10 Best "Personal History" Pieces: #10 Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

The New Yorker’s “Personal History” section is a rich source of reading pleasure. Some of the magazine’s best pieces appear there. Over the next ten months, I’ll look back and pick ten of my favorites (one per month) and try to express why I like them so much. Today’s choice is Ann Patchett’s wonderful “Flight Plan” (August 2, 2021).

“Flight Plan” is Patchett’s reflection on how she learned to live with her flight-obsessed husband. It features one of my favorite opening lines: “The three of us were in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” No throat clearing. Patchett puts us immediately there, “in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” I love the specificity. I love the exoticism. Why is Patchett there in that float plane, in that remote location? Who are the two men she’s with? What’s this all about? Patchett tells us in detail after fascinating detail:

Karl and I were spending a week fishing at a fly-out lodge outside Iliamna, by which I mean nowhere near Iliamna but closer to Iliamna than to anywhere else. Each morning, we and the dozen or so other guests gathered up our neoprene waders and were divided into groups of three or four or five. Along with thermoses and sandwiches and tackle boxes and a guide, we were loaded into a string of warhorse floatplanes bobbing at the dock. The pilots who flew for the lodge struck me as men who would have had a hard time finding work elsewhere. After a flight of twenty or thirty minutes, we would land on a river or a lake, then pile out of the plane and into a small waiting boat. The plane would then taxi off while the guide and the boat took us even deeper into nowhere, the idea being that special fish congregated in secret locations far from civilization. But there was no civilization, and there were plentiful fish in the lake in front of the lodge. Taking a plane to a boat to find an obscure fishing spot seemed to be a bit of Alaskan theatre. After we reached whatever pebbly shoal the guide had in mind for the day, we arranged our flies and waded hip-deep into the freezing water to cast for trout. Despite the significant majesty of the place, wading around in a river for eight hours wasn’t my idea of a good time. Bears prevented me from wandering off. Rain prevented me from reading on the shore. Mosquitoes prevented everything else. 

On the fifth day of their fishing trip, Patchett’s boyfriend, Karl, suggests that they skip the fishing and pay extra to spend the day flying instead. She agrees. She writes,

Flying was what he’d come for, anyway: the early-morning flight out to the fish and the afternoon flight back to the lodge. Karl liked talking to the pilots—who put him in the right seat and let him wear the headset—and they liked talking to him, because he was a doctor, and free medical advice is hard to come by. Karl and I were less than a year into our relationship when we went to Alaska, and I didn’t yet fully understand the centrality of airplanes in his life. After Alaska, I got it.

She got it, but at a cost – the loss of peace of mind when Karl is flying solo and is late calling in or doesn’t call at all. Patchett tells of the time Karl flew a Cessna to Kingston, Ontario, to look at a boat. On the way home, the weather turns bad. He calls from Bowling Green, Kentucky to say that he’d landed because the transponder was out, which meant the plane couldn’t be tracked. Patchett tells him to stay there and she’ll drive up to get him. He says no, maybe he can fix it. Two hours later there’s still no call, and still no answer when she tries his cell phone. She writes,

Around midnight, the clock and I had a conversation. I told the clock that I wanted to wait fifteen minutes before my new life began, the life in which Karl had been killed in a plane crash. I requested fifteen more minutes in this world—which I was quickly coming to see as the past—before figuring out whom to call, whom to wake up. You’ll remember this feeling when the phone rings, I told myself. You’ll remember how scared you were when he calls to tell you he’s fine. And it was true. As many times as I’ve been in exactly this situation, I never forget it, and it never fails to shock me, the flood of adrenaline that does not serve for fight or flight but drowns me. At twelve-thirty, I shifted my perspective again, from wondering what it would be like if he were dead to understanding that he was dead, and I decided that I could wait another fifteen minutes. He would be dead forever, so what difference did it make if I gave myself a little more time? I still had no idea what I was supposed to do.

After I had extended the final cutoff two more times, he walked in the door. That’s how these stories always end, of course, except for the one time when they don’t. I saw the headlights against the garage door and went outside in the rain to meet him with my love and my rage and my sick relief. I wanted to kill him because he had not been killed. I wanted to step into his open jacket and stay there for the rest of my life, for the rest of his life. How had he not called?

I love that “I saw the headlights against the garage door and went outside in the rain to meet him with my love and my rage and my sick relief.” There are so many great lines in this piece. Return to that opening scene for a moment, where Patchett is in the float plane with Karl and the pilot. The pilot asks if Karl would like to try flying the plane. Karl says yes. Patchett describes the experience:

After a demonstration—up, around, down again—the pilot turned over the controls. This was not Lake Michigan. Getting up to speed required circling, but you had to take off straight toward a fixed point on the horizon and into the wind. Karl took off toward the shore, and then we lifted off the lake, flew past the mountains, through the clouds, around the blue sky, back through the clouds and past the mountains, then nose up, plane down, smack into the lake. The pilot was right; it was hard to see it coming. I reminded myself to relax my jaw. The pilot offered Karl some pointers, some praise. There was a quick discussion of how the landing could be improved, and then we were off again, a tighter circle, greater speed, straight up, lake-mountain-cloud-blue-cloud-mountain-lake, the nose up as we came down. The jolt was harder this time—I felt it in my spine—but before I could fully register my relief we were up again: a carnival ride for which no one bothered to take the tickets.

I wasn’t prone to airsickness or seasickness, but the combination of air and water in rapid succession was something new. I turned away from the window to contemplate the floor, stamped metal rusted at the edges, like a service elevator in a hospital. I stared at it while Karl took off, turned above the lake, then dropped back down onto the surface. Repetition was the key to learning. The only thing on hand to throw up in were the pilot’s waders, which seemed better (better?) than throwing up on the stamped-metal floor. I held down my breakfast through sheer force of will. I was angry at both men—especially the one I was sharing a bed with back at the lodge—for not caring about how seriously unpleasant this might be for someone who did not live to fly. But, despite the rage and the nausea pulsing in the back of my throat, I wasn’t afraid. Considering that about half of all small-craft accidents occur during either takeoff or landing; considering that taking off and landing was all we were doing; considering that the plane was rusted and the pilot had struggled with the aftereffects of Agent Orange and my boyfriend had never landed a plane on water before; considering that this lake was somewhere far from Iliamna and no one knew we were there in the first place; considering that if the plane flipped, as it had been established these planes could do, I would probably not be able to swim through the freezing water in my sack of neoprene (which I had stupidly worn against the cold), and that, if I did make it to the shore, my chances of surviving whatever came next were probably zero—I should have been afraid.

That “I turned away from the window to contemplate the floor, stamped metal rusted at the edges, like a service elevator in a hospital” is inspired! The whole piece is inspired – one of my all-time favorite “Personal History” pieces. 

Credit: The above illustration by Sam Alden is from Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan."

Interesting Emendations: Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Illustration by Sam Alden, from Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Ann Patchett’s “Flight Plan” (The New Yorker, August 2, 2021) is one of my favorite pieces of 2021. It has a wonderful opening sentence: “The three of us were in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” 

Recently, reading the piece again, this time in Patchett’s new essay collection These Precious Days, I was surprised to find the first line altered. It now reads, “Three of us were in a 1947 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” Two revisions, both interesting: “the” is deleted, and “1957” is changed to “1947.” Normally, I relish the use of zero pronouns, but in this case, “the three of us” seems more precise. As for the change in the de Havilland Beaver’s model year, I’m curious; which is it? Does it matter? Not if it’s fiction. But this is a personal history piece, so, yes, accuracy matters. 

I suspect what happened is that Patchett submitted her manuscript to The New Yorker. The magazine fact-checked it, found that “1947 de Havilland Beaver” should be “1957 de Havilland Beaver” and changed it. But when Patchett collected the piece in These Precious Days, she used her original text, ignoring the fact-checked New Yorker version. That’s just my theory; I could be wrong. Whatever the explanation, it’s an unfortunate discrepancy in a piece that seems destined for classic status. 

Best of 2021: Reporting

Illustration by Mark Wang, from John Seabrook's "Zero-Proof Therapy"

Here are my favorite New Yorker reporting pieces of 2021 (with a choice quote from each in brackets): 

1. John Seabrook, “Zero-Proof Therapy,” September 27, 2021 (“I swirled the beer and admired the lacery of foam, as the bubbles slid slowly down the side of the glass. I took a deep whiff—the Cascade hops, from the Pacific Northwest, had notes of pineapple and hay. I brought the glass up to my lips, and took a long swallow. A tingle of good cheer seemed to spread through my hand up my right arm and into my chest”).

2. Gary Shteyngart, “My Gentile Region,” October 11, 2021 (“I have always imagined that beyond its pleasurable utility the penis must be an incomprehensible thing to most heterosexual women, like a walrus wearing a cape that shows up every once in a while to perform a quick round of gardening”).

3. Heidi Julavits, “The Fire Geyser,” August 23, 2021 (“The lava near the path reached out with giant panther paws that seemed to demand petting”). 

4. Rivka Galchen, “Better Than a Balloon,” February 15 & 22, 2021 (“And Pacific Trimming had recently remodelled, so that if you walked by on Thirty-ninth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, even the least crafty among us might be filled with a desire for rickrack, for zippers in thirty-six colors, for shank buttons”).

5. Nick Paumgarten, “It’s No Picnic,” March 1, 2021 (“At Hamido, the evening was mild, and the curve was still more or less flat; happy to be around people other than our families, we sat at a large table on the sidewalk, in the open air, sharing platters of bran-grilled orate, grilled octopus, fried sardines, baba ghanoush, and beers of our own bringing. Was all of this reckless? Probably”).

6. Ed Caesar, “Only Disconnect,” November 29, 2021 (“The men were making Berber tea, which is the color of rust. They seemed delighted to see a stranger, and came out to greet me. Their grooved, hard faces confirmed a lifetime spent outdoors. Next to them, I looked like a newborn. They gave me bread, a tin of sardines, and a glass of the tea, which was as sweet as a candy cane. I happily devoured all of it”).

7. John McPhee, “Tabula Rasa: Volume 2,” April 19, 2021 (“Nothing goes well in a piece of writing until it is in its final stages or done”). 

8. Ann Patchett, “Flight Plan,” August 2, 2021 (I saw the headlights against the garage door and went outside in the rain to meet him with my love and my rage and my sick relief.)

9. M. R. O’Connor, “Towering Infernos,” November 15, 2021 (“The temperature was a hundred degrees, and the Air Quality Index was 368—a ‘hazardous’ rating. An opened but undrunk can of Budweiser sat on the patio of an abandoned house, and the milkweed on the side of the road was drenched in psychedelic-pink fire retardant. We took our breaks sitting inside idling trucks, where we could breathe conditioned air instead of toxic smoke”).

10. Lauren Collins, “Kitchen Confessional,” December 20, 2021 ("In Roman’s world, an admission of effort must be offset by an ungiven fuck"). 

2021 Year in Review

Illustration from newyorker.com

Begin with a drink. I’ll have one of those Mumbai Mules that Hannah Goldfield mentions in her excellent “Tables For Two: Bollywood Kitchen” (March 1, 2021): “vodka, ginger beer, and fresh lime juice, punched up with ground coriander and cumin and shaken over ice.” Mm, fucking delicious! Okay, let’s roll! 

First highlight: John Seabrook’s “Zero-Proof Therapy.” What a piece! It’s about Seabrook’s “raging non-alcoholism,” and his discovery of a great zero-alcoholic beer called Run Wild. It begins in the bar of the Atlantic Brewing Company, Stratford, Connecticut:

Behind the bar, Bill Shufelt, a thirty-eight-year-old former hedge-fund trader, who co-founded Athletic in 2017, drew me a pint of Two Trellises, one of the company’s seasonal N.A. brews—a hazy I.P.A. that he and the other co-founder, John Walker, Athletic’s forty-one-year-old head brewer, were test-batching. I had not raised a pint drawn from a keg since I quit drinking alcohol, exactly one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight days earlier. The glass seemed to fit my palm like a key.

That “The glass seemed to fit my palm like a key” is inspired! The whole piece is inspired – a perfect blend of the personal and the reportorial. I enjoyed it enormously. 

Highlight #2: John McPhee’s “Tabula Rasa: Volume 2.” Great to see the Master still producing at age ninety. This piece is a beauty, containing, among other arresting items, the story of how McPhee became a New Yorker writer. If you’re an aspiring writer racked by self-doubt, you should read this piece. In McPhee’s words, it’s a “chronicle of rejection as a curable disease.” It begins, improbably, with a seventeenth century Dutch ship called the Tyger, and ends in the office of William Shawn. Other ingredients: sand hogs, basketball, the Twin Towers, the Tower of London, Jackie Gleason, Bill Bradley, and lunch with the legendary Esquire editor, Harold Hayes. How does it all connect? You’ll have to read it and see. It’s quite a story!    

Speaking of greats, Janet Malcolm died this year, age eighty-six. She’s one of my lodestars. I love her unique blend of sharp-eyed journalism and sharp-tongued criticism. Many of her pieces are in my personal anthology of great New Yorker writing, including “Depth of Field,” “Performance Artist,” “A Girl of the Zeitgeist,” and her extraordinary “The Silent Woman.” I’ll miss her. 

Highlight #3 is the wonderful art criticism of Peter Schjeldahl; seventeen splendid pieces this year. Among my favorites: “Movements of One” (“Morandi drains our seeing of complacency. He occults the obvious”); “Home Goods” (“Ordinary things in the world interested Chardin. That doesn’t sound rare, but, oh, it is”); and “A Trip to the Fair” (“He created this work in the dark with slathered silver nitrate, silver oxide, silver iodide, and silver bromide. Exposed to light, the strokes resolved into a filmy gestural cadenza: quietly ferocious, if such is imaginable, like superimposed eddies in a whipping windstorm”).

And while we’re at it, let’s give a huzzah for my favorite section of the magazine – “Goings On About Town” – a weekly smorgasbord of delectable mini-reviews of, among other things, art shows, movies, music, and restaurants. I devour it! For me, the most challenging “Top Ten” list is always “Best of GOAT”; there's so much to choose from, it’s tough boiling it down.

Other highlights: Rivka Galchen’s “Better Than a Balloon,” Gary Shteyngart’s “My Gentile Region,” Ann Patchett’s “Flight Plan,” Heidi Julavits’s “The Fire Geyser,” and Ed Caesar’s “Only Disconnect” – all crazy good! 

But that’s enough for now. Over the next few days, I’ll roll out my “Top Ten” lists - my way of paying tribute to the pieces I enjoyed most. Thank you, New Yorker, for another glorious year of reading bliss. 

August 2, 2021 Issue

Three excellent pieces in this week’s issue:

1. Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: We All Scream for Ice Cream,” a review of several blissful new ice creams, including Sea Salt Saba (“Trapani sea-salt base with a swirl of intensely concentrated grape-must syrup”), Red Flag (“sweet cream with strawberry jam and graham crunch”), and Roasted Banana with Coffee Caramel (“surging with dark reduced sugars”). Pleasure is palpable in every paragraph. Sample: 

There are pints to take home, too; availing myself of an insulated bag outfitted with ice packs ($7), I toted several on the subway, including Panna Stracciatella, flecked with dark-chocolate shards, and Somebody Scoop Phil, the brainchild of the sitcom producer turned food personality Phil Rosenthal, featuring a lightly salted malted milk-chocolate base, dense with chunks of Twix and candied peanuts, plus swirls of fudge and panna caramel that oozed obscenely when I peeled off the lid.

2. Nick Paumgarten’s Talk story “Lemonland,” an account of his visit to an intriguing Manhattan installation called Citrovia, created to disguise a giant construction shed. Paumgarten describes it as a “plasticine sanctuary of tangerine lemons and Teletubby trees, a contrived oasis where the lemons are yellow and the sky is always blue.” The air at Citrovia is scented with a custom-made fragrance. Paumgarten delightfully describes it:

It brought to mind the old seventies perfume Love’s Fresh Lemon, from Love Cosmetics (“The subtle way to get fresh with him”), the jangly tang of Mello Yello (“There’s nothing mellow about it”), and smoke-concealment strategies of yore.

3. Ann Patchett’s “Flight Plan,” a personal history piece on learning to live with her flight-obsessed husband. The opening sentence hooked me: “The three of us were in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” The piece brims with arresting lines. This one, for example: “The only thing on hand to throw up in were the pilot’s waders, which seemed better (better?) than throwing up on the stamped-metal floor.” And this 138-word beauty:

Considering that about half of all small-craft accidents occur during either takeoff or landing; considering that taking off and landing was all we were doing; considering that the plane was rusted and the pilot had struggled with the aftereffects of Agent Orange and my boyfriend had never landed a plane on water before; considering that this lake was somewhere far from Iliamna and no one knew we were there in the first place; considering that if the plane flipped, as it had been established these planes could do, I would probably not be able to swim through the freezing water in my sack of neoprene (which I had stupidly worn against the cold), and that, if I did make it to the shore, my chances of surviving whatever came next were probably zero—I should have been afraid.

And this: “I saw the headlights against the garage door and went outside in the rain to meet him with my love and my rage and my sick relief.”

That last one is inspired! The whole piece is inspired! I enjoyed it immensely.