Dear American Airlines

For a tiny little book, this sure packed a big wallop. I expected humor and angst (which it had), but I sure didn't expect a poignant and beautiful little study on the meaning of life, and, surprisingly, suicide. While Bennie, an alcoholic, washed-up poet, is desperately trying to get to his daughter's wedding, he writes a rambling, scathing letter to American Airlines detailing his frustration at his delayed flight. Blistering humor and some pretty fabulous literary linguistics follow. But, it's the secondary plotline that tears pretty quickly at your heart. Bennie is translating a Polish novel about a wounded war veteran. He inserts pieces of this novel into his tome to AA (and no, that acronym is not lost on Bennie). It is an amazingly tender and haunting story. It's hard to even reconcile that the two stories are from the same writer. I'm now thoroughly intrigued about Jonathan Miles and must seek out more! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

“Why are you so unhappy?” Thats the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a womens magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”). 

A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.

"One of the many pleasures of Dear American Airlines is watching Benjamin's and Walenty's stories finally dovetail in a way that's not just philosophically but emotionally rewarding. Ah, but the digressions! Not every reader will love them as I did." Richard Russo, New York Times

"Mr. Miles is a superb writer and learned, too. Allusions, literary and otherwise, abound." Dallas Morning News

"This is writing that pulls no punches....It's also very funny." Los Angeles Times

"Miles has done a beautiful job of moderating Benny's riffs and rants, so that we get to know him gradually, circularly, as one might do a loquacious town crank who tells good stories." Boston Globe

"Turn to nearly any page and you'll find a funny, smart, touching, wonderfully caustic or well-turned sentence or paragraph." Chicago Tribune

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughters wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O'Hare International 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 lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. Bennie's writing is infused with a sense of remorse for the actions of a lifetime — and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right.

A margarita blend of outrage, humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term "airport novel" and announces the emergence of a major new talent in American fiction.

From the cocktails columnist at the The New York Times comes the scathingly funny, deeply moving story of a stranded airline passenger, whose enraged letter of complaint transforms into a lament for a life gone awry.

From the author of Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, a charming, disturbing, and funny story of a more-than-slightly deluded young man's quest to find a bride.

JONATHAN MILES's first novel, Dear American Airlines, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. A former columnist for the New York Times, he serves as a contributing editor to magazines as diverse as Field & Stream and Details, and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review and The Literary Review (UK). A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives with his family in rural New Jersey.