Synopses & Reviews
Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor — he fires people — has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls Airworld, finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss's desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate.
With perception, wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the psychic costs of our rootless existence, and confirms Walter Kirn as one of the most savvy chroniclers of American life.
Review
"[A] hilarious, often ingenious ode to America....Whip smart yet entertaining enough to rival anything from John Grisham." Julia Dahl, Time Out New York
Review
"Kirn's prose is splendid, his observations droll and intelligent." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Kirn has a gift for exploiting telling details about our consumption-mad culture....Harrowing reading, but worth the turbulence." Library Journal
Review
"Kirn's style is as bright and metallic as the shiny skin of a jet airplane. But his underlying point is refreshingly down to earth." Chicago Tribune
Review
"[A] marvelously entertaining and keenly satiric novel." Booklist
Synopsis
Ryan Bingham has a simple goal: to accumulate one million miles in his frequent flyer account. This story follows his life in the transient realm he calls "Airworld" as he wings his way to his goal. Soon to be a major motion picture from Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures, starring George Clooney and directed by Jason Reitman (Juno).
About the Author
Walter Kirn is the literary editor for GQ and a contributing editor to Time and Vanity Fair. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and numerous other national magazines. He is the author of the short-story collection My Hard Bargain and the novels She Needed Me and Thumbsucker (a 1999 New York Times Notable Book). He lives on a farm near Livingston, Montana.