Aircraft (review)

Technology and culture are intimately intertwined in this book, beginning on the cover where the hungry maw of a jet engine seems to press forward with the intensity of an Andrew Wyeth image. The title itself is chosen to evoke Le Corbusier's 1935 work of the same name; Le Corbusier, more than any other single artist, is frequently referenced throughout David Pascoe's book. In his preface, Pascoe sets forth his objectives: to consider "the powered, fixed wing, flying machine from several distinctive perspectives: as a miracle of engineering; as a device driven by military ambition; as a product of the desire for speed; and, finally, as an inspiration for artists, architects and writers" (p. 8).

Within these limited parameters, Pascoe succeeds. One will have to look elsewhere for consideration of balloons and dirigibles, or for a discussion of the powered, fixed-wing flying machine as a device driven by commercial ambition, or as a product of the desire for comfortable long-distance transportation, or as an important element in the development of "the global village."

Acknowledging that design is driven by physical rather than emotional constraints, Pascoe nevertheless repeatedly points out the resonance of the best aerodynamic design with twentieth-century aesthetic sensibility. He gives us images on almost every page, about a dozen of them in color. The book has four chapters: "Flight Engineering," "Conquests of the Air," "Silver Bullets," and "Model Planes." Unfortunately, these do not correspond to clear thematic divisions. In each chapter, Pascoe deals with design and engineering, and in each he oscillates among technology, psychology (primarily military and erotic), and the graphic, plastic, poetic, and performing arts.

Chapter 1 opens with the words of the poet Filippo Marinetti, founder of the futurist movement: "A pressing need to liberate words, to drag them out of their prison in the Latin period . . . This is what the whirling propeller told me, when I flew two hundred metres above the mighty chimney pots of Milan!" (p. 11, ellipsis in the original). Pascoe goes on to explore artists' attempts to express their sentiments; one may differ with his analysis of Delaunay's L'Hommage à Blériot, but one cannot deny the chill elicited by the melding of pilot and gun sight in the advertisement for Fokker's fighters or by the ambiguous anthropomorphism of Max Ernst's Murdering Aeroplane. By the middle of the chapter, the focus is more clearly on design, although the various arts are drawn in again and again as cultural responses to aircraft design and function.

This pattern persists through the remainder of the book. Chapter 2 begins with a quotation from Bertolt Brecht—". . . the beauty of an aeroplane has something obscene about it" (p. 67)—and continues with an exploration of the military aspects of aircraft. The "Conquests of the Air" are concomitantly a conquest of humanity. Chapter 3 begins with an analysis of the film Things to Come and is the chapter most clearly focused on technical aspects of aircraft design—all in relation to military objectives. Chapter 4 begins by describing an erotic encounter between a beautiful woman, an aircraft, and a male flying instructor in the 1997 film Crash. Pascoe here returns to the themes of the first chapter: the concept of aircraft as both works of art in themselves and as inspiration for artists of all media.

Pascoe's prose is self-consciously literary. For example, under the section head "Stealth Tactics" he begins: "Through sparkling visibility the bombers came to the city, outspread, unsleeping, on the bright Tuesday in early September. Twin-aisled, wide-bodied Boeings both, American and United, silver and dark blue, they delivered their cargo at intervals into the heart of the world" (p. 108). This introduces the discussion of 11 September 2001 and the destruction of the World Trade Center, which is not mentioned by name until page 109, though the phrase "twin-aisled" perhaps hints at the nickname "twin towers."

Overall, this is a disturbing book, focused as it is on what might be called the dark side of aviation and the...