by Clyde Edgerton
I am always a little curious about this sort of book. Mr. Edgerton has published a bunch books and eight of them were New York Times best sellers. So does his editor say, “Write anything you want, Clyde,” or does Clyde fight to publish this non-fiction account of his flying and military experience? There’s even a little bit near the end about his struggle to write Floatplane Notebooks, which I will probably snag and take a look at, but in general this feels a lot like Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake.
There’s very little real writing; mostly it feels like musing. That’s fine at times, but there doesn’t feel like there’s much effort to carry a through-line or to really write each story as powerfully as possible. There are some nice descriptions of flying both near the beginning and near the end (when he gets back into a little plane). He seems to have trouble with the war effort he is a part of (Vietnam), but he stayed in until the end of his bit and he didn’t turn around and start protesting.
I would have liked some more about flying.