If you’re an author of fiction, having your novel labelled an “airport novel” is a fate worse than death. Airport novels have a reputation of mediocrity, blandness, and moral depravity. Okay, maybe not that last thing, but the general consensus remains: airport novels suck.
The reasons why are numerous, and the airport novel faces an uphill reputational challenge from the get-go. For one thing, they’re often small, being required to fit in your hand luggage; every item purchased from an airport shop is one more item you must carry on your person. For another thing, the most common genres, crime and romance, are repetitive and generic.
Surely, surely there are better ways of passing your time on an airplane?
That’s the thing: No.
The Travel Problem Nobody Tells You About
Travelling, the act of getting from one place to another (completely different from what you do once you’re there), is a mixture of stress and boredom. Travelling effectively, the point of this entire section of the website, is a learned skill. It takes practice in the same way becoming a chess master takes practice. And the more you travel, the more you realise how much cognitive energy is required of you at all times.
To fly by airplane, you must get to the airport, find the right terminal, check-in, drop off your luggage, pass through airport security, find your gate, go through the boarding procedures, get your bags stowed, take-off, land, and repeat most or all of the above steps in reverse order…and that’s assuming everything goes right. Upheavals in the delicate chain of events might leave you stranded in Montreal against your will. Your margin of error is low.
Even if all goes well, you might still be sleepy from having to get up early, which will decrease your alertness. All-in-all by the time the plane actually gets in the air, you will have used up a considerable amount of cognitive energy just to get there.
The research, as outlined in Cal Newport’s Deep Work is clear: people cannot exercise unlimited concentration, and that’s not counting the distracting menace of smartphones.
And being an experienced traveller doesn’t give you extra immunity. You might still be caught off guard by a gate change or extensive delay, requiring considerable attention to rectify. The only difference is that you might face these problems in an airport lounge and you’ve got insurance courtesy of your co-branded credit card.
In this pitiful environment, the trashy airport novel steps in to save your soul (if not your literary tastes).
Where and When To Read The Trashy Novel
Your journey through the airport, however stressful, leads you to one place, your airplane seat. The moment you click your seatbelt, you’ll be facing a serious predicament: boredom. No matter what’s facing you when you land, for the next two hours minimum, you’re stuck.
If you’re lucky, your seat comes with an in-flight entertainment system. Games, movies, and fun flight maps can passively amuse you during this lull period between take-off and landing. But what if you answer no to the question “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?” Or worse, what if there is no in-flight entertainment system? Don’t think your phone or tablet can help you either; in airplane mode, they have no access to the Internet.
But then you remember that airport novel you bought, promising salvation from this boredom. For one thing, the novel is under your ownership, which means it can’t be shut off by an announcement from the pilot (in-flight entertainment systems are required to do so). For another thing, you don’t need to rely on the airplane’s crappy, expensive WiFi to work the book; if you’re literate, you’re good to go. Third, you don’t have to choose how you’ll use the system. Will you watch a new movie or an old favourite? The problem with a new movie is the concentration problem inherent to flying and the problem with an old movie is that the novelty’s worn off. Unless it’s your all-time favourite film, your mind will wander. The novel solves both these problems as you’ve never read it before (because you possess some self-respect) and the subject matter does not require you to concentrate that hard.
Over on the book review blog, I review and recommend high-end non-fiction books as well as serious literary books that ought to be included in a standard education. However I also recognise that reading them requires a good deal of concentration. But the issue with airplanes is that concentration is much, much harder. Not only are you cognitively blitzed from going through the airport, you’re also suffering from the pressurised air. In that environment, your ability to concentrate is slightly impaired. As such, going through Kant’s Critique Of Pure Reason is off the table.
But the bog-standard romance of the mediocre airport novel solves that problem: there are no abstruse concepts to grasp, no deeper themes the creator is trying to get across, only steamy love scenes in the back of a pickup truck. Forgetting how or why the romantic leads put a new spin on the wheelbarrow position doesn’t matter. You’re just passing the time and you don’t have to read another word once you get off the plane. The word count of these novels means you’ll have them finished on a flight lasting more than two hours, including meal service and bathroom breaks.
Once you’re safely on the ground, you can confidently return to Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals.
Conclusion
It’s easy to sneer at airport novels and their infamous reputation. Yet this much-maligned genre of books doesn’t always deserve this derogatory label. Comparing them to the smartest works of science, history and literature is an apples to oranges comparison because these books serve completely different purposes.
As a book review blogger, I strongly believe that any book someone reads is better than that person not reading at all. But in their specific environment, airport novels are superior to Darwin’s Origin of Species because they take into account, however unwittingly, the likely cognitive state of the reader. Reading is hard not because the act is tedious but because we live in a world beset by distraction, noise and interruption. In such a world, even finishing a 275 page novel about a ranch-hand and his cowgirl performing some special field plowing is a daunting task. In the airport and on an airplane, such an environment is the norm. Ivory towers cannot fly, so don’t bother pretending that they can.
Embrace the smut and enjoy your flight.