Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles
Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles
List: $16.95 | Sale: $11.87
Club: $8.47

Dear American Airlines

Author: Jonathan Miles

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 7 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/05/2008

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

Bennie Ford, a fiftythreeyearold failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughters wedding when his flight is cancelled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of OHare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a cris de coeur of a life misspent, talent wasted. Bennie pens his letter in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heartonsleeve emotion, and wideranging eruditionall propelled by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he has a chance to do something right in his life.

About Jonathan Miles

Jonathan Miles is the author of Dear American Airlines, Want Not, and Anatomy of a Miracle. A former columnist for the New York Times, he is a contributing editor to such magazines as Details, Garden & Gun, Men’s Journal, and Field & Stream. His work is frequently anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime Writing. A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives along the Delaware River in rural New Jersey.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kate on June 23, 2008

Entirely dysfunctional airline industry as a metaphor for entirely dysfunctional American life--abysmal failures to meet expectations and make connections, mounds of baggage nobody knows what to do with, and that sickening, existential feeling that life can be a vastly unfair, bureaucratic wasteland......more

Goodreads review by Edward on July 17, 2008

Too clever by half, as the British say. Everyone was ballyhooing this book upon its publication. So I plunked down for a nice hardcover addition. Everyone knows the concept: one-time drunk, has-been poet, current translator rehashes his life story in a long, long, l-o-n-g letter of complaint to the air......more

Goodreads review by Dan on February 06, 2009

I've always admired Jonathon Miles' personality-driven, lyrically-satisfying journalism - book reviews, food writing, outdoors essays, etc. - so of course I was excited to read his first novel. Whether one loves or hates this protogonist, or loves or hates this book, (the nature of the beast of this......more

Goodreads review by Molly on November 07, 2010

Dear Mr. Miles: Had I bought this book and not borrowed it from the library, I'd demand my effin' money back. This book was not all that funny. But then, maybe it wasn't intended to be and my bad for assuming a humorous read. I was incredibly annoyed by your whiny narrator. I felt no connection to him.......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on December 31, 2022

The conceit of this book is so unique, I just had to read it. It's a letter of complaint written by a passenger stranded in O'Hare Airport on the way to his daughter's wedding. In the course of the novel, he reveals his whole life. He's a dysfunctional character, and so are all the other key figures......more