Up In The Air by Walter Kern

From The Week of February 21, 2010

I love quirky novels. Though I do not always enjoy them, they have an oddly potent energy and passion I find fascinating. Up In The Air does not disappoint in its strangeness. Far from it. Any piece of fiction about a lonely man's obsessive quest to earn a million frequent flyer miles has surely earned its weirdness credibility a million times over.

Ryan Bingham, our disturbed protagonist, loves to fly. He seems to love everything about it: the chance to talk to anyone from any line of work, the sensation of freedom that comes from being 30,000 feet up, the ability to be anywhere in only a few hours. He loves rental cars and hotel rooms as well. They allow him never to leave any part of himself behind, no footprint, no signature. This kind of impermanence is a fetish for Mr. Bingham who is madly trying to complete his quest before his boss realizes he has left his job and retaliates by cancelling the credit card Mr. Bingham is using to accrue his points.

The novel takes a decidedly dark turn when Mr. Bingham starts to believe that someone is stealing his frequent flyer miles to take flights to places he's never been. Or has he been to those places, those towns and simply forgot? How would he know if he was? Mr. Kern's has written a story that hinges almost entirely on one character, Ryan Bingham, which is a gamble, but a gamble he successfully pulls off. There's a disquiet the reader experiences while watching Mr. Bingham's deterioration, a kind of anxiety I can only equate to watching the deranged unravel before our very eyes. And yet, rather than come off as ridiculous, Bingham is a clever allegory for our dislocated times in which nothing that we have, nothing that we own, is permanent, is lasting. Everything comes and goes, replaced by something new, just like Mr. Bingham, just like this keyboard I type on.

A thoughtful and powerful read. It reminds me of the not-so-quiet desperation exemplified in films like American Beauty. There's a franticness about the protagonist that is urgent and worrisome. Highly recommended if, like me, you like pieces that are some ways off the beaten path. (4/5 Stars)