MadNihilist
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01:30:34 pm on November 14, 2009 | # |
A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, by Alain de Botton
I’ve had issues with De Botton’s work in the past, most of which are too nebulous to articulate, or indeed dwell on. But constraining the man in this format – literally constraining him to one location, and then to the format of a short book – seems to have worked. There’s a focus and passion to the writing, at least in his reserved English-Swiss style, that is also insightful and, at a few points, genuinely affecting. It’s also funny.
De Botton can be critiqued for lack of critique. He’s about as far from the ‘intellectual as attack dog’ that you recall Denis Healey’s description of Geoffrey Howe – “like being savaged by a dead sheep” – which would actually be rather unpleasant, when you think about it. Yet behind the pale visage and courteously benign manner there does lurk a subtle critique of sorts. In this context – Heathrow – he repeatedly points out the associated externalities (destruction of green belt, carbon emissions, noise, negative first impressions of Britain, and so on). But they’re expressed as mere descriptors rather than sustained critique. Put simply, he doesn’t stick the boot in and he clearly could’ve done.
Perhaps with this in mind, he addresses the issue of his patron, BAA, right away, and does so carefully, thoughtfully, and with humour. He’s intensely aware of his delicate position here, and the power structures around him. He partly suggests that the new economic reality of the publishing industry has made him consider this alternative, and ancient, business model. I’m not sure that’s relevant – it’s a well-understood model, and we can judge the book on its merits, reading between lines as we see fit. I think once given the green light to say what he likes – and as mentioned above, BAA have chosen a writer that is hardly going to stick the boot in; at worst, a thin smile disguising a delicate stiletto nick – de Botton would clearly jump at the chance of this commission.
And who wouldn’t? Airports are fascinating places, and emblematic tokens of our civilisation. This last year has been a year of flying for me. I’ve probably done over 2000 km per week for the last year, on average (with an appropriately hideous carbon footprint as a result) and so I’ve overly familiar with certain of these spaces. But curiously, I still enjoy them, as places. They perform a compression of so many things the experience is both everyday (almost) and surreal simultaneously.
And de Botton picks apart that paradox from almost every angles one can imagine. In fact, his starting point is that the airport is essentially the emblematic human structure:
“In a world full of chaos and irregularity, the terminal seemed a worthy and intriguing refuge of elegance and logic. It was the imaginative centre of contemporary culture Had one been asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that neatly captures the gamut of themes running through our civilisation – then it would have to be to the departures and arrivals halls that one would head.”
(…)
