However, I find it rather strange to review a novel based on an event in which the reviewer professes no interest or connection. I can understand not feeling emotionally and/or intellectually bound to 9/11 based on any number of reasons, but at the same time such a prejudiced viewpoint is going to negatively skew the reviewer’s reading before she opens the book. For the reason, I would never review addiction memoir number 1,007,699; zero stars could be the only result. And I only hope the reviewer jests as she proclaims being unaware of other 9/11 novels. Whether living in Europe, Asia or nearly anywhere else, those attuned to the writing world could hardly avoid the questions constantly raised as to whether novels, films, etc. could “capture” 9/11. Being unaware of other 9/11 novels would cause any reviewer to misunderstand THIS 9/11 novel. And that’s what clearly occurred.

Example: What the reviewer calls “postmodern” denotes a major lapse in attention. Certainly, the novel plays with structure in the way other novels described as “postmodern” do, but for entirely different purposes. I labeled the various sections “Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Denouement” in line with savage attacks on Strunk & White and all the other Popes and catechisms of publishing. The novel is in part a satire on novels and also memoirs. The sections mock the dot-to-dot narrative arcs of contemporary “literature,” for which I haven’t the slightest patience, knowing the ending must — must — be redemptive. Thus, becoming a temporary drug addict is now a career move. A few months of highs and lows, a stint in a comfy rehab, and then it’s time to write that memoir.

Nor can I bear reading even the back-cover description of one more mass-produced MFA novel concerning an adulterous professor, immigrant whose olfactory delight supposedly proves marvelous “craftsmanship” (in the sense of a well-made birdhouse), or a divorced woman on her way to Maine to fall in love with a sensitive fisherman.

I wouldn’t write the acceptable brand of “literary” novel under any circumstances, much less when I decided to write a 9/11 novel. In fact, Airplane Novel received two to three page letters from almost every major publisher, full of praise, some verging on positive literary criticism I would never have predicted. Unfortunately, those same letters ended with the usual concerns regarding marketing. I anticipated that my novel would fail to meet marketing standards during the writing process. Knowing that in all but the rarest cases, major publishers will only publish and promote novels for simpletons, I went so far as to title the climax “Climax.” But, even in trying to use simplicity as a satirical attack on simplicity, I obviously failed to be simple enough.

Regarding the novel being “self-reflexive,” it’s intended to generate self-reflection on the part of the reader. It’s quite acceptable to me the reviewer finds this aspect monotonous; I’ve always known this would be a “love it or hate it” novel, and I simultaneously knew that for this book alone, I would take the most derogatory review as a compliment that would prove I had violated exactly the standards I had sought to ridicule. Mission accomplished.

To prove the point, this is the kindest bashing I’ve ever taken in a review. I again thank the reviewer for the positive comments. I accept, if not agree with, the negative comments. I post this response only in hopes that readers of this review will not bypass reading Airplane Novel based on the negative comments presented by someone admittedly uninterested in the topic, and who misidentifies satire that couldn’t have been more clearly presented as “postmodernism.” Accordingly, irony, a keystone of “postmodernism” in its “avant-garde” days, is directly attacked by the narrator: “I do not understand irony. I understand steel.”

No, this book is not for everyone, particularly those lacking any interest in the subject, as well as anyone whose idea of satire peaks out at Saturday Night Live skits. Finally, if I had been writing as if paid by the word, I assure the reviewer and all potential readers that if I had been paid by the word, I would have written a novel with far more than the paperback version’s 208 pages. Perhaps I could have even purchased a 1978 car.

In summary, I suspect this review’s readers have 208 pages of time to spare the only 9/11 novel that doesn’t heap literary schmaltz upon its subject. Perhaps you will love it, perhaps you will hate it, but you will definitely not put it on your shelf with the conviction you’ve read the same “literary novel” a thousand times before. And if that were my only accomplishment in writing Airplane Novel — and it isn’t — then I would still consider it a success that will endure and outlast our historical attention deficit disorder.

Sincerely,

Paul A. Toth