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Pilot Impostor
A startling, shape-shifting book of prose and images that draws on an unexpected pair of inspirations--the poetry of Fernando Pessoa and the history of air disasters--to investigate con men, identity politics, failures of leadership, the privilege of ineptitude, the slave trade, and the nature of consciousness.
Early in 2017, on a plane from Cape Verde to Lisbon, author and visual artist James Hannaham started reading Pessoa & Co., Richard Zenith's English translation of Fernando Pessoa's selected poetry. This was two months after Trump's presidential election; like many people, ideas about unfitness for service and failures of leadership were on his mind. Imagine his consternation upon discovering the first line of the first poem in the book: I've never kept sheep/But it's as if I did.
The Portuguese, Hannaham had been musing, were responsible for jump-starting colonialism and the slave trade. Pessoa published one book in Portuguese in his lifetime, Mensagem, which consisted of paeans to European explorers. He also invented about seventy-five alter egos, each with a unique name and style, long before aliases and avatars became a feature of modern culture.
Hannaham felt compelled to engage with Pessoa's work. Once in Lisbon, he began a practice of reading a poem from Zenith's anthology and responding in whatever mode seemed to click. Even before his trip, however, he had become fascinated by Air Disasters, a TV show that tells the story of different plane crashes in each of its episodes. These stories--as well as the textures and squares of the city he was visiting--began to resonate with his concerns and Pessoa's, and make their way into the book.
Through its inspirations and juxtapositions and its agile shifts of voice and form--from meme to fiction to aphorism to screenshot to lyric--the book leads us to reckon with the most universal questions. What is the self? What holds the self--multiple, fragmented, performative, increasingly algorithmically controlled, constantly under threat of death--intact and aloft?
Early in 2017, on a plane from Cape Verde to Lisbon, author and visual artist James Hannaham started reading Pessoa & Co., Richard Zenith's English translation of Fernando Pessoa's selected poetry. This was two months after Trump's presidential election; like many people, ideas about unfitness for service and failures of leadership were on his mind. Imagine his consternation upon discovering the first line of the first poem in the book: I've never kept sheep/But it's as if I did.
The Portuguese, Hannaham had been musing, were responsible for jump-starting colonialism and the slave trade. Pessoa published one book in Portuguese in his lifetime, Mensagem, which consisted of paeans to European explorers. He also invented about seventy-five alter egos, each with a unique name and style, long before aliases and avatars became a feature of modern culture.
Hannaham felt compelled to engage with Pessoa's work. Once in Lisbon, he began a practice of reading a poem from Zenith's anthology and responding in whatever mode seemed to click. Even before his trip, however, he had become fascinated by Air Disasters, a TV show that tells the story of different plane crashes in each of its episodes. These stories--as well as the textures and squares of the city he was visiting--began to resonate with his concerns and Pessoa's, and make their way into the book.
Through its inspirations and juxtapositions and its agile shifts of voice and form--from meme to fiction to aphorism to screenshot to lyric--the book leads us to reckon with the most universal questions. What is the self? What holds the self--multiple, fragmented, performative, increasingly algorithmically controlled, constantly under threat of death--intact and aloft?
208 pages, Hardcover
Published November 30, 2021
11 people are currently reading
1366 people want to read
About the author
James Hannaham
16 books350 followersJames Hannaham is the author of the novel Delicious Foods, winner of the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, God Says No, was published by McSweeney's in 2009 and was a finalist for a Lambda Book Award, a semifinalist for a VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and was named an honor book by the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Awards. His short fiction has appeared in BOMB, The Literary Review, Nerve.com, Open City, and several anthologies. He has written for the Village Voice, Spin, Blender, Out, Us, New York Magazine, The Barnes & Noble Review and The New York Times Magazine. Once upon a time in 2008, he was a staff writer at Salon.com. He has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and Fundación Valparaíso and a NYFFA Fellowship. He teaches in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute. In November 2021, Soft Skull published Pilot Impostor, a multi-genre book of responses to poems by Fernando Pessoa, and in 2022, Little, Brown will release his third novel, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 9, 2022
The hardest review to write is of a singularly amazing book. And this one is so experiential, it's difficult to describe. It's just flat-out extraordinary. And I've never read anything like it.
If you mash together the title words, it sounds like *posture* and that's precisely what this collaboration of prose, poetry, and visuals is about. This is an exploration of the self, consciousness, and the many personas each of us presents to the world. Throughout, the author views the world through the lens of Fernando Pessoa's poetry, a synchronous act, since Pessoa himself went by many personas, even inventing elaborate biographies for each one.
Behind, and threaded through the improvisations, are the ideas that we are all acted upon by the fullness of history, and that no self exists in a vacuum. You can see the evidence of its effects in contemporary events. Colonialism has carved out a completely different world than it would have been without predatory imperialism. The echoes are louder for some than for others, resulting in definitive inequities.
Hannaham has a deft touch by infusing humor, without defanging the points he makes. Even his references to air disasters and the self as a rather unreliable pilot, are both fascinating and palatable. I laughed as often as I marveled at this incredible indescribable work of art.
If you mash together the title words, it sounds like *posture* and that's precisely what this collaboration of prose, poetry, and visuals is about. This is an exploration of the self, consciousness, and the many personas each of us presents to the world. Throughout, the author views the world through the lens of Fernando Pessoa's poetry, a synchronous act, since Pessoa himself went by many personas, even inventing elaborate biographies for each one.
Behind, and threaded through the improvisations, are the ideas that we are all acted upon by the fullness of history, and that no self exists in a vacuum. You can see the evidence of its effects in contemporary events. Colonialism has carved out a completely different world than it would have been without predatory imperialism. The echoes are louder for some than for others, resulting in definitive inequities.
Hannaham has a deft touch by infusing humor, without defanging the points he makes. Even his references to air disasters and the self as a rather unreliable pilot, are both fascinating and palatable. I laughed as often as I marveled at this incredible indescribable work of art.
July 3, 2021
This was a delightfully weird book that I am going to struggle to describe but definitely enjoyed reading. Part poetry, part art, part hallucination (?), part meditation on mortality and competence and race. Pop an edible, pick it up and just experience it.
November 22, 2021
PILOT IMPOSTOR by James Hannaham is such a unique book! It’s my first hardcover book from Soft Skull Press. Reading this book is like taking a flight through a creative literary mind with a shape shifting flight plan. Taking inspiration from Fernando Pessoa’s poetry and air disasters this book features prose and full colour images. It was a thrill to turn the page! I really enjoyed this book! It totally appeals to my love of poetry, radical writing and short fiction. I’m very curious to read the poetry of Pessoa now. I love a book that inspires me to keep reading!
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Also love the jacket design and Soft Skull art direction by House of Thought!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!
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Also love the jacket design and Soft Skull art direction by House of Thought!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy!
November 23, 2021
My review can be found here:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
January 26, 2022
So great. So funny and smart and on point.
But this is clearly poetry. Is Hannaham licensed to do this? Should we report him?
But this is clearly poetry. Is Hannaham licensed to do this? Should we report him?
December 22, 2021
Intricate. Weird. Fun.
This book of prose, images, and air disasters is as bizarre as it is gripping.
This book of prose, images, and air disasters is as bizarre as it is gripping.
December 11, 2021
Darkly humorous and absurd. Stellar existential reading.
September 27, 2021
Seeing it as part art book, part prose poem collection, part written performance art, and part homage to Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, I took to this work with growing enthusiasm. The author doesn't explain his ideas which sometimes slide off into near-obsessions, but it's pretty clear that they all have at least a little to do with the modern facades which we encounter in life. That would come off as pompous but he keeps a light touch on his little snippets, bringing farce into accounts of destruction, nonsense and word play in among intelligible narrative pieces which have the beginnings of plot. There is racial tension along the way, disturbing mid-air mishaps, avant-garde visual art alongside scenes of disaster and horror, and by the end a group of poems split up into actual lines of verse. I thought it was fresh and intriguing, other people might find this book less substantial than what they would like. One thing it did do was to make me go looking for works by poet Fernando Pessoa which he wrote under numerous pseudonyms so I could try figuring out what that was all about.
I received an advance reading copy of this book without DRM through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review the publisher could use as promotion.
I received an advance reading copy of this book without DRM through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review the publisher could use as promotion.
January 13, 2022
James Hannaham is sheer genius. This small book of micro-essays, prose poems, verse, photographs, musings and howls just bowled me over, by turns moving, hilarious, goofy, deep, mystifying, true, questioning, and searingly beautiful. Most pieces are less than a page long. Themes recur in various guises--planes, piloting and air disasters (who is driving this thing?), impersonation, European explorers, a Black man's reaction to living in Black skin in a tricky and unjust world and his response to that world, including incidents as small almost hitting a white woman stepping out into traffic with the confidence that the motorists will not hit her--the ultimate sense of privilege--and what if he, a Black man, had hit her? ("Dear White Woman I Nearly Hit with My Car This Morning."
The works were begun as responses to a volume of Fernando Pessoa's poetry the author had taken along with him on a trip to Portugal, and the variety of perspectives echo Pessoa's multiplicities of personae, the "authors" of his poetry, and most of the pieces include a line from a Pessoa poem so small it's almost invisible--another layer of puzzle--as well as intriguing small cubes of photographs (think of Sebald after a stint as a graphic designer)
I especially enjoyed reading this right after finishing How to Live by Sarah Bakewell, about Montaigne, because it seemed to continue the conversation.
Just a few quotes-- with caveat, that the more mysterious and deep pieces can't be quoted with pull quotes, as their impact has to be taken in toto. But here's a flavor:
From "Pilot Impostor"-- "I have impersonated things that I never became. But everything I did become, I faked at first. (Some things I might still be faking)..."
"On Seeing Pessoa by A. Butterfly--//\/\Pessoa\\\\///\/\/...." hahahahahaha....
"Love Song of the Pragmatist"--"Let us go together, my love, hand in hand (until we need our MetroCards)..."
"Slavish Rhythm"--"... 'Yo neighbors' aint did you no favors, they savored sabers and craved yo labors, the slavers took cavers on the waves without waivers--weavers, heavers, cleavers, and achievers who got fevers from the lovers of other mothers' brothers who fucked out, lucked out ducked out and made suckers made Smuckers in the muck for a buck, shuck like a scmuck, pluck a duck for Huck in a truck..." (That Huck in a truck still gets me.)
"Age of Discovery"--"Nobody discovered much of anything. They walked into a furnished apartment during a party and said, 'Mine...'
"Future"--"O unknowable circus wheel of infinite possibilities many bad.... O unidirectional conveyor belt... O cryptic crypt toward which we creep...."
"On Arriving Nowhere"-- "Tipping. Tipping in Nowhere can get complicated..."
A very handsome short book in an attractive square format, Pilot Impostor would make a terrific gift for people who like to burnish their brains a bit. I'm already making a list.
The works were begun as responses to a volume of Fernando Pessoa's poetry the author had taken along with him on a trip to Portugal, and the variety of perspectives echo Pessoa's multiplicities of personae, the "authors" of his poetry, and most of the pieces include a line from a Pessoa poem so small it's almost invisible--another layer of puzzle--as well as intriguing small cubes of photographs (think of Sebald after a stint as a graphic designer)
I especially enjoyed reading this right after finishing How to Live by Sarah Bakewell, about Montaigne, because it seemed to continue the conversation.
Just a few quotes-- with caveat, that the more mysterious and deep pieces can't be quoted with pull quotes, as their impact has to be taken in toto. But here's a flavor:
From "Pilot Impostor"-- "I have impersonated things that I never became. But everything I did become, I faked at first. (Some things I might still be faking)..."
"On Seeing Pessoa by A. Butterfly--//\/\Pessoa\\\\///\/\/...." hahahahahaha....
"Love Song of the Pragmatist"--"Let us go together, my love, hand in hand (until we need our MetroCards)..."
"Slavish Rhythm"--"... 'Yo neighbors' aint did you no favors, they savored sabers and craved yo labors, the slavers took cavers on the waves without waivers--weavers, heavers, cleavers, and achievers who got fevers from the lovers of other mothers' brothers who fucked out, lucked out ducked out and made suckers made Smuckers in the muck for a buck, shuck like a scmuck, pluck a duck for Huck in a truck..." (That Huck in a truck still gets me.)
"Age of Discovery"--"Nobody discovered much of anything. They walked into a furnished apartment during a party and said, 'Mine...'
"Future"--"O unknowable circus wheel of infinite possibilities many bad.... O unidirectional conveyor belt... O cryptic crypt toward which we creep...."
"On Arriving Nowhere"-- "Tipping. Tipping in Nowhere can get complicated..."
A very handsome short book in an attractive square format, Pilot Impostor would make a terrific gift for people who like to burnish their brains a bit. I'm already making a list.
December 30, 2025
some favorite quotes
"The hawk wants a juicy mouse, okay, not your stupid ass"
"The mixed race child of two homos."
"If they say that God said it, God said it, so shut up"
"The hawk wants a juicy mouse, okay, not your stupid ass"
"The mixed race child of two homos."
"If they say that God said it, God said it, so shut up"
March 1, 2022
I love the design, and the high concept style on display here. Pictures of air disasters, bursts of poetry, snippets of translations, and philosophical ramblings make for a hell of an interesting book. If you dig French style experimental writing or esoteric poetry or weird autobiographical philosophy chapbook style writing, you could definitely do worse than checking this out. Best read, I think, in stops and starts, as that feels like how it was written.
October 9, 2022
Wanted to like this more than I did. Interesting format, funny in some spots, but overall this didn't work for me. It did kindle an interest in reading Pessoa, which I will do.
March 24, 2022
Well isn’t this just a fragmentary, hypnotic, multidisciplinary art installation between two covers!
In short: I thought this was a neat read! Very weird! Enjoyable! Confounding! Took a lot away from it, there’s so much pleasure in being carried along by something like this, Check it out!
In long: Pilot Impostor is a consistently surprising and flat-out strange reading experience. It feels more personal than a straight-up memoir or poetry, as Hanneham brings you on an intimate tour of his brain in a moment of time as you look at pictures of planes and square-based art while zinging from personal anecdote to plane crash to historical footnote to sociopolitical comment to philosophical introspection to poem to nouveau fable to chunk of text that defies neat categorization. It’s sometimes silly, sometimes confounding, constantly changing tempo on you.
And this book is really fucking playful!! There are unexpected moments of humor and simplicity bursting through even the headiest or airiest moments of the book, a reminder that not all art has to be understood like a math problem or be designed to jerk the feelings out of you like a box of Kleenex. Art isn’t a riddle to be solved, it says, what are you, a narc? Now hold on while I give you a delicate metaphor for the self. Please pause for a moment of deep thought and sincerity. This note about dead authors ends in a pun.
I can truly say that I never knew what the next page was going to hold, or how to connect every dot, or even if I should. Hanneham shows his work by noting on almost every page a poem that has a thematic or formal similarity to what he has written. Given that the book deals with the self, artifice, and the construction of meaning…this feels to me less like a citing of sources and more like a dare, challenging the reader to keep looking deeper as if there’s something more or truer than what��s on the page.
That said, read about the poet Fernando Passoa before you read this book (even just a little).
In short: I thought this was a neat read! Very weird! Enjoyable! Confounding! Took a lot away from it, there’s so much pleasure in being carried along by something like this, Check it out!
In long: Pilot Impostor is a consistently surprising and flat-out strange reading experience. It feels more personal than a straight-up memoir or poetry, as Hanneham brings you on an intimate tour of his brain in a moment of time as you look at pictures of planes and square-based art while zinging from personal anecdote to plane crash to historical footnote to sociopolitical comment to philosophical introspection to poem to nouveau fable to chunk of text that defies neat categorization. It’s sometimes silly, sometimes confounding, constantly changing tempo on you.
And this book is really fucking playful!! There are unexpected moments of humor and simplicity bursting through even the headiest or airiest moments of the book, a reminder that not all art has to be understood like a math problem or be designed to jerk the feelings out of you like a box of Kleenex. Art isn’t a riddle to be solved, it says, what are you, a narc? Now hold on while I give you a delicate metaphor for the self. Please pause for a moment of deep thought and sincerity. This note about dead authors ends in a pun.
I can truly say that I never knew what the next page was going to hold, or how to connect every dot, or even if I should. Hanneham shows his work by noting on almost every page a poem that has a thematic or formal similarity to what he has written. Given that the book deals with the self, artifice, and the construction of meaning…this feels to me less like a citing of sources and more like a dare, challenging the reader to keep looking deeper as if there’s something more or truer than what��s on the page.
That said, read about the poet Fernando Passoa before you read this book (even just a little).
May 12, 2023
A fascinating and utterly unique book. Is it a graphic novel? Poetry? Philosophy? Humor? Yes and none of these. Hannaham muses on the nature of self, politics, air disasters, obscure Portuguese photographers, family and romance, and pretty much everything else. His writing ranges from the profound ("Imagine just for a moment a world where everyone - absolutely everyone - was equal to everyone else. / That was a trick. Everyone has always been equal") to the hilarious ("While turtles might not anticipate death, instinct tells them that sharks will f--- their s--- up"). A book to sit down with for an evening or a lifetime.
December 30, 2022
A book of prose poems obsessed with plane crashes and fake news and Fernando Pessoa’s many alter egos. I don’t know if this is a novel or a collection of essays or fractured absurdities that are so funny that you can’t help but cry. Soberingly hysterical. Hilariously melancholic. James Hannaham has relesaed a truly unique collection with Pilot Imposter.
November 17, 2023
I love Hannaham as a writer and I still do but this was just decent for me. Definitely thought provoking but so abstract at times that I couldn’t get back on the horse for some of the chapters. Super unique though. Not necessarily easy to read but simultaneously quick? I suggest but no need to make it #1 on your “to be read”.
March 4, 2022
This book was delightfully absurd, yet in just the right amount to still be enjoyable. So many of the thoughts expressed within put voice to words I find hard to reach about topics I've always wondered if other people pondered also
February 4, 2022
Pretty weird and pretty brilliant.
April 9, 2022
Beautiful and I promise I am not just saying that because James Hannaham is a wonderful human and professor.
June 3, 2022
Like nothing I've read. Diabolical. Enjoyed reading it alongside the Pessoa, also.
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August 1, 2023Very cool and weird.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews