a real story that people around the world are familiar with and given both a unique fictional account and an unbiased one. From cover to cover we are presented with observations, as our narrator is the quintessential observer, and the events described take a back seat to the individual players presented.
Each chapter fleshes out an individual player, tying them all together through the ultimate event that was September 11, 2001. This is not an unusual method for a novel, for what is a story but the development of the characters? No, what is fascinating is Toth's ability to convey observations on human nature through the lens of an alien sentience. To Cary Grant, we are not people, we are spider monkeys. To it, we are just as contradictory as its description of events.
“Airplane Novel” is less fictionalized history and more an examination of what it is to be human, for whatever that may be worth. It is complex through simplicity. Varied through repetition. In a nod to Cary Grant, “swaying in a breeze, starched and clean and beyond blame”: It is a novel that may or may not be a novel. It is not a good story. It is an amazing story, and through it our narrator is both victor and victim.

[Angie · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you have not already wasted your time with this book, don't bother! It is horrible!!!! If you have already wasted your time, I am so sorry...I feel your pain.

[Norman Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is built on a whole series of ingenious touches, from naming
the Twin Towers Cary Grant and Gary Cooper (anagrams CG/CG) --two, tall
swaggering empty suits of Hollywood and outward-peering icons, to
employing the South Tower itself as the unassailable epicenter of POV, to
the inside-baseball expose of the current literary biz and its dull
procession of airplane novels. It's all here, deftly braided and
devastatingly recounted.

We know the tragedy. Lord knows we know it. Most impressive is the
restraint from cheap, low-hanging 'human interest' and stock
sentimentality that 9/11 practically demands. There is no human interest,
because, well, there are no humans, only steel, concrete and spider
monkeys. But you will have to read it to see. I highly recommend it. Toth
has broken with the pack here in a very big way.

[Dan Newland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Airplane Novel is, without a doubt, the most unique book written to date on the events of 9/11. Author Paul A. Toth has hit upon an absolutely distinctive point of view, since his narrator is none other than the voice of the South Tower. This book tells a truly intimate inside story of the rise and fall of the Twin Towers that cuts through the hype and emotive rhetoric so often associated with the terrorist attack and its aftermath. Objective, clear-headed and big-picture focused, this is a book that will change the outlook of many a reader regarding the 9/11 tragedy. Read my interview with the author at http://southernyankeewriter.bl​ogspot...

[Shelf Magazine]

Is Paul A. Toth's new "Airplane Novel" the 9/11 novel? Perhaps. It certainly makes the short list. We’ve been seeking perspective,after all, and Toth delivers with a second tower omniscient narrator, the South Tower himself, who details his birth, life, and death from his singular, elevated vantage point.

Read an interview with the author in our August/September issue. http://www.shelfmediagroup.com/staff_...

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read Chapter One on this site, and I firmly believe the author will prove correct in calling this "the only 9/11 novel worth reading."

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely THE 9/11 novel.

[Sylvia Petter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird and wonderful book.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating book.

By taking out the human emotion of 9/11 and telling the events from the point of view of the South Tower, Toth writes a book that is moving and quite possibly more emotional than a memoir about said events. Because instead of feeling sadness and hope, we're left feeling slightly uncomfortable. The characters in the book are flawed, and even cruel (unlike the heroic stories we hear about) -- which makes the novel even more compelling.

[John Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was alugubrious read for me. kaleidoscopic views and observations consciously expressed in psychedelic streams of consciousness from the POS of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Mulitleveled and fascinating impossble to read quickly. A definite work-out for my puny brain. A visceral churning of 9/11. Brilliant! Original!

[A B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself skipping through quite a bit, though I felt bad for doing so. The language is strange and beautiful, but I'm too much of a literal, type A person to digest it properly. In other words, "it's not you, it's me."

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendously entertaining! I love the way Mr Toth uses language. Bravo!!