The Flying Machine and Modern Literature

"This is the first work to survey the myths created by the modern literary imagination about technology." --Herbert Sussman

"... succeeds admirably, fascinatingly on all counts... " --American Literature

"... a landmark in the study of literary and technological history." --NMAH

"... fascinating... a welcome addition to the growing scholarship about the impact of technology on the modern imagination." --Journal of Modern Literature Annual Review

This book chronicles precisely how the flying machine helped to create two kinds of apocalyptic modes in modern literature.

This is the first work to survey the myths created by the modern literary imagination about technology. --Herbert Sussman

. . . succeeds admirably, fascinatingly on all counts . . . --American Literature

. . . a landmark in the study of literary and technological history. --NMAH

. . . fascinating . . . a welcome addition to the growing scholarship about the impact of technology on the modern imagination. --Journal of Modern Literature Annual Review

This book chronicles precisely how the flying machine helped to create two kinds of apocalyptic modes in modern literature.

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

1. Introduction

2. Leonardo da Vinci and the Modern Century

The Annunciation, 17: The Necromancer, 24; Leda and the Swan, 33

3. Birds with a Human Face

The Envious Eye, 44; Our Business Is With Mechanism, 48; The Murder of Birds, 55

4. Wells and The War in the Air

5. Tumult in the Clouds: The Flying Machine and the Great Crusade

6. Lindbergh in 1927: The Response of Poets to the Poem of Fact

7. Origins: Some Versions of Kitty Hawk

Hart Crane's "Cape Hatteras," 110; Muriel Rukeyser's "Theory of Flight," 117; Language and Origins, 124

8. The Nearest Paradise: Forms of Flight in the 1930s

Redeeming the Time, 131; Saint-Exupery, 139; The Modern Bird Poem, 144

9. The Poetry of Firebombing

The Case of James Dickey, 152; The Modern Apocalypse, 162

10. Spaceflight: Three Versions of Manifest Destiny

Robert Frost's "Kitty Hawk" 172; Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, 180; Robert A. Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon, 185

11. The Moon Landing and Modern Literature

The Rivalry of Poet and Astronaut, 191; The Testimony of Mailer and Bellow, 203

12. Conclusion: Some Texts of the 1970s

The Descent, 212; The Ascent, 217

Notes

Supplementary Bibliography

Index