Status
Available
Collection
Publication
Hyperion (1997), Edition: 1st, 368 pages
Description
Praised as a riveting adventure tale, loopy travelogue, and powerful family memoir in one ingeniously crafted package (Harry Stein, "One of the good Guys"), this beautiful memoir tells an enchanting story of youthful accomplishment.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Polaris-
Well, I expected this to be good - how could the tale of two teenage brothers flying together in a Piper Cub across continental Ammerica east to west and back again NOT be good?! - but I think this was in the end an excellent read. I was moved, charmed, and thrilled by the story of Rinker and his
But there was more to this book than the 'adventure' itself. This is an endearingly told story also of brothers and how they are able to simultaneously love and hate each other, and how their relationship eventually blossoms. These brothers however, each have a quite different relationship with their father - the one legged former barnstormer pilot Tom Buck. His lively pipe-smoking presence looms imperiously in the background as these boys are literally trying to fly away. The twists and turns in this aspect of the story are told with a beautiful poignancy.
'I looked back several times at my father as he waved, wiggling
the wings for him a couple of more times. Behind and below me,
he was framed by the tail section of the plane, as if in a
picture. I remember the way the sunlight turned the grass
around him a hard green, and the way the image of him was
blurred and kept going double from the slipstream beating my
hair into my face and whipping up tears in the corners of my
eyes. I was filled with an immense sadness and happiness for
him at once, and afterward I couldn't understand why that
particular vision of him moved me so much, or why it returned
so often in my dreams. After a while I just accepted it as a
portrait of contentment between us. Maybe we would never say
it that way but the truth was that we were happiest watching
each other recede in the distance.'
Back to the flying at the heart of this lovely memoir. Buck has a fantastically simple way of saying things that are both eloquent and straightforward. There is plenty of technical detail in the flight descriptions but I never felt that it was too difficult for me to grasp whatever was happening to '71-Hotel' or the air around it through which it flew. Some of the prose describing their passage over a July 4th weekend USA is as delightful as any I've read.
I could insert other passages here in this review to show off Buck's fine writing, but I won't as time is pressing in on us. The chapter covering the Rocky Mountain traverse is brilliantly written and is simply enthralling. The many varied characters they encounter are wonderful slices of Americana of the mid-60s. This was a highly satisfying book and will please readers of many different genres. Read it!
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older brother Kern first restoring the aircraft in the family barn over the winter, and then the adventure of the flight itself.But there was more to this book than the 'adventure' itself. This is an endearingly told story also of brothers and how they are able to simultaneously love and hate each other, and how their relationship eventually blossoms. These brothers however, each have a quite different relationship with their father - the one legged former barnstormer pilot Tom Buck. His lively pipe-smoking presence looms imperiously in the background as these boys are literally trying to fly away. The twists and turns in this aspect of the story are told with a beautiful poignancy.
'I looked back several times at my father as he waved, wiggling
the wings for him a couple of more times. Behind and below me,
he was framed by the tail section of the plane, as if in a
picture. I remember the way the sunlight turned the grass
around him a hard green, and the way the image of him was
blurred and kept going double from the slipstream beating my
hair into my face and whipping up tears in the corners of my
eyes. I was filled with an immense sadness and happiness for
him at once, and afterward I couldn't understand why that
particular vision of him moved me so much, or why it returned
so often in my dreams. After a while I just accepted it as a
portrait of contentment between us. Maybe we would never say
it that way but the truth was that we were happiest watching
each other recede in the distance.'
Back to the flying at the heart of this lovely memoir. Buck has a fantastically simple way of saying things that are both eloquent and straightforward. There is plenty of technical detail in the flight descriptions but I never felt that it was too difficult for me to grasp whatever was happening to '71-Hotel' or the air around it through which it flew. Some of the prose describing their passage over a July 4th weekend USA is as delightful as any I've read.
I could insert other passages here in this review to show off Buck's fine writing, but I won't as time is pressing in on us. The chapter covering the Rocky Mountain traverse is brilliantly written and is simply enthralling. The many varied characters they encounter are wonderful slices of Americana of the mid-60s. This was a highly satisfying book and will please readers of many different genres. Read it!
Show Less
LibraryThing member mahallett
good story of adventure and sibling relationship and paternal relationship and crazy first names.
LibraryThing member TimBazzett
FLIGHT OF PASSAGE: A MEMOIR, by Rinker Buck.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. And that cover photo of an immaculately restored Piper Cub only tells half the story. Sure, there's plenty in here about that, and also a wonderful recreation of the young Buck brothers' news-making transcontinental
The often crushingly frustrating, head-to-head conflict between fifteen year-old Rinker and his father is perhaps best explained, metaphorically, by a phenomenon the author calls "copilot vertigo," a "phenomenon ... where visibility over the pilot in front is limited .. [and] the copilot longs to battle the turbulence himself and restore his sense of control." Rinker was at a point in his development where he needed to get out from under the thumb of his rigidly controlling father, and the journey he makes with his brother helps him to do this. Indeed, at the very heart of this eloquent memoir is the story of a son finally coming to terms with what was for so long a deeply difficult relationship with his own father.
I was able to connect to this story at both levels, as a son, and as a father. In fact I nearly wept at the author's description of the first phone call home from the boys after the initial leg of their flight from New Jersey to Indiana.
"My father must have been sitting all evening with the phone in his lap. We didn't even get off a full ring before he picked it up. When he heard it was us, we could hear the tension and worry going out of his voice."
Yeah, wondering if his 17 year-old and 15 year-old sons were okay on this momentous and maybe foolhardy adventure. Dad was probably a muddle of guilt, fear and envy about the whole thing. But mostly he was probably scared for them. Yeah, I could relate. Just like I could relate to the constant confrontations between the ebullient 14 and 15-year old Rinker and his strict, disciplinarian dad. And this is so important - being able to relate, I mean - and LIKING the main character, in this case the author narrator, Rinker Buck. And I liked Buck, no mistake. Not only a great writer, but obviously a great human being, looking back at those days over thirty years later with the advantage of those extra intervening years working for him in telling his story.
Because this is so much also a book about flying, I was often reminded of a couple similar memoirs I've read in the past ten or twelve years: Clyde Edgerton's SOLO: MY ADVENTURES IN THE AIR, and Samuel Hynes's FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE: RECOLLECTIONS OF A WORLD WAR II AVIATOR. Both are wonderful books about both flying and a young man's coming of age. If you liked Buck's book, you'd certainly like Hynes and Edgerton too. This book? Outstanding. Highly recommended.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. And that cover photo of an immaculately restored Piper Cub only tells half the story. Sure, there's plenty in here about that, and also a wonderful recreation of the young Buck brothers' news-making transcontinental
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flight in said aircraft; and Rinker Buck's journalistic background is evident in the fine writing displayed here. But the real story is about family. First, about an extrovert younger brother (Rinker) who had always overshadowed and outshone his introverted, geeky, highly intelligent older sibling (Kern), and how their relationship changed in the months-long process of restoring the Cub and then flying it together coast-to-coast in the course of one adventure-filled and often dangerous week which tested the limits of their flying skills, but, even more importantly, brought them closer together. They became friends and equals during the trip. And second, Rinker confronts the problems he's had with his father, Tom Buck, a flamboyant, self-made man who had taught himself to fly during the Great Depression and barnstormed his way out of poverty into a successful career in publishing. The often crushingly frustrating, head-to-head conflict between fifteen year-old Rinker and his father is perhaps best explained, metaphorically, by a phenomenon the author calls "copilot vertigo," a "phenomenon ... where visibility over the pilot in front is limited .. [and] the copilot longs to battle the turbulence himself and restore his sense of control." Rinker was at a point in his development where he needed to get out from under the thumb of his rigidly controlling father, and the journey he makes with his brother helps him to do this. Indeed, at the very heart of this eloquent memoir is the story of a son finally coming to terms with what was for so long a deeply difficult relationship with his own father.
I was able to connect to this story at both levels, as a son, and as a father. In fact I nearly wept at the author's description of the first phone call home from the boys after the initial leg of their flight from New Jersey to Indiana.
"My father must have been sitting all evening with the phone in his lap. We didn't even get off a full ring before he picked it up. When he heard it was us, we could hear the tension and worry going out of his voice."
Yeah, wondering if his 17 year-old and 15 year-old sons were okay on this momentous and maybe foolhardy adventure. Dad was probably a muddle of guilt, fear and envy about the whole thing. But mostly he was probably scared for them. Yeah, I could relate. Just like I could relate to the constant confrontations between the ebullient 14 and 15-year old Rinker and his strict, disciplinarian dad. And this is so important - being able to relate, I mean - and LIKING the main character, in this case the author narrator, Rinker Buck. And I liked Buck, no mistake. Not only a great writer, but obviously a great human being, looking back at those days over thirty years later with the advantage of those extra intervening years working for him in telling his story.
Because this is so much also a book about flying, I was often reminded of a couple similar memoirs I've read in the past ten or twelve years: Clyde Edgerton's SOLO: MY ADVENTURES IN THE AIR, and Samuel Hynes's FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE: RECOLLECTIONS OF A WORLD WAR II AVIATOR. Both are wonderful books about both flying and a young man's coming of age. If you liked Buck's book, you'd certainly like Hynes and Edgerton too. This book? Outstanding. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member reader1009
nonfiction/travel memoir (two teen boys fly across country in a lightweight 2-seater plane in 1966)
Awards
Best Fiction for Young Adults (Selection — 1998)
Language
Original language
English