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ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines
A breathtaking free fall into the long-buried (and fictional) history of a utopian era in American lighter-than-air travel, as told by its death-defying, aero-acrobatic heroes.
Foster and Romo's 'real fake dream' of the future-past history of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a superb and loving phantasmagoria that gobbles up real histories for breakfast and spits out the seeds.--Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
In the early years of the twentieth-century, the use of airships known as dirigibles--some as large as one thousand feet long--was being promulgated in Southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism and poverty.
ELADATL tells the story of this little-known period of American air travel in a series of overlapping narratives told by key figures, accompanied by a number of historic photographs and recently discovered artifacts, with appendices provided to fill in the missing links. The story of the rise and fall of this ill-fated airship movement investigates its long-buried history, replete with heroes, villains, and moments of astonishing derring-do and terrifying disaster.
Written and presented as an "actual history of a fictional company," this surrealist, experimental novel is a tour de force of politicized fantastic fiction, a work of hybrid art-making distilled into a truly original literary form. Developed over a ten-year period of collaborations, community interventions, and staged performances, ELADATL is a furiously hilarious send-up of academic histories, mainstream narratives, and any traditional notions of the time-space continuum.
Poet Foster (Atomik Aztex) and artist Romo deliver a maddeningly accomplished inquiry into the secret history of East Los Angeles. . . . This is as much fun to read as it must have been to make.--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
One of the wildest, most creative and deeply-cutting novels I've read in years, a genuine piece of newness in both content and form. To wade through this surreal narrative archeology is to experience, in the finest sense, literature as fever dream.--Omar El Akkad, author of American War: A Novel
Visionary, hilarious, anarchic, this assemblage of breakneck dialog, blisteringly brilliant film criticism, bureaucratic documents, revolutionary chatter, mass transit, and fake dreams of the secret police, is the counterfactual novel to beat all counterfactual novels.--Mark Doten, author of Trump Sky Alpha
Hilarious and prophetic and profound, truer than truth, and realer than all realities currently available for purchase, ELADATL is strong medicine against the erasures of history, a mega-vitamin for struggles yet to come. This book combats despair.--Ben Ehrenreich, author of Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time
Foster and Romo's 'real fake dream' of the future-past history of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a superb and loving phantasmagoria that gobbles up real histories for breakfast and spits out the seeds.--Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
In the early years of the twentieth-century, the use of airships known as dirigibles--some as large as one thousand feet long--was being promulgated in Southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism and poverty.
ELADATL tells the story of this little-known period of American air travel in a series of overlapping narratives told by key figures, accompanied by a number of historic photographs and recently discovered artifacts, with appendices provided to fill in the missing links. The story of the rise and fall of this ill-fated airship movement investigates its long-buried history, replete with heroes, villains, and moments of astonishing derring-do and terrifying disaster.
Written and presented as an "actual history of a fictional company," this surrealist, experimental novel is a tour de force of politicized fantastic fiction, a work of hybrid art-making distilled into a truly original literary form. Developed over a ten-year period of collaborations, community interventions, and staged performances, ELADATL is a furiously hilarious send-up of academic histories, mainstream narratives, and any traditional notions of the time-space continuum.
Poet Foster (Atomik Aztex) and artist Romo deliver a maddeningly accomplished inquiry into the secret history of East Los Angeles. . . . This is as much fun to read as it must have been to make.--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
One of the wildest, most creative and deeply-cutting novels I've read in years, a genuine piece of newness in both content and form. To wade through this surreal narrative archeology is to experience, in the finest sense, literature as fever dream.--Omar El Akkad, author of American War: A Novel
Visionary, hilarious, anarchic, this assemblage of breakneck dialog, blisteringly brilliant film criticism, bureaucratic documents, revolutionary chatter, mass transit, and fake dreams of the secret police, is the counterfactual novel to beat all counterfactual novels.--Mark Doten, author of Trump Sky Alpha
Hilarious and prophetic and profound, truer than truth, and realer than all realities currently available for purchase, ELADATL is strong medicine against the erasures of history, a mega-vitamin for struggles yet to come. This book combats despair.--Ben Ehrenreich, author of Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time
328 pages, Paperback
Published April 6, 2021
12 people are currently reading
262 people want to read
About the author
Sesshu Foster
13 books41 followersSesshu Foster is an American poet. He has taught composition and literature in East LA since 1985, and has also taught at the University of Iowa, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Jack Kerouac School's Summer Writing Program. He was in residence at California State University, Los Angeles.
Awards:
2010 American Book Award for World Ball Notebook
2009 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry for World Ball Notebook
2005 Believer Book Award for Atomik Aztex
1990 American Book Award for Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry
Finalist for a PEN Center West Poetry Prize, for City Terrace Field Manual
Finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize for City Terrace Field Manual
Awards:
2010 American Book Award for World Ball Notebook
2009 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry for World Ball Notebook
2005 Believer Book Award for Atomik Aztex
1990 American Book Award for Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry
Finalist for a PEN Center West Poetry Prize, for City Terrace Field Manual
Finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize for City Terrace Field Manual
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 3, 2021
Consider the dirigible, the airship, the zeppelin. High hopes for luxurious travel in graceful ghostly style high above the churning ocean. Airborne behemoths, leviathans of the deep superimposed on the sky as a form of transportation, these sky-traversing vessels ran on super-flammable gas or something like that, the Hindenburg had some issues coming in for a landing in Lakehurst, NJ, 1937, immortalized on the cover of Led Zeppelin's first album, a black and white photo I saw in color one evening in my mid-teens, amazed the next morning to see it returned to its traditional state. Like Moby Dick crossed with Icarus, the gorgeous doomed airship seems like a top-notch symbol for ye olde American Dream of the melting pot raising all races up and up as co-equal citizens.
Sesshu Foster -- an (east) LA poet and author of Atomik Aztek, first published 19 years ago, winner of the Believer Book Award, and one of the most memorable, enjoyable, hyperkinetic, quantum-reality performances in American prose so far of the 21st century — returns with another all-over-the-place crazy soaring and ultimately exploded false history, deploying every possible postmodern/Laurence Sterne approach, of a sort of gypsy cab/alternate secret underground airship transportation line featuring obscurely located, beautifully illuminated stations outfitted with crappy plastic chairs, not following precise schedules at all, linking destinations all over California, extending maybe to the southeastern US and Mexico and Central America and maybe even Croatia?
Through the first 165 pages I was thinking how funny it was that the author's surname is Foster when the only author who approaches this sort of associative thematic play and delight in language was Foster Wallace, comparing it to Paul Betty's The Sellout or at times Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, all set to essentially jump up and down about it, but then came twenty pages of false random quotations attributed to famous names, a riveting fight scene, and then scenes that were really dreams involving characters with names (Mel, Sergio, etc) who didn't seem characterized at all or enough or certainly didn't exist in my mind as any sort of human construct. It then exploded into a flaming cascade of ephemera, an imaginative and creative use of old photographs and forged old documents and letters etc, a display of detritus, a cyclone of trash from the ashes of the doomed transportation line high above east LA and thereabouts that may or may not have ever existed, a dream that's real that's unreal that in its unreal reality is nevertheless the dream we've lived, or something like that -- maybe something conceptually extended to relate to the indigenous experience post-conquest in the southeastern American diaspora, or how the bloated flying whale of the American Dream explodes to reveal a perpetual underclass oppressed by corporations and the state?
As an idea, conceptually, the book sort of needs to go down in flames -- and the diffuse creative cascade of photos and texts and whatever in the book's last third felt more extraneous than significant, poignant, beautiful, politically insightful etc. Worth it alone however for the chapter about the Poet of the Universe. And overall highly highly recommended to anyone interested in the possibilities of the novel and unconcerned with plot and character etc or at least willing and able to read a novel like a poem.
Sesshu Foster -- an (east) LA poet and author of Atomik Aztek, first published 19 years ago, winner of the Believer Book Award, and one of the most memorable, enjoyable, hyperkinetic, quantum-reality performances in American prose so far of the 21st century — returns with another all-over-the-place crazy soaring and ultimately exploded false history, deploying every possible postmodern/Laurence Sterne approach, of a sort of gypsy cab/alternate secret underground airship transportation line featuring obscurely located, beautifully illuminated stations outfitted with crappy plastic chairs, not following precise schedules at all, linking destinations all over California, extending maybe to the southeastern US and Mexico and Central America and maybe even Croatia?
Through the first 165 pages I was thinking how funny it was that the author's surname is Foster when the only author who approaches this sort of associative thematic play and delight in language was Foster Wallace, comparing it to Paul Betty's The Sellout or at times Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, all set to essentially jump up and down about it, but then came twenty pages of false random quotations attributed to famous names, a riveting fight scene, and then scenes that were really dreams involving characters with names (Mel, Sergio, etc) who didn't seem characterized at all or enough or certainly didn't exist in my mind as any sort of human construct. It then exploded into a flaming cascade of ephemera, an imaginative and creative use of old photographs and forged old documents and letters etc, a display of detritus, a cyclone of trash from the ashes of the doomed transportation line high above east LA and thereabouts that may or may not have ever existed, a dream that's real that's unreal that in its unreal reality is nevertheless the dream we've lived, or something like that -- maybe something conceptually extended to relate to the indigenous experience post-conquest in the southeastern American diaspora, or how the bloated flying whale of the American Dream explodes to reveal a perpetual underclass oppressed by corporations and the state?
As an idea, conceptually, the book sort of needs to go down in flames -- and the diffuse creative cascade of photos and texts and whatever in the book's last third felt more extraneous than significant, poignant, beautiful, politically insightful etc. Worth it alone however for the chapter about the Poet of the Universe. And overall highly highly recommended to anyone interested in the possibilities of the novel and unconcerned with plot and character etc or at least willing and able to read a novel like a poem.
February 21, 2022
In spite of a world half-destroyed, a nation sunk in ruins of once proud ideologies, surrendering its will to fashion, self-delusion, self-absorption, self-defeat, and bad writing, I’m always happiest riding my bike.
I found much of this absurd to the point where I was angry. The premise is novel, minorities operate a zeppelin service in a California ravaged by climate change. Internecine conflict limits the enterprise, Armed bigotry is a more efficient nemesis.
I found about a fifth of this intriguing which motivated me to continue. There is no mistaking that this is a novel penned by a poet. Alas it is bloated by its own smug vision, however emancipatory such might esteem. It would have made a powerful story but in its present form it just invoked rage, albeit of the toothless variety.
I found much of this absurd to the point where I was angry. The premise is novel, minorities operate a zeppelin service in a California ravaged by climate change. Internecine conflict limits the enterprise, Armed bigotry is a more efficient nemesis.
I found about a fifth of this intriguing which motivated me to continue. There is no mistaking that this is a novel penned by a poet. Alas it is bloated by its own smug vision, however emancipatory such might esteem. It would have made a powerful story but in its present form it just invoked rage, albeit of the toothless variety.
March 20, 2022
Sesshu Foster's second novel again postulates an alternative future where marginalised groups (in this case mainly Hispanic) take centre stage. In this case the running of clandestine dirigible transport network. Yes, a preposterous idea but since it's told with a touch of humour I went with it and enjoyed the ride
May 21, 2021
I've posted a review on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fooj3...
Here I will add that I find the book an important instance of political engagement along with its other merits.
Here I will add that I find the book an important instance of political engagement along with its other merits.
August 13, 2025
3.5
A solarpunk novel in fragments about a POC-led anarchist dirigible air transport organization attempting to revolutionize air travel in the American Southwest after the world has been ravaged by climate change--ok, so this is obviously a must read based solely on that synopsis. And in many ways, it lives up to the incredible premise. But there are also a dozen or more subplots and threads that ended up weighing the narrative down for me: the war between wealthy white Hollywood elites and working class Los Angeles, also fought via dirigibles; a meta-documentary about the historical East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (there are multiple generations) that half the organization sees as their end product, rather than an actual revitalized lighter-than-air transport system; and a plot to assassinate the leaders of ELADATL, possibly from within the organization.
Though such a complex narrative demands a fragmented form, and there was certainly something exciting about not knowing where the story would go next and trying to piece together where the next chapter fits into the whole arc, I found it quite unmooring at times. Though this is marketed as a novel, it's divided up into sections that, up until the end, have seemingly very little to do with each other, spanning times and places and about a dozen characters; in that sense, I read this almost as a book of short stories. Some of the stories were more engaging than others, and as the tone, narration style, time, and place shift so many times, it's hard to feel grounded in the overarching novel's lore. (I say lore, rather than plot, because I felt that the authors were more interested in formalizing the history and mythology of an anarchist organization that is necessarily fragmented and contradictory than developing a traditional plot.)
Having said all that, the moments where this came together for me were totally unexpected, often funny, and intensely affecting. I'm thinking in particular of a few chapters toward the latter half--one in which the world ends as a couple are dining at a restaurant in LA's Chinatown with their two fighting children, and a chapter which recounts various versions of an extended dream sequence from a character's distant future--but there are more sprinkled throughout. The character development in particular was interesting, as each of these characters were shown even in short bursts through their individual idiosyncrasies. I think the book will really come together on subsequent read-throughs, so at some point this might become a 5-star review, but for now, I felt too unmoored by the inventive narrative structure. I'm excited to come back to this in a year or so.
A solarpunk novel in fragments about a POC-led anarchist dirigible air transport organization attempting to revolutionize air travel in the American Southwest after the world has been ravaged by climate change--ok, so this is obviously a must read based solely on that synopsis. And in many ways, it lives up to the incredible premise. But there are also a dozen or more subplots and threads that ended up weighing the narrative down for me: the war between wealthy white Hollywood elites and working class Los Angeles, also fought via dirigibles; a meta-documentary about the historical East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (there are multiple generations) that half the organization sees as their end product, rather than an actual revitalized lighter-than-air transport system; and a plot to assassinate the leaders of ELADATL, possibly from within the organization.
Though such a complex narrative demands a fragmented form, and there was certainly something exciting about not knowing where the story would go next and trying to piece together where the next chapter fits into the whole arc, I found it quite unmooring at times. Though this is marketed as a novel, it's divided up into sections that, up until the end, have seemingly very little to do with each other, spanning times and places and about a dozen characters; in that sense, I read this almost as a book of short stories. Some of the stories were more engaging than others, and as the tone, narration style, time, and place shift so many times, it's hard to feel grounded in the overarching novel's lore. (I say lore, rather than plot, because I felt that the authors were more interested in formalizing the history and mythology of an anarchist organization that is necessarily fragmented and contradictory than developing a traditional plot.)
Having said all that, the moments where this came together for me were totally unexpected, often funny, and intensely affecting. I'm thinking in particular of a few chapters toward the latter half--one in which the world ends as a couple are dining at a restaurant in LA's Chinatown with their two fighting children, and a chapter which recounts various versions of an extended dream sequence from a character's distant future--but there are more sprinkled throughout. The character development in particular was interesting, as each of these characters were shown even in short bursts through their individual idiosyncrasies. I think the book will really come together on subsequent read-throughs, so at some point this might become a 5-star review, but for now, I felt too unmoored by the inventive narrative structure. I'm excited to come back to this in a year or so.
Read
January 11, 2022Frederic Jameson, Mike Davis, and the Goodyear blimp.
Really fun, funny, and compelling.
Really fun, funny, and compelling.
April 24, 2021
I'm very happy to see this book that is so wild and experimental and brings the reader along in being aware of wide wonders. It could be read as a bitter indictment of late capitalism, in particular. Sort of a version of "I alone am escaped to tell this story". Another option is to read it as a type of book where the author fancies himself the smartest person in the room. I tried to read it just as it is, which means accepting viewpoints that I'm not immediately familiar with and not putting words or ideas into the author's mouth or intentions. I rarely re-read a book, but while I was reading this one I had the idea to re-read it to see if I could better understand why a passage might seem gratuitously descriptive, why a portion is given not only as a radio broadcast but a broadcast on a pirate radio station in the wee hours of a morning, why the notion of a secret history is invoked, and why the photos offered as "evidence" of the fictional ELADATL include people who appear to be dirigible pilots, among whom are the named authors of the book itself, who don't figure in the narrative. One thing I especially enjoyed about this book is the use the author made of Noah Purifoy's art and the Joshua Tree Outdoor Museum. The name Purifoy is dropped in the narrative casually, so the reader isn't made to feel less than for not knowing the name Purifoy. So many times in the book there are references to trash. To then find a depiction of a piece by Purifoy, who made assemblage art, made me think there is still reason to be hopeful for something better in this world. One thing I missed that I think isn't actually there in the narrative is the idea of Los Angeles being and meaning one thing to one person and another thing to another person, both of whom live in LA or in the LA area. This seems kind of important because the ELADATL is itself a community that is intended to serve a community, and both of these communities fit into a larger context that includes East Los Angeles and several other named cities where the dirigibles travel to and from. The strength of the narrative, it seems to me, is to give the reader individuals who accept their individuality and embrace whatever challenges they have selected for themselves.
February 1, 2021
“The purpose of art today is to debase, cut the dead weight of the empirical from the dirigible of expansive meaning, then let that collection of gasses expand, coalesce, and bubble up and ignite into intoxicating visions.” —From the book
The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (ELADATL) existed and may exist still in a recent parallel past and present, a Latinx re-casting of contemporary, historical, and cultural life in the East Los Angeles and Los Angeles areas, reflecting the challenges and creativity of marginalized people of color in Southern California.
Like Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, no matter how often an anecdote is related in ELADATL, the story remains, Roshomon-like, blurry around the edges, and its facts are not always the point. The story—such as it is—concerns ELADATL as (a) the name of a film in fund-raising status, (b) a military group in conflict with the (white-owned) zeppelins of Los Angeles, (c) an under-funded, semi-reliable transportation system for East LA-ers, who have no other way of getting back and for to work, or (d) all of the above, none of the above, some of the above, perhaps simultaneously.
Bolaño, however, really didn’t have a knack for comedy. ELADATL is often funny for its absurdist scenarios: “The Zoltan Monsanto Institute for Cognitive Dissension originated in 1953, when the death of Josef Stalin allowed select scientific figures in the American Intelligence Community to return to their research endeavors into ESP-Transference and Kinetic Manipulation as related to UFO clubs throughout history, particularly those that multiplied throughout the American Southwest during the 19th and 20th centuries, aided by funding from ‘anonymous’ donors with apparently indefatigable sources of income.” Zoltan Monsanto and his Institute soon give way to the Poet of the Universe, a position Monsanto created before his untimely death. Poet of the Universe and dirigibles—who knew?
Like Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the premise of what ELADATL seems to be about in the first 50 pages, explodes into a collage of lists, “agent reports,” photographs, notes, and narratives,—all more or less on the topic of the ELADATL from various viewpoints, times, and places. The energy level of the book is high as disparate voices describe eerie, suspenseful scenes, make comedic observations, and recount of historical crimes and atrocities. Recommended: experimental and accessible, briskly paced, with pointed humor throughout.
The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (ELADATL) existed and may exist still in a recent parallel past and present, a Latinx re-casting of contemporary, historical, and cultural life in the East Los Angeles and Los Angeles areas, reflecting the challenges and creativity of marginalized people of color in Southern California.
Like Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, no matter how often an anecdote is related in ELADATL, the story remains, Roshomon-like, blurry around the edges, and its facts are not always the point. The story—such as it is—concerns ELADATL as (a) the name of a film in fund-raising status, (b) a military group in conflict with the (white-owned) zeppelins of Los Angeles, (c) an under-funded, semi-reliable transportation system for East LA-ers, who have no other way of getting back and for to work, or (d) all of the above, none of the above, some of the above, perhaps simultaneously.
Bolaño, however, really didn’t have a knack for comedy. ELADATL is often funny for its absurdist scenarios: “The Zoltan Monsanto Institute for Cognitive Dissension originated in 1953, when the death of Josef Stalin allowed select scientific figures in the American Intelligence Community to return to their research endeavors into ESP-Transference and Kinetic Manipulation as related to UFO clubs throughout history, particularly those that multiplied throughout the American Southwest during the 19th and 20th centuries, aided by funding from ‘anonymous’ donors with apparently indefatigable sources of income.” Zoltan Monsanto and his Institute soon give way to the Poet of the Universe, a position Monsanto created before his untimely death. Poet of the Universe and dirigibles—who knew?
Like Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the premise of what ELADATL seems to be about in the first 50 pages, explodes into a collage of lists, “agent reports,” photographs, notes, and narratives,—all more or less on the topic of the ELADATL from various viewpoints, times, and places. The energy level of the book is high as disparate voices describe eerie, suspenseful scenes, make comedic observations, and recount of historical crimes and atrocities. Recommended: experimental and accessible, briskly paced, with pointed humor throughout.
May 28, 2021
A few short passages from Eladatl:
*
The United States was at war when we were growing up, as we came of age, during our young adulthood, throughout our lifetimes, and after we died. The wars would never stop, it was too late for that now. People didn’t mention it. It wasn’t worth thinking about. United States equals WAR. So? They got Mexicans to fight in the wars and deported then afterward. Some wars, if you blinked you missed them. Grenada. Panama. Of course, the industrial-military complex conducted full-blown wars in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan – and those soldiers, privatized mercenaries and civilian contractors, didn’t want to work in KFC and Popeye’s frying chickens like Mexicanos, though they did eat mountains of chicken.
*
In spite of a world half-destroyed, a nation sunk in ruins of once proud ideologies, surrendering its will to fashion, self-delusion, self-absorption, self-defeat, and bad writing, I’m always happiest riding my bike.
*
Because there were a million reasons not to do anything and only like four or five reasons to actually do anything, and people avoided that.
*
The United States was at war when we were growing up, as we came of age, during our young adulthood, throughout our lifetimes, and after we died. The wars would never stop, it was too late for that now. People didn’t mention it. It wasn’t worth thinking about. United States equals WAR. So? They got Mexicans to fight in the wars and deported then afterward. Some wars, if you blinked you missed them. Grenada. Panama. Of course, the industrial-military complex conducted full-blown wars in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan – and those soldiers, privatized mercenaries and civilian contractors, didn’t want to work in KFC and Popeye’s frying chickens like Mexicanos, though they did eat mountains of chicken.
*
In spite of a world half-destroyed, a nation sunk in ruins of once proud ideologies, surrendering its will to fashion, self-delusion, self-absorption, self-defeat, and bad writing, I’m always happiest riding my bike.
*
Because there were a million reasons not to do anything and only like four or five reasons to actually do anything, and people avoided that.
April 6, 2021
I’ve never enjoyed a story’s derailment as much as this, and it hops the rails again, again and again. Every section of ELADATL starts off as pie and instantly morphs into cake. With two authors at the helm, it has an Exquisite Corpse vibe, but clearly in the hands of professional aeronauts (just compare the oceanic difference between good and bad improv [either team’s name: The AeroNutz!]). What starts off as a collection of short stories, set in an alternative California, quickly becomes a movie and/or/about/within a dream and/or vice versa and so on. This sounds like a mess, I know, but like I said up top, every turn the book takes makes for a delightful treat. Baron Munchausen meets The Savage Detectives.
July 25, 2021
3.5 Stars. I'm sure I'll never read another book like this. It's unique and feels less like a novel than a collection of fiction elements bright together to give the reader a sense of a story. I enjoyed the world view and quirks of the book, more than the actual story it tried to tell.
You won't forget this book.
You won't forget this book.
April 8, 2024
Very interesting premise, but uneven execution. Some of the chapters were fantastic: the first radio conversation; the "we" narrator chapter; the ideological division between actual lighter than air transport and it's cinematic representation. But a lot of the others were too disjointed for my tastes. Hate to say it, but by the time I got to the appendices, I had lost interest and stopped there. One of the things that both grabbed me and later lost me was that I couldn't figure out the time setting: was it post apocalyptic or alternative history? Then again, I think that lack of grounding was partially the point? I feel like I would like this much more if I was better versed in the history and geography of LA, but I'm an East Coaster through and through.
September 23, 2021
A grand idea executed mostly very well. An alternate history and near-future glimpse of a ruined LA, shredded by capitalism and governmental neglect. A ragtag team of dirigible engineers and pilots try and prop up their public transit service in the face of monumental cost and environmental threat. There are strange holistic interviews and suspicious disappearances and murders. And all of it is accompanied by Romo's superb illustrations and supplementary material to enhance the counterfactual verisimilitude. The disjointed narrative meant that I did lose track of things more than once, and I was left wanting more, but I really enjoyed my time with this!
July 21, 2021
I’m glad this was written. I’m glad I bought it. Probably best read skimming. Probably about twice as long as it should be. I wanted more paperwork. I wanted less novel. Might be a book about political organizing. Might be best read aloud.
January 12, 2022
A necessary reminder to never judge a book by its cover; the flashy art design that catches your eye on a bookstore table could be housing one of the worst books you’ll ever read!
E.L.A.D.A.T.L. nonetheless marks an enormous accomplishment - namely, its authors have bravely pushed the scientifically observable limits of how boring and inaccessible a “novel” can possibly be! They’ve started with a fascinating idea - in an alternate LA, a band of outlaws create an Aboveground Railroad of blimps to figuratively and literally lift marginalized peoples out of poverty, discrimination, and climate apocalypse - and taken the bold and terrible approach of abstracting it to hell, tearing any semblance of a linear (or even legible) plot to surrealist shreds and letting them fly away in a tornado. Even that makes this sound more interesting than it is, because it would be physically impossible to take this idea and present it in a less interesting way than they’ve done. Each chapter jumps in time, perspective, and form (almost a third of the book is assorted documents, files, news clippings, etc, from this fictional world - not a single one of which is illuminating or entertaining in the least), and characters speak in a rambling, free-associative, nonsensical manner that gives the feeling of listening to a friend recall an incoherent dream with zero thematic or emotional relevance to your life whatsoever.
On generous estimate, I might’ve enjoyed a total of 20 of its 317 excruciating pages, and even those barely made any sense. There’s postmodern, and then there’s post-narrative; whatever this is, I don’t care. It’s an exactingly boring ode to pointlessness, and one of the worst attempts at art I’ve encountered in any medium in a long, long time. If that’s what its creators were going for, then let them have it - I certainly don’t want it.
E.L.A.D.A.T.L. nonetheless marks an enormous accomplishment - namely, its authors have bravely pushed the scientifically observable limits of how boring and inaccessible a “novel” can possibly be! They’ve started with a fascinating idea - in an alternate LA, a band of outlaws create an Aboveground Railroad of blimps to figuratively and literally lift marginalized peoples out of poverty, discrimination, and climate apocalypse - and taken the bold and terrible approach of abstracting it to hell, tearing any semblance of a linear (or even legible) plot to surrealist shreds and letting them fly away in a tornado. Even that makes this sound more interesting than it is, because it would be physically impossible to take this idea and present it in a less interesting way than they’ve done. Each chapter jumps in time, perspective, and form (almost a third of the book is assorted documents, files, news clippings, etc, from this fictional world - not a single one of which is illuminating or entertaining in the least), and characters speak in a rambling, free-associative, nonsensical manner that gives the feeling of listening to a friend recall an incoherent dream with zero thematic or emotional relevance to your life whatsoever.
On generous estimate, I might’ve enjoyed a total of 20 of its 317 excruciating pages, and even those barely made any sense. There’s postmodern, and then there’s post-narrative; whatever this is, I don’t care. It’s an exactingly boring ode to pointlessness, and one of the worst attempts at art I’ve encountered in any medium in a long, long time. If that’s what its creators were going for, then let them have it - I certainly don’t want it.
May 22, 2022
This is a sublimely weird book, less “plot” and more “stream of consciousness”. That may scratch your itch; it sometimes did for me but other times I wished it would get on with it. Definitely only recommended for those into extreme atmospherics (pun not intended…)
Worth noting that the cover (at least of my copy) speaks of the “early 20th century” so I went in expecting steampunk; it’s actually 21st century, ie present day-ish.
Worth noting that the cover (at least of my copy) speaks of the “early 20th century” so I went in expecting steampunk; it’s actually 21st century, ie present day-ish.
August 10, 2022
Reading this book, I frequently found myself wondering what exactly the point of the story was or if there was a plot at all. My head hurt after reading the first chapter, but tbf it got better after that. While I liked some of the characters I feel like the message or theme of the work was lost on me. I didn't get much out of reading this.
Although, the implicit criticism of the film industry in LA was interesting.
Although, the implicit criticism of the film industry in LA was interesting.
December 9, 2021
A book of wild imagination grounded in a politics and a history that feels as current as the future --you will never encounter something quite like it. A must-read for artists and writers interested in cross-genre collaboration, world-building, lost and recovered histories, and a fascination with dirigibles you didn't know you had.
June 3, 2021
I thought it would be more steampunk and less pointed socio-cultural critique of the Southland and workingman's history that never was, but still pretty funny and hallucinatory, and Oscar Zeta Acosta, the "Samoan attorney", is even a character.
May 28, 2021
Although it confronts us with many absurdities — none of them actually involving airships — this is a surprisingly poignant and even hopeful book.
June 24, 2021
You can read my review here: https://www.altaonline.com/books/fict...
August 12, 2021
This is by far the waviest book I have ever read. It was fun to read, if confusing, and though I’m glad I read it I will not ever read it again.
January 7, 2022
The street art of literature
March 31, 2025
If my brain were a bit bigger and a bit more fun, I think I could’ve liked this.
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May 28, 2021Although it confronts us with many absurdities — none of the them actually involving airships — this is a surprisingly poignant and even hopeful book.
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