Artist: Boubacar Traore
Genre(s):
Other
Ethnic
Instrumental
Discography:
Macire
Year: 2000
Tracks: 11
Kar Kar
Year: 1994
Tracks: 10
Allun
Book review: "Dear American Airlines" by Jonathan Miles (Houghton Mifflin)
There could never be a debut novel more perfectly timed to enter the world than Jonathan Miles' "Dear American Airlines."
The book is a novel-length complaint letter written by one angry American Airlines passenger who has been stranded in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and may miss his daughter's wedding in Los Angeles.
Sound familiar? Just a few months ago, hundreds of thousands of actual American Airlines customers were stranded in airports across the country when the airline was forced to cancel 3,100 flights to check or redo something called "wiring bundles." The universe, or at least the Federal Aviation Administration, has apparently gift-wrapped a marketing campaign just for this book.
So we can credit Miles, the cocktails columnist at The New York Times, with excellent timing. But we can also credit him with a sharp and funny first novel that will outlast the particular troubles of the modern airline industry.
Bennie Ford's letter begins as a request - check that, a profane demand - for a refund of his $392.68 ticket. He's desperately trying to get to Los Angeles for the wedding of his estranged daughter, whom he hasn't seen in years.
From the first paragraph, we hear Bennie's distinctive voice: angry and outraged, literate and funny. If the cancelled flight weren't awful enough, he has to sit in a "maldesigned seat in this maldesigned airport," a limbo without clocks or cigarettes, where everyone seems to be playing sudoku, "the analgesic du jour of the travelling class."
It may seem like faint praise to call a novel "funny," as if laughter were a guilty pleasure in serious literature, something enjoyable but slightly disreputable. But what good is satire without humour? It shouldn't hurt Miles' reputation as a writer to point out a simple fact: This book will make you laugh. Out loud and repeatedly.
Bennie grew up in New Orleans, "where cirrhosis of the liver is listed as 'Natural Causes' on a death certificate." Holding his daughter in his arms for the first time, Bennie reflects, "She was so beautiful and small - a gorgeous pink speck of life. But I should also confess that I was drunk almost beyond recognition."
Later, in the middle of a domestic dispute, he finds himself locked out of his apartment in the rain. He screams his wife's name only once before it hits him: "You simply cannot shout the name Stella while standing under a window in New Orleans and hope for anything like an authentic or even mildly earnest moment."
Even in his despair, Bennie can't resist a good one-liner at his own expense.
Admittedly, whether you enjoy this novel may depend on your tolerance for a certain stock literary "guy": the brawling and boozy tough-guy poet, a little too sensitive for today's world, a little too broken inside to hold together a relationship. The template for Bennie Ford might be well-worn but Miles never falls into the cliched traps of drunken sentimentality or self-pity.
Bennie's letter soon becomes something more, a sincere confession about his failures and regrets, charting the collapse from his early years as an aspiring poet and young father, to his divorce and estrangement from his family.
He's a bad father and a miserable husband but he doesn't flinch from the truth of it. As readers, we admire his honesty and his righteous anger at modern life and modern airports. And in the end, Bennie is blessed with a moment of redemption, a touch of grace for a man stuck in O'Hare's interminable purgatory.
Property mogul DONALD TRUMP has urged Scottish officials to grant him permission to build a $2 billion (GBP1 billion) golf resort in Aberdeen, insisting failing to do so would be a "terrible blow" to the country.
The American tycoon is currently in the Scottish city to argue his case for the project to be given the greenlight after coming up against opposition from environmental protestors.
The campaigners claim Trump's luxury 18-hole golf course - which will include a 450-room five star hotel, 900 vacation homes, and 500 luxury homes costing up to $2 million (GBP1 million) each - on the north-east coast of Scotland will cause significant damage to the environment
But Trump denies this is the case.
A public inquiry into the ambitious project began on Tuesday (10Jun08) at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC), where Trump told the ministers: "People won't play a course if it is environmentally harmful. They don't like it, they don't feel good about it, and they won't play it."
When confronted by claims the plans are not popular with locals, Trump responded: "I see polls showing 93 per cent in favour. You can say what you want, but this is a very popular project..."
Trump went on to claim the resort would be "the world's greatest golf course".
He added: "If you reject this, there will be a terrible blow to Scotland."
Trump needs to secure the approval of Scottish Government ministers and win over the public if he is to secure the planning permission for the golf resort.
TV Guide
, which last month reported its first profitable quarter in nearly four years,
announced Thursday that its TV Guide Online unit had experienced record growth
in May. It said that more than 12.1 million unique visitors logged on to
TVGuide.com in May, a 58-percent increase over May of last year. (The figure
actually pales in comparison with the magazine's circulation of more than 20
million in its heyday.) While the magazine underwent a total makeover in
October 2005, doing away with its video-log format, the online division said
that the number of visitors to its online video guide increased 205 percent
from May of last year to 540,000 unique users.
06/06/2008
LATEST: Production on JAKE GYLLENHAAL and JESSICA BIEL's new movie NAILED ground to a halt on Friday (23May08), after more financial difficulties hit the cash-strapped project.
A number of staffmembers failed to show up for work at the South Carolina set on Thursday (22May08), after union leaders at the International Alliance of Theatrical + Stage Employees (IATSE) called for a boycott when they learned below-the-line crews were not being paid.
Production is expected to resume this Thursday (29May08), reports industry publication Variety.
It is the third time director David O. Russell's independent movie has been shut down. Workers belonging to the IATSE union also held up production on 15 May (08) for similar pay reasons, while Gyllenhaal and Biel, both members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), walked off the set on 9 May (08), after producers failed to show they had enough money to pay the cast.
In April (08), veteran James Caan quit his cameo role after a bust-up with Russell.
BRAD PITT has paid an odd tribute to his adopted New Orleans, Louisiana in the shape of a new tattoo on his lower back.
The movie star was spotted showing off a new tattoo over the weekend (10-11May08), but left those who saw it puzzled about what the black lines and boxes represented.
Experts told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, which ran with the photos taken in Monaco, that the markings could be inspired by a map of the levees in New Orleans, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Since the disaster, Pitt and his family have bought a home in New Orleans, and the movie star is at the forefront of a major rehousing project in the city.