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Flyboys
Tommy Riley and his friends are growing up among the men and machines of a key Air Force Base in the middle of the Cold War. One day, the boys sneak into a top-secret reconnaissance bomber, switch on the radio, and overhear a commie plan that is so diabolical . . .
225 pages, Paperback
First published October 27, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 5, 2019
Tom (Sawyer) Meets the Cuban Missile Crisis
This starts out like a comic book with a comic book hero, Maj Tom Riley, USAF, shooting down MiGs in his F-86 Sabre jet fighter, chortling at his superiority over Col Tomb, "a commie sack of dog poop." It continues as a fifties sit com as our hero wakes up and find himself a seventh-grader living on an Air Force base in Kansas with two little sisters and two little bothers and a perfect sit com mom who looks like Elizabeth Taylor, "but unlike Liz, she sang soprano at church, could antique furniture, mated for life...[and] her famous coconut cake always got top dollar at Bake Sales." As Tom gets ready for school the third person narrative becomes something like Huck Finn's first person, circa 1962, as he is told by his mom to apologize to his sister for elbowing her. "Sheesh. No way around it," he laments under his breath. When mom tells him to wait for his sisters for school, he dead pans to himself, "Jeesh, have a cow, why doncha?"
One is beginning to wonder at this point if Tom Hanley, novelist, is for real, or is he just putting us on? Is this satire, or is this guy unconscious? We next get a full day at Saint Luke middle school with Sister Redempta, terminal boredom, girls "starting to grow, you know...Breasts!" and Tom making like Walter Mitty with the heroic fantasies, this time reeling in a 2,000 pound, plus marlin with an 8-lb. test line. And then we have Chapter 4, "The Oval Office." It's the Cuban missile crisis and we're in the war room with JFK and his Boston accent and there's the Joint Chiefs and MacNamara and Schlesinger (no doubt taking copious notes) and they're all making like characters from Dr. Strangelove. LBJ hurries in, tucking in his shirt, wondering "what the sam-hill" is "going on." Marilyn Monroe (!) makes a discreet exit from close proximity to JFK, turning to breathe out "a throaty, Yes sir, Mr. President sir" as the assembled "loins of the most powerful men in the free world stirred as one."
By now I've figured out what's going on. Hanley is having one hellsapoppin' good time recounting a fantasy boy's life as a gee whiz fun satirical novel (with perhaps a grownup fantasy of Steven Spielberg taking a six-figure option on it, which might happen: Spielberg loves kids and he'd like nothing more than to remake the Kubrick/Terry Southern classic in a more Spielbergian style). But I have a feeling that some of this may have gone over the head of a few readers, particularly when one considers that the author bills himself on the cover as "an artist, writer, surfer, pilot, and a regular guy," a Boy Scout Tenderfoot and a Leo "--but not one of those, you know, loud and pushy ones." This guy could actually BELIEVE this stuff he's writing, one imagines. He sure as hell ain't no fancy-smarmy pseudo intellectual from Harvard Yard.
The prose glitters with authentic detail and a kind of all fools wisecracking ("holy cats, ching-gow, correct-a-mundo, no problemo, danged" this and "danged" that, and even "darnit," etc., etc. and nearly ad infinitum). Particularly funny was the take off by the kids on the neologism, "eat me!" on pages 56 and 57. Hanley returns the early sixties, BH (Before Hippies), which are really the fifties, as though well-remembered or well-researched, and makes the words run across the page in a readable and agreeable manner. (By the way, great job of proofreading by somebody.)
While this is not any nouveau artistic accomplishment, this is a fun read that really would make a swell comedy for the silver screen even though things do get a little fantastic as the plot unravels and even though an ex-US President (Lyndon Baines Johnson) does take some terrible satirical licks en route (ha, ha) and even though General Curtis E. LeMay is quoted as saying stuff like, "What in blazes do you mean?" and even though there's not a single f-word to be found anywhere nor any dope, drugs, booze or--heck--even any rock and roll. Bottom line, if you don't like this novel, you must be a girl!
--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
This starts out like a comic book with a comic book hero, Maj Tom Riley, USAF, shooting down MiGs in his F-86 Sabre jet fighter, chortling at his superiority over Col Tomb, "a commie sack of dog poop." It continues as a fifties sit com as our hero wakes up and find himself a seventh-grader living on an Air Force base in Kansas with two little sisters and two little bothers and a perfect sit com mom who looks like Elizabeth Taylor, "but unlike Liz, she sang soprano at church, could antique furniture, mated for life...[and] her famous coconut cake always got top dollar at Bake Sales." As Tom gets ready for school the third person narrative becomes something like Huck Finn's first person, circa 1962, as he is told by his mom to apologize to his sister for elbowing her. "Sheesh. No way around it," he laments under his breath. When mom tells him to wait for his sisters for school, he dead pans to himself, "Jeesh, have a cow, why doncha?"
One is beginning to wonder at this point if Tom Hanley, novelist, is for real, or is he just putting us on? Is this satire, or is this guy unconscious? We next get a full day at Saint Luke middle school with Sister Redempta, terminal boredom, girls "starting to grow, you know...Breasts!" and Tom making like Walter Mitty with the heroic fantasies, this time reeling in a 2,000 pound, plus marlin with an 8-lb. test line. And then we have Chapter 4, "The Oval Office." It's the Cuban missile crisis and we're in the war room with JFK and his Boston accent and there's the Joint Chiefs and MacNamara and Schlesinger (no doubt taking copious notes) and they're all making like characters from Dr. Strangelove. LBJ hurries in, tucking in his shirt, wondering "what the sam-hill" is "going on." Marilyn Monroe (!) makes a discreet exit from close proximity to JFK, turning to breathe out "a throaty, Yes sir, Mr. President sir" as the assembled "loins of the most powerful men in the free world stirred as one."
By now I've figured out what's going on. Hanley is having one hellsapoppin' good time recounting a fantasy boy's life as a gee whiz fun satirical novel (with perhaps a grownup fantasy of Steven Spielberg taking a six-figure option on it, which might happen: Spielberg loves kids and he'd like nothing more than to remake the Kubrick/Terry Southern classic in a more Spielbergian style). But I have a feeling that some of this may have gone over the head of a few readers, particularly when one considers that the author bills himself on the cover as "an artist, writer, surfer, pilot, and a regular guy," a Boy Scout Tenderfoot and a Leo "--but not one of those, you know, loud and pushy ones." This guy could actually BELIEVE this stuff he's writing, one imagines. He sure as hell ain't no fancy-smarmy pseudo intellectual from Harvard Yard.
The prose glitters with authentic detail and a kind of all fools wisecracking ("holy cats, ching-gow, correct-a-mundo, no problemo, danged" this and "danged" that, and even "darnit," etc., etc. and nearly ad infinitum). Particularly funny was the take off by the kids on the neologism, "eat me!" on pages 56 and 57. Hanley returns the early sixties, BH (Before Hippies), which are really the fifties, as though well-remembered or well-researched, and makes the words run across the page in a readable and agreeable manner. (By the way, great job of proofreading by somebody.)
While this is not any nouveau artistic accomplishment, this is a fun read that really would make a swell comedy for the silver screen even though things do get a little fantastic as the plot unravels and even though an ex-US President (Lyndon Baines Johnson) does take some terrible satirical licks en route (ha, ha) and even though General Curtis E. LeMay is quoted as saying stuff like, "What in blazes do you mean?" and even though there's not a single f-word to be found anywhere nor any dope, drugs, booze or--heck--even any rock and roll. Bottom line, if you don't like this novel, you must be a girl!
--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
July 2, 2009
Such a wonderful surprise! Walter Mitty isn't dead, he lives on in this fabulous tale of little boys growing up on an Air Force base during the Cuban Missle Crisis. Overhearing what is going on in the larger world after all of their fathers and all (well as it turns out, not quite all) of the base's airplanes have been deployed to face off with Castro and the Soviets, these modern little rascals determine to join the fight! Charming writing and disarmingly honest portrayal of the dreams of little boys - how has this not been made into a movie?
June 30, 2009
I don't think this is in print anymore, but if you can ever get your hands on it, its great. Its the story about a group of four little boys living on a military base during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They decide to take matters into their own hands and show the US and the world that the Russians are lying to us.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews