09/14/2015
Schaberg (The Textual Life of Airports), an associate professor of English and Environment at Loyola University New Orleans, waxes philosophical as he contemplates the role airports play in today’s society. His short essays and anecdotes draw on his years as an airport employee as well as other personal experiences. In his eyes, airports have gone from magical to mundane, enjoyable to tedious, joyful to grim. And yet his stories of working at them have traces of humor and fascination, revealing the type of behind-the-scenes knowledge that always feels a little bit exotic to the uninformed. Sadly, as he moves to “the new dilemmas and lingering problems of flight,” he loses much of the intimacy and charm, his unfocused narrative drifting across the lanes of thought. At the bottom of every page, he includes pithy sayings that read like free-form poetry, leading to observations such as “the airport contracts about you. It is a sharp-edged, massed, metallic airport,” and “if you listen to the faintest but constant suggestions of the airport, you will see to what extremes, even insanity, it may lead you.” This curious work doesn’t quite live up to its potential. (Nov.)
...[a] well-fuelled study of air travel’s fading profile in our digitally transported age.” —Nathan Heller, The New Yorker
“A strong and innovative book. Tracing speculative paths around and through airports and commercial flight, The End of Airports finds new ways to think about, among other things, drones, airport/aircraft seating, weather, jet bridges, viral stories about flight, tensions with new media expectations and technologies, and seatback pockets. A fascinating read for anyone interested in airports and airplanes, but also for readers of cultural studies, media studies, and creative nonfiction.” —Kathleen C. Stewart, Professor of Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
“The golden age of air travel is over, but thanks to Schaberg the airport may become the new figure with which to think place, time, labor, leisure, organization, and communication, as well as hope, fatigue, loneliness, and desire-in other words, the most fundamental problems of life in late capitalism. In the tradition of Benjamin, Barthes, and Baudrillard, this book is theoretically incisive, intimate, pleasurable, and on time. Air travel in all of its multidimensionality, as idea and experience, but also as mood, may finally assume its rightful place in the modern psychic infrastructure.” —Margret Grebowicz, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Goucher College, USA, and author of The National Park to Come
“Schaberg, an associate professor of English and Environment at Loyola University New Orleans, waxes philosophical as he contemplates the role airports play in today's society. His short essays and anecdotes draw on his years as an airport employee as well as other personal experiences. In his eyes, airports have gone from magical to mundane, enjoyable to tedious, joyful to grim. And yet his stories of working at them have traces of humor and fascination, revealing the type of behind-the-scenes knowledge that always feels a little bit exotic to the uninformed.” —Publishers Weekly
The golden age of air travel is over, but thanks to Schaberg the airport may become the new figure with which to think place, time, labor, leisure, organization, and communication, as well as hope, fatigue, loneliness, and desire-in other words, the most fundamental problems of life in late capitalism. In the tradition of Benjamin, Barthes, and Baudrillard, this book is theoretically incisive, intimate, pleasurable, and on time. Air travel in all of its multidimensionality, as idea and experience, but also as mood, may finally assume its rightful place in the modern psychic infrastructure.
A strong and innovative book. Tracing speculative paths around and through airports and commercial flight, The End of Airports finds new ways to think about, among other things, drones, airport/aircraft seating, weather, jet bridges, viral stories about flight, tensions with new media expectations and technologies, and seatback pockets. A fascinating read for anyone interested in airports and airplanes, but also for readers of cultural studies, media studies, and creative nonfiction.
10/15/2015
Schaberg's (The Textual Life of Airports) provocative theme implies the end of our ability to appreciate airports as bustling and forward-looking spaces. According to the author, visitors to airports now see these terminals as grim zones where they will be subjected to screening, rude employees, cancellations, and generally inhumane treatment. The first part of the book, dubbed "Work," recounts Schaberg's experiences as an airline employee from 2001 to 2003 at a small airport outside Bozeman, MT, and lists 16 aspects of his job description from check-in-clerk to the noxious assignment of emptying airline lavatory reservoirs. The second part, "Travel," considers the ways in which U.S. commercial air travel has both changed and remained the same over the years, as well as the new challenges and lingering problems of flight, with particular emphasis on the ways that airport operational and behavioral protocols pervade society today. VERDICT A prescient requiem for contemporary airports as abetting agents and reflectors of America's declining cultural standards. Recommended for specialists in the fields of aviation and transportation, social and intellectual history, sociological studies, media, and libraries.—John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.
