Likewise, the airport’s beauty bar makes de Botton think not of bronzing creams but of Bach’s Cantata 106: ‘Set thy house in order / For thou shalt die / And not remain alive.’ As de Botton points out, air travel is not particularly dangerous any more, but we humans cannot help but worry that we may fall out of the sky.
Elsewhere, he is less pretentious. His description of the windowless warehouse where ‘twenty thousand cutlets’ are prepared simultaneously for in-flight trays will do more to turn you off your next aeroplane lunch than anything put about by animal rights campaigners.
Perhaps the book’s best passage is the result of an interview with Willie Walsh, the boss of British Airways, which de Botton was at first reluctant to conduct. They get along so well theorising about the poetry of aviation that Walsh drops his guard and becomes an overgrown schoolboy playing with a giant model plane. Then the encounter goes wrong: de Botton suggests that he might one day assume the role of Writer in Residence on a flight and Walsh — either because he fears that he is being mocked or because he is terrified that he is being felt up for a free ticket — brings their meeting to an immediate close and summons security.
It is a pity Walsh did not jump at the idea: he might have found himself responsible for de Botton’s most imaginative work yet.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.