I think travel does expose people’s true character. There’s just so many moments of frustration and anger. You see all these videos that go viral of people getting into fights at the gate or on the plane, or whatever, because there’s such a feeling of helplessness: if your flight’s canceled, there’s nothing you can do, and you might be stranded somewhere for days. It does seem a little unnatural to be able to get on a flight and then be on the other side of the world in like 15 hours, considering that we were never able to do that for most of [human history]. I do wonder if that is disorienting, almost on a cellular level for us. [Flying] is a very surreal experience that we see as normal at this point.
There’s also a liminal experience in flying and being in airports. The idea of Linda flying somewhere, not caring at all about the destination, just wanting to take the flight, and then spending the night in the airport by choice, and flying right back seems so perverse. And it feeds back into that more oblique commentary on climate change, and how we’re all fetishizing carbon consumption in a way. But Linda does it in a more literal way.
People might not expect this book to have a focus on finding connection in unexpected places. How did that emerge as a theme?
In earlier drafts, there was a harshness to the book that was developing from Linda being so isolated by her obsession, and there was nowhere, really, for the character to go from there, or for the story to go. I didn’t want it to be a sarcastic or cynical book. It would’ve been the easy way to write it, but it also wouldn’t be as interesting. I think about Linda as someone who is pretty self-aware and just happens to have this intense connection with planes and holds this belief in what her ultimate destiny is. But she has to live her normal life while she waits for her destiny to be manifested. And she still has the same needs for human companionship, and to feel like she belongs. Linda’s ultimate desire is to just be able to be herself, but she’s written that off so early on as not being possible because she’s aware that her desire is very strange. That’s the path of the book: How is Linda going to be her true self and be accepted?
I finished the book with a renewed sense of humanity. How do you hope people come out of reading your book?
I like hearing stuff like that because the premise sounds really zany and weird, and may seem like it could be one type of book. But then, when people actually read it, they find that it has more depth. I hate the term uplifting because it feels like everyone always says books are uplifting. But there is a more life affirming message in it that’s also paired with this very dark sort of undercurrent of death. That, I think, is a universal human impulse. Oddly, in writing the book, it made me less afraid of flying. Diving more into the world of aviation, I saw how much goes into it, and how many people are so dedicated to it and how the system is really, really solid overall. Hopefully, that will continue.
And so I hope people will feel more reinvigorated with a childlike excitement to fly, too, because that is something that’s beaten out of us by the actual experience of commercial travel. And also that people will feel affirmed in their own weirdness if they feel like they have parts of themselves that are strange. It’s not only Linda, but all the characters in the book that have human weirdness, even they’re better able to sublimate it, or channel it into more conventional desires. Everyone is weird: we all have weird things and weird thoughts and ideas about ourselves. Maybe people will find some companionship in Linda because she’s definitely a woman who loves to travel.
More fiction by Kate Folk
