Up in the Air: Amazon.de: Walter Kirn: Englische Bücher

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Taschenbuch, 7. Januar 2010

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Produktinformation

Taschenbuch: 320 Seiten
Verlag: John Murray Publishers (7. Januar 2010)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 1848543263
ISBN-13: 978-1848543263
Gr��e und/oder Gewicht: 19,6 x 12,8 x 3 cm
Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 89.999 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)

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Amazon.com's Best of 2001

The hero of Walter Kirn's novel Up in the Air inhabits an entirely new state: Airworld, where the hometown paper is USA Today, the indigenous cuisine wilts under heat lamps, and the citizenry speaks a Byzantine dialect of upgrades, expense accounts, and market share. Airworld even has its own nontaxable, inflation-free currency in the shape of bonus miles, which Ryan Bingham calls "private property in its purest form." Officially, Bingham is a management consultant, specializing in the lugubrious field of career transition counseling (i.e., he fires people for a living). But what Kirn's airborne protagonist is really doing is pursuing his own private passion, his great white whale: accumulating one million miles in his frequent-flyer account. As Up in the Air opens, Bingham has set out on a final, epic traveling jag. He intends to visit eight cities in six days, thereby achieving his own vision of Nirvana somewhere over Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Mocking the euphemisms of business speak is as easy as shooting fish in a designer barrel. But Kirn also takes on the corporate world's weirdly mystical and paranoid side, its rhetoric of personal empowerment and its messianic devotion to gurus. "Business is folk wisdom, cave-born, dark, Masonic, and the best consultants are outright shamans who sprinkle on the science like so much fairy dust," declares Bingham. (This doesn't stop him from working on his own book about "the transformational journey of one mind wholly at peace with its core competencies.") Meanwhile, his junket becomes progressively more surreal, complete with an evil nemesis as well as a mysteriously powerful firm called MythTech that's working behind the scenes. And what's worse, someone seems to have stolen his identity, assuming control of his credit cards and his all-important miles.

Is this model consumer being tracked as he makes his purchasing decisions, like an elk tagged by wildlife biologists? Or is he merely losing his mind? The ending answers these questions perhaps a little too neatly, but Kirn's disturbing satire packs a mighty wallop nonetheless. The writing is as sharp as a tack, punctuated by character sketches as brilliant as they are quick. Bingham and his ilk are modern nomads, dispossessed of physicality but not quite of their bodies. His simulated environment is not mimicking an actual place but replacing it--and that, to the author, is the scariest part of Airworld: "This is the place to see America, not down there, where the show is almost over." --Mary Park -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

From Booklist

The third novel by the literary editor for GQ ushers the reader into an alternative universe called Airworld, "a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood, and even its own currency--the token economy of airline bonus miles." Science fiction? No, the contemporary world of business travel, populated by people who know little of life except for the inside of airplanes, terminals, hotels, and office suites. Ryan Bingham, a denizen of Airworld, is a consultant specializing in the firing of employees. But Ryan maintains a firm grasp on his personal holy grail: acquiring a million air miles. As this marvelously entertaining and keenly satiric novel opens, Ryan is closing in on his goal. In fact, he knows exactly which flight out of all the upcoming ones he has booked will put him past the magic milestone, at which point he will "stop, sit back, and reconsider everything." But does it all play out as Ryan plans? Readers will have a wonderful time finding out. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Amazon.com: 89 Rezensionen

81 von 87 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

wonderful satire 10. Dezember 2005

Von michael fowler - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Taschenbuch

The neutral and even negative reviews on Amazon of this masterly novel are beyond comprehension. As someone who dwelt in cubicle Hades for a quarter of a century, and who now, at retirement, am still assessing the mental damage done to me, it is a pleasure to read the mother of all satires concerning team building, goals and objectives, win-win situations, addressing the problem and not the person, core competencies, consumer satisfaction and all the rest of the mind-rotting bilge that one had to pretend to take seriously in order to pick up one's pay. Kirn is laugh aloud funny on these travesties and more, including air travel, hotels, restaurants, Vegas, and even family values. The protagonist, Ryan, buys into huge amounts of new age business drivel, but a woman he once fired helps him ascend into the light. He is redeemed, in the end, only because his heart was never in the nonsense he does for a living, and because he is truly a nice guy, as the woman recognizes. He's also a gentleman, as is Kirn, who paints only men negatively in his book. Women, when they act out, are only trying to keep up or get even. Highly recommended.

21 von 24 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

A humorously sardonic, wry portrayal of a life we know little about 17. Dezember 2009

Von Spencer Madsen - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Taschenbuch

After reading Kirn's Lost in the Meritocracy, I was excited to pick up Up in the Air. Forget the hype about the movie and clooney's acting; the book stands on its own, as does its protagonist Ryan Bingham. What makes this novel so inexplicably intriguing is its realistic portrayal of a life without a home, content in chain hotels, chain steak houses, chain airport restaurants and so on. As Bingham says, the aspects of travel we cringe at make him feel at home.

Kirn's philosophical voice is spoken through the mind of his protagonist; and Bingham, as a premise, is one interesting man. In his quest to reach one million frequent flier miles, and fulfill his job of motivational speaking and career transition counseling, he builds relationships with everyone in Air World he sees. That disconnect between what Bingham says and what Bingham thinks provides conflict and humor that other narration styles lose out on.

If you're looking for an action-backed book, look elsewhere. This novel is for those who find people more interesting than anything. Ominous conflicts, hilarious social interactions, a real portrayal of a fictitious character, all add up to a page-turning read of Up in the Air (Movie Tie-in Edition)

14 von 16 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

captivating tale of the perplexing state of many a modern man 17. Dezember 2009

Von L. Milucky - Ver�ffentlicht auf Amazon.com

Format:Taschenbuch

As a fan of Walter Kirn's extensive contributive work to every fantastic periodical you can think of and of his books including his intriguing memoir "Lost in the Meritocracy", I was thrilled to learn I had somehow missed this work released at the unfortunate same time as the sept.11th attacks. What a fortunate turn for Jason Reitman to endure in his facination with Kirn's character of Ryan Bingham by selecting it to be developed to film. It was by my learning of the film's imminent release that I ordered and read it then. The central character is a self banished society outsider who imagines himself to float above the common man's labrynth of society systems and inter-personal ties by removing himself from the very ground that they walk on. By relinquishing all responsibilities as soon as they come upon him, he is a shiny snake with freshly shed skin ready to dazzle at every moment. Even when he lands to do business or attend to the tasks of getting laid or take care of family matters, the reader is aware he is not really there, with his mind and almost his body in the forward moving ether of "whats next and when do we leave for it?" After I became acclimated to the ghost state of this unattainable man, chasing his unattainable goal (a million frequent flyer miles) I then turned my attention to anything that would allow me to redeem him. And that's what hooked me. Being there to love and attend to his sister through her own struggles with commitment and her own self banishment by anorexia and Ryan's tender understanding of her were poignant. His thoughtfulness, appropriate consideration and even caring in the midst of matter of fact pursuit of women was almost attractive, but his insecurities and revealed self-awarenesses are what makes this "big ego, low self esteem" character endearing. I have also seen the movie in early release and it is fantastic to see Kirn's valuable and entertaining tale masterfully shown through a fresh director's eyes with actors, cinematography, music and an adapted screenplay with altered focuses but so much of the generative novel's greatness. However Kirn does this with only words black and white on paper, and that's why I love this author and this book.

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