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In the town of Babbington, New York, at the tail end of an alternative version of the 1950s, a young dreamer named Peter Leroy has set out to build a flying motorcycle, using a design ripped from the pages of Impractical Craftsman magazine.
This two-wheeled wonder will carry him not only to such faraway places as New Mexico and the Summer Institute in Mathematics, Physics, and Weaponry, but deep into the heart of a commercialized American culture, and return him to Babbington a hero.
More than forty years later, as Babbington is about to rebuild itself as a theme park commemorating his historic flight, Peter must return home to set the record straight, and confess that his flight did not match the legend that it inspired.
Flying is an artful, slyly intelligent, wildly inventive, and buoyant comedy of remarkable wingspan, a hilarious story of hoaxes, digressions, do-it-yourself engineering, and the wilds of memory—and a great satire of magical thinking in America.
“A reminder of how entertaining a novel can be when it slips the surly bonds of realism. . . . The effect is like a happy-go-lucky Nabokov, with all the road-tripping wordplay and none of the incest. . . . Kraft’s affectionately satirical, buoyant language makes Flying soar.”
Radhika Jones, TIME
“Beneath its aw-shucks surface, Flying is an ingenious, at times dizzyingly self-inverting assault not only on the truth, but on the concoction of palatable fictions, as well. Its only inviolate god is the human imagination; it’s a paean to flight by a boy who never left the ground, except, perhaps, where it counts in his mind.”
Laura Miller, The New York Times
“Eric Kraft is an oddball, an eccentric, a bit of a genius — the writerly equivalent of a dreamer who puts together weird and wonderful contraptions in his garage. . . . Kraft has made his career out of high-wire performance, seizing on the merest hint or detail and spinning it into magic. . . . Flying . . . feels like Kraft’s grandest achievement since Herb ’n’ Lorna.”
Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
“If you were to pick up a hitchhiking Jorge Luis Borges and Robert Pirsig, or to listen as Thomas Pynchon recited Ulysses from memory over longnecks on J. D. Salinger’s tab, you might catch the flavor of Eric Kraft’s work.”
Matthew Battles, Barnes & Noble Review
“That rare book that can change the way you look at the world. Peter looks at life as if he’s seeing it for the first time. If you’ll only buy into this, you can find the same joy Peter Leroy finds.”
William McKeen, St. Petersburg Times
“Once again, wizardly Kraft mixes boy-wonder high jinks with metaphysical musings, tall tales, and true love in a zany, heart-lifting escape from the everyday.”
Donna Seaman, Booklist
This two-wheeled wonder will carry him not only to such faraway places as New Mexico and the Summer Institute in Mathematics, Physics, and Weaponry, but deep into the heart of a commercialized American culture, and return him to Babbington a hero.
More than forty years later, as Babbington is about to rebuild itself as a theme park commemorating his historic flight, Peter must return home to set the record straight, and confess that his flight did not match the legend that it inspired.
Flying is an artful, slyly intelligent, wildly inventive, and buoyant comedy of remarkable wingspan, a hilarious story of hoaxes, digressions, do-it-yourself engineering, and the wilds of memory—and a great satire of magical thinking in America.
“A reminder of how entertaining a novel can be when it slips the surly bonds of realism. . . . The effect is like a happy-go-lucky Nabokov, with all the road-tripping wordplay and none of the incest. . . . Kraft’s affectionately satirical, buoyant language makes Flying soar.”
Radhika Jones, TIME
“Beneath its aw-shucks surface, Flying is an ingenious, at times dizzyingly self-inverting assault not only on the truth, but on the concoction of palatable fictions, as well. Its only inviolate god is the human imagination; it’s a paean to flight by a boy who never left the ground, except, perhaps, where it counts in his mind.”
Laura Miller, The New York Times
“Eric Kraft is an oddball, an eccentric, a bit of a genius — the writerly equivalent of a dreamer who puts together weird and wonderful contraptions in his garage. . . . Kraft has made his career out of high-wire performance, seizing on the merest hint or detail and spinning it into magic. . . . Flying . . . feels like Kraft’s grandest achievement since Herb ’n’ Lorna.”
Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
“If you were to pick up a hitchhiking Jorge Luis Borges and Robert Pirsig, or to listen as Thomas Pynchon recited Ulysses from memory over longnecks on J. D. Salinger’s tab, you might catch the flavor of Eric Kraft’s work.”
Matthew Battles, Barnes & Noble Review
“That rare book that can change the way you look at the world. Peter looks at life as if he’s seeing it for the first time. If you’ll only buy into this, you can find the same joy Peter Leroy finds.”
William McKeen, St. Petersburg Times
“Once again, wizardly Kraft mixes boy-wonder high jinks with metaphysical musings, tall tales, and true love in a zany, heart-lifting escape from the everyday.”
Donna Seaman, Booklist
- GenresFiction
454 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 3, 2009
3 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Eric Kraft
52 books28 followersEric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He met or invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year at Harvard. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they have two sons. After earning a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of hackwork to support the Kraft ménage and the writing of the voluminous work of fiction that he calls The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England; and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 18, 2009
This is the fictional biography of Peter Leroy, the "Birdboy of Babbington", a teenager who flew from Long Island to New Mexico in a homemade winged motorcycle in the 1950s. Well, almost flew. And really, it's the journey that makes the story, not the arrival.
Told from the point of view of Peter as an older man as he reads his "memoirs" to his wife on a road trip, this was a beautiful, chucklesome story of hope and adventure. Peter's wife Albertine is a wonderful character in her own right, and theirs is one of my favorite literary relationships ever. Took me awhile to get through this one, but it certainly wasn't one to rush.
Told from the point of view of Peter as an older man as he reads his "memoirs" to his wife on a road trip, this was a beautiful, chucklesome story of hope and adventure. Peter's wife Albertine is a wonderful character in her own right, and theirs is one of my favorite literary relationships ever. Took me awhile to get through this one, but it certainly wasn't one to rush.
April 15, 2024
Overall good story but way too wordy. Can easily skip 100s of pages and not lose your place in the story.
June 22, 2009
I had previously read four of Eric Kraft's books and enjoyed them very much. But this latest installment in the imaginary memoirs of Peter Leroy was a major disappointment. It was like spending many hours trapped on a transcontinental railroad sitting next to a boring, self-absorbed, self-indulgent traveling companion who will not SHUT UP.
Previously entries in this series have been charming, whimsical and sweetly innocent. But now we're weighed down by our protagonist's (and author's) delusions of grandeur. I lost count of the references to Proust and Kafka. Leroy (Kraft) seems to have drunk the kool aid and come to the conclusion that he is a literary personage of real importance, and as such, every one of his tiresome observations suddenly takes on cosmic importance. He's not and they don't.
The slight tale concerns how Peter pedals a bike with wings that's supposed to fly but does not across Amerika (in the Kafkaeque sense because this country bears no resemblance to the real America).
Interspersed with this, the present-day Peter, even more loquacious than he was a youth, accompanied by his wife Albertine (how Proustian) recreate the trip in an electric car.
Along the way, he has various and sundry picaresque experiences -- but more often he just drones on about anything that enters his head.
This is a very sad development and I take no pleasure in writing these words. As long as he didn't take himself too seriously, Kraft was a delight and a treasure. But in this book he and his hero have both become pretentious bores.
Previously entries in this series have been charming, whimsical and sweetly innocent. But now we're weighed down by our protagonist's (and author's) delusions of grandeur. I lost count of the references to Proust and Kafka. Leroy (Kraft) seems to have drunk the kool aid and come to the conclusion that he is a literary personage of real importance, and as such, every one of his tiresome observations suddenly takes on cosmic importance. He's not and they don't.
The slight tale concerns how Peter pedals a bike with wings that's supposed to fly but does not across Amerika (in the Kafkaeque sense because this country bears no resemblance to the real America).
Interspersed with this, the present-day Peter, even more loquacious than he was a youth, accompanied by his wife Albertine (how Proustian) recreate the trip in an electric car.
Along the way, he has various and sundry picaresque experiences -- but more often he just drones on about anything that enters his head.
This is a very sad development and I take no pleasure in writing these words. As long as he didn't take himself too seriously, Kraft was a delight and a treasure. But in this book he and his hero have both become pretentious bores.
February 28, 2012
Flying is a novel in three parts and two eras, a high-school aged boy from Long Island on his cross-country adventure via aerocycle, and the middle-aged man with his wife retracing his path. The first part, Taking Off, was brilliant, insightful, and hilarious, with thoughts on nostalgia, small towns, and fame. Kraft's writing here was clever, with great anecdotes, and thoughtful ideas. But after this first 175 pages, the novel starts to drag. The anecdotes become heavy-handed and long-winded, the plot starts to feel flat, and the reader just wishes the book were 200 pages shorter. Or maybe 300 pages shorter. Fortunately, the last section of the novel, with the protagonist in New Mexico, winds up the novel on an amusing note about the teenage years for geeky kids. [return][return]This novel felt like it should have been split up. There were too many ideas, themes, and most of all, too many words for one book. A heavier hand by the editor would have been valuable as well. Still, for readers with time on their hands and the willingness to slog through some excess prose, the best parts of this novel are well worth it.
April 21, 2012
I read this book as a participant in Ed Champion's roundtable discussions before it was released. It's funny and fantastical. Fantasy is not a genre I appreciate and when I say it's fantastical, please don't assume the three short, interconnecting novels told by narrator Peter Leroy fit the genre. The quixotic adventure plays with a number of 20th century fantasies, skews the era's pieties, and is laugh out loud funny.
Ingenuity, timing, drawing, pop culture, high culture: he makes his way through time and space in one happy tale after another, and many of his imagined machines and fads and communal enthusiasms seem prescient even when they're playing with recent history.
(I've mentioned this before, but if anyone's reading my reviews here, it probably bears repeating: As a mostly unpublished writer who finds writing a daredevil act, I put up reviews here if I found the book an astonishing artistic achievement: hence, the preponderance of five stars.)
Ingenuity, timing, drawing, pop culture, high culture: he makes his way through time and space in one happy tale after another, and many of his imagined machines and fads and communal enthusiasms seem prescient even when they're playing with recent history.
(I've mentioned this before, but if anyone's reading my reviews here, it probably bears repeating: As a mostly unpublished writer who finds writing a daredevil act, I put up reviews here if I found the book an astonishing artistic achievement: hence, the preponderance of five stars.)
May 23, 2009
A very slow - and frustrating - start. Honestly, if I weren't reading this for a book club, I'm not sure how diligently I would have pushed through the first part. Once I got through the longer rambling sections of philosophy and pertinence, a plot finally caught the ignition and took flight; I was a much happier reader then. The middle & last part of this book bumped it from a 2 to a 3. I greatly enjoyed "On the Wing" and "Flying Home," though the narrator's paranoia about the "flyguys" seems somehow ironic...and annoying irrational. Other than that, though, a pleasant read. I would recommend it, though with the caution that the first part is slow...that's okay. The rest of it is worth it.
August 4, 2011
Surreal and deeply funny take on the great American road trip novel. I couldn't stop laughing. I love the structure of interweaving Peter's teenage "flight" to New Mexico with his present day road trip with Albertine. Both stories dovetail nicely and the ending still manages to surprise. Peter and Albertine are wonderfully developed -- you start to feel like you know them. Great fun to read.
Now to go out in search of the BCB (Big Cheap Breakfast) :-)
Now to go out in search of the BCB (Big Cheap Breakfast) :-)
Currently reading
May 18, 2009Here it is at last, in a bizarre paperback from Picador. Mini dust jacket with book flaps, which is the totality of the outside binding, and untrimmed edges. Ah, but it is finally in my hot little hands. I have loved every Peter Leroy book so far, and I know already this will be excellent (okay, I read excerpts).
Read
June 11, 2011Abandoning this one part way through. I love an unreliable narrator as much as the next gal (to be honest, probably more) but I simply have no interest in following the narrator's trail of admitted fabrications and self-deceptions.
April 20, 2009
Very, very funny
April 25, 2009
I read about this one in Newsweek. I like the plot idea but the dialogue seems a bit stilted so far. Not so much that I won't read it on the airplane to California next week.
December 25, 2010
Most boring book I've ever read!
October 11, 2010
Part of a series. This is a fantasy that I felt was a lot of fun. Made me seek out more by this author, but this is among his best. Also try Herb and Lorna.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews