Airline Quality Literature

Recently, I had occasion to travel by plane for the first time in a little over a year. The flight was to be about five hours, so, of course, I took a book with me to occupy most of my time. Generally, though, prior to opening my book, I’ll flip through the complimentary inflight magazine a bit first to see if there are any articles of interest.

On this particular flight, I had a window seat and spent the taxiing and takeoff portion of the trip gazing out the window. Then, about ten minutes after we took off, I turned my gaze to the seatback in front of me to see what magazines they had to offer. When I did that, it took a moment for me to process what I was seeing; or maybe more aptly put—what I was not seeing.

Clearly, the sign at the top of the seatback said, “literature only,” yet I did not see any magazines. All that was there was a thin pamphlet titled “A321.” I pondered this for a moment and then thought to myself, “Don’t prejudge. Just because I never heard of ‘A321’ does not mean it is not a high-quality piece of literature.” So, I opened it up and this is what I saw:

Now, I graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and while I was not a straight-A student, I feel like I paid enough attention to discern what is and isn’t literature.  And I was pretty confident that what I was holding in my hands was, decidedly, not literature. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are some fine graphic novels out there that tell amazing stories using pictures only, so I don’t discount that medium as literature. But what I was looking at had no real plot, completely underdeveloped characters, and a total lack of creativity. It starts off with some guy in a tacky yellow shirt buckling a seatbelt, moves on to some dude figuring out how to properly store a briefcase, and follows up with an emotionless mom putting an oxygen mask on her equally emotionless kid, in a situation that would, presumably, be terrifying to them. I’ll admit that last bit piqued my interest, but this two-page piece of “literature” never went back to that storyline.

I finished this epic tome in about 35 seconds and placed it back in the “Literature Only” section of the seatback. I debated hitting the call button to get the flight attendant over so I could complain about the plane’s lack of literature, but remembered that I had my own book anyway, and decided not to make waves. I felt bad, though, for anyone on the plane who may have forgotten to bring a book or magazine with them to read. What would they do on a five-hour flight without any airline-provided literature? I glanced over at the guy in the middle seat who was looking at his phone, and then at the guy in the aisle seat who was looking at his laptop. That’s when I remembered it was 2022.