Week at the Airport

Critics

• Book Review: A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton Share

  When I first discovered Alain de Botton’s work several years ago, my initial thought was, “Well, I’m going to have a lot of free time on my hands now, because this man is already writing the exact books I would like to write myself. Maybe I will take ... (read full critics)

  blogcritics published on Fri, 5 Nov 2010

• A WEEK AT THE AIRPORT by Alain de Botton

  Review by Poornima Apte (SEP 22, 2010) Okay, maybe Ryan Bingham might have qualified. But considering that George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air was entirely fictional, the authorities at Heathrow airport settled on another huge fan of airports ... (read full critics)

  mostlyfiction published on Thu, 30 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

• 

  Heathrow airport - present

  More a brochure than a book..

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  Mati said on Oct 13, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  就讓我引用封底的摘錄吧。
  If you are asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that captures all the themes running through the modern world -- from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our interconnectedness to our romanticising of travel -- then you would almost certainly have to he ... (continue)

  就讓我引用封底的摘錄吧。
  If you are asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that captures all the themes running through the modern world -- from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our interconnectedness to our romanticising of travel -- then you would almost certainly have to head to an airport. Airports, in all their turmoil, interest and beauty, are the imaginative centres of our civilisation.

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  SASHA said on Aug 27, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  Would you like to spend a week at the airport?

  If BA crew were allowed to go on strike as planned during Christmas, tens of thousands of passengers would have to spend days at the airport, stranded. Just like those at the Eurostar terminals. What a nightmare!

  Surely, there is another, much more pleasant, way to spend a week at the airport. How ... (continue)

  If BA crew were allowed to go on strike as planned during Christmas, tens of thousands of passengers would have to spend days at the airport, stranded. Just like those at the Eurostar terminals. What a nightmare!

  Surely, there is another, much more pleasant, way to spend a week at the airport. How about BAA, Heathrow's owner, appointing (and paying) you as writer-in-residence, promising you unlimited access to all areas of the gigantic complex? All you have to do is to write a book about the experience. You are promised total editorial freedom to write whatever you like (though BAA is planning to give thousands of copies of the book to terminal users). How about that?

  Well, BAA approached Alain de Botton, and he agreed to do it. He spent a week at Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport in mid-August 2009 and the book A Week At The Airport - A Heathrow Diary came out in September.

  Is this a sell-out? Has de Botton reached "de botton" as a writer by accepting this commercial deal? Well, if you are open and frank about it from the beginning, instead of doing a "Fay Wheldon" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulgari_Connection), I don't see what the fuss is all about.

  But I do have an issue with the quality of the literary outcome of this commercial deal. I am disappointed as a reader. De Botton may have never "written a dull sentence in his life", but A Week at the Airport, though very slim at just over 100 pages, lacks structure (I guess that's why he calls it a diary) and purpose (very few people want to read other's rambling diaries). I don't doubt that de Botton genuinely enjoyed his week-long stay at Heathrow. But I am quite sure that given his talent, he would have written a much better book had he given (or been given) more time to digest the experience.

  The Guardian regards the book "as perky as an air stewardess", and I think this is a fair comment, provided that the air stewardesss in question is a BA employee.

  Judge for yourself.

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  曾堯 joetsang said on Dec 25, 2009 | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
  (27)
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• English Books
• Others 112 Pages
• ISBN-10: 1846683599
• ISBN-13: 9781846683596
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Pub date: Sep 24, 2009
• Dimensions: 1226 mm x 787 mm x 90 mm Just how big is that?
• In other languages: other languages 繁體書, 简体书, Libri Italiani

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