The book begins with Benjamin Ford, or Bennie, writing a letter to American Airlines, because of his canceled flight. He is heading to his daughter's wedding, and now because of the airplane cancellation, he is not able to make it on time. Bennie begins his book by saying "...I am writing to request a refund in the amount of $392.68. But, no, scratch that: Request is too mincy and polite, I think, too officious and Britishy, a word that walks along the page of a ramrod straightness of someone trying to balance a walnut on his upper ass cheeks!" (1). I think that this beginning is a really good introduction into Bennie's character. Both the swearing and the wittiness of his comments continue throughout the whole novel, adding a undertone of humor, despite his often unfortunate situations. Benjamin Ford is a recovering alcoholic who has been through a lot in his life, causing him to have anger at many things. His built up anger is very apparent. "In the eightish-hour period I've smoked seventeen cigarettes which wouldn't be notable save for the fact that the dandy Hudson News outlets here don't stock my brand so I'll soon be forced to switch to another, and while that shouldn't upset me it does. In fact, it enrages me. Here's my life in dangly tatters and I can't even enjoy the merest of my pleasures" (3). This passage shows both his addiction to smoking and his easily angered personality. I myself like his personality because he doesn't feel the need to be somebody he is not. I also think it's funny how he attacks the airlines because I have had so many troubles with airplanes, and I love how he is pointing out all the terrible parts of the airlines.
Bennie starts to tell the story of who he is and his life, so he starts talking about his mother, who he refers to a Miss Willa. He tells us that, "The stroke may have been the best thing that could have happened to my mother. No doubt this sounds beastly... but my mother use to be crazy and now she is not. ... I mean manic-depressive schizophrenic crazy, the hard stuff" (5). It must have been very difficult for Bennie to have grown up with a mother who had so many problems herself, and it seems like this could be one of the reasons that Bennie is who he is today. Because he had to take care of his mother for the past three years in their apartment, he became a heavy drinker and smoker, and his situation has gotten much worse. I feel badly for his mother, also, who can only write by post-it notes and can't do anything anymore. His mother attempted suicide many times, and one of my favorite descriptions in the whole novel is when he describes his mother trying to commit suicide by swallowing paint. "One by one, she emptied all of her oil paints into her mouth, cadmium yellow and lead white and arsenic-laced cobalt blue- a garish, self-annihilating palette squeezed down her throat. As suicide attempts go, it was a weak one. (She'd get better over the years- oh, much fucking better.) My grandmother found her lying on her bedroom floor, rainbows of drool leaking from the corners of her mouth, but Willa vomited up the paint before her stomach had to be pumped. It was, I've sometimes imagined (albeit abstractly), the worlds most beautiful vomit: a gastric rendition of Joseph's coat of many colors, its wild variegation and vivd chromatic streaks a pooling rebuke to the black mind that sought to swallow them" (22). Despite being extremely grotesque, this description of how beautiful her vomit would have been stuck out to me as being very vivid and memorable. I love how he made the comparison between the many colors of the paint, and the blackness of her mind. This passage shows both how good a writer Jonathan Miles is and how twisted the mind of Bennie is. I think that how the suicide was beautiful showed his family history of awful depression, and how when he looks past it all he is able to see something really beautiful, and it is again a development of his character.
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