The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight

by Christopher Schaberg

This is a book about airport stories. It is about common narratives of airports that circulate in everyday life, and about the secret stories of airports-the strange or hidden narratives that do not always fit into standard ideas of these in-between places. Tales of near disaster, endless delays, dramatic weather shifts, a lost bag that suddenly appears-such stories are familiar accounts of a place that seems to thrive on and recycle its own mythologies.

The Textual Life of Airports shows how airports demand to be read. Working at the intersection of literary studies and cultural theory, Schaberg tracks airport stories in American literature, as well as in a range of visual texts (film, airport art, magazine illustrations). It accounts for how airports appear in literature throughout the twentieth-century, while also examining the influx of airport figures in markedly post-9/11 literature and culture. These literary and cultural representations work together to form "the textual life of airports."

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Philosophy

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Emmkay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in the topic - airports and the culture of flight. But this was a hard slog, heavy on the Derrida, Baudrillard, and academic jargon.

[Zane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I thought of reading in airports (and during flight) as a fairly straightforward matter. Never again. In The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight, author Christopher Schaberg takes the term "airport reading" to a whole new nuanced level. He explores an incredible range of "texts"--from a Fitzgerald novel to a series of modern art installments--and makes his own interpretations as to the ways in which we experience, talk about, and understand air travel. Each chapter begins with an account of Schaberg's own experience working in a small mountain-town airport. These vignettes ground the more philosophical and academic sections of the book. As an example, I was struck by a sentence at the beginning of chapter three: "By boarding a flight carrying a concealed weapon, federal agents produce the state of emergency that they claim to be protecting the flight from." Schaberg starts off the chapter with a description of how federal agents can get special permission to carry a weapon. And then he ends the chapter with the story of Haisong Jiang--the innocent lover who caused a security breach havoc in the Newark Airport. Schaberg is a master at framing such fascinating juxtapositions: the seriousness of a secret weapon vs. a simple kiss on the wrong side of a security line. Overall, I found this book to be a uniquely accessible and critical look at an everyday phenomena. It gave me a whole new context in which to "read" the culture of flight.

[Michael Goodine · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like the analysis of popular culture and you also like airports, this is the book for you.  In the first of his three books about airports, Loyola University professor Christopher Shaberg explores how they have been depicted in literature (high and low) over the years. This is a curious topic - and not for everyone - but the book has attracted a lot of admirers.

[Biblio Files (takingadayoff) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course you bring a book to read at the airport. But did you ever consider reading the airport itself? Christopher Schaberg has made a career of reading the airport and in The Textual Life of Airports, he examines some of the ways airports have been portrayed in literature and film, and considers what the airport has to say to us.

By "reading" the airport, Schaberg seems to mean looking at the airport and thinking about it. Normally, that kind of thing strikes me as being an egghead-ish thing to do. But I've spent a lot of time in airports, and I think I get where Schaberg is coming from. The airport is not your destination, you're only there to get from one place to another, even if you've just arrived, you're still on your way to a hotel, a conference center, home. Yet, it's nothing like a train station or a bus station. I certainly wouldn't want to "read" a bus station.

Schaberg looks at the art in the airport, at the carpet, at the landscaping, the architecture, at the security screening. He reads what novelists have written about airports, analyzes how filmmakers have portrayed airports, listens to airport-inspired music. He spends an entire chapter deconstructing three Hardy Boys books that featured airports.

Fittingly, I found The Textual Life of Airports in a London book store (Foyle's) and read the book on the plane (and airport) returning home to Las Vegas. This really would be an excellent book to stock in any airport bookstore.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this because I was working on a review that involved a big scene at an airport. It arrived too late to be much help for that review, but I'm glad I read this because it is a beautiful meditation on the textual life of airports. Or to put it another way, the way that airports are represented in art and literature. Some of the work on airport artwork, which is generally so ephemeral was really interesting.

[Jeehyun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable. I particularly appreciated the overall clarity of the prose and the accesibility of the author's theoretical engagement. I found the literary interpretations engaging despite my unfamiliarity with most texts mentioned, partly because his passion was quite evident.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm probably biased because i love airports and i love cultural studies, but this book brilliantly combines them both, interspersed with the author's real-life experience as an airport employee - great read for truly encompassing perspectives on what airports are, do and mean :)