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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING
A fierce, funny, and rollicking novel about our media-saturated, celebrity-obsessed, and spectacle-oriented age. THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING imagines that a flight very much like the celebrated "Miracle on the Hudson" was a concocted event, arranged by a failing airline and its hired publicity Svengali. But this well-laid and devious plan goes far awry.
Flight AW2921 crashes into the Hudson River during the Monday morning commute and all 162 passengers aboard survive. A city and a nation—a world really—where bad news and devastation are anticipated by the minute, latches on to the miracle with unabashed glee at the happy ending, at the odds-defying safe landing. What they don’t know? The crash was orchestrated by a dastardly PR svengali at the behest of the failing airline’s CEO. Stock in Wanderlust was plummeting. This was the last-ditch effort at resurrection. Previously nothing more than a second- rate airline, Air Wanderlust is now associated with the surmounting of impossible odds and hard-to-come-by modern day heroism, resting on its throne at the top of Google searches.
The man of the hour, Captain Hank Swagger, proves to be a man with extraordinary flaws but some small reservoir of strength, or at least good luck. Recent indiscretions put him in danger of having his wings permanently clipped; instead Swagger spent the last 9 months test-landing a simulator and rehearsing his lines for the inevitable morning shows and superbowl half-time interviews that would come when flight AW2921 made him a household name, and an American hero. Disgraced TV news anchor Lucy Springer has been outfitted with a puppet in a vindictive divorce settlement and relegated to covering the celebrity Twitter beat with her foul-mouthed doppelganger sidekick; she was “luckily” the only reporter on the downed plane, and first to capture the story, with a hunch that this crash is not all it seems.
Normal Fulk, the real hero of flight AW2921’s unfolding saga, wasn’t even supposed to be on board. A month ago, he’d faked his own death to escape a fanatical reality television producer and the consequences of his barely legal career as celebrity semen trafficker. Normal is toting the coveted “John Lennon” with him on the flight—his last big score—but when the plane crashes, he has to leave it behind or risk being arrested. And conscripted into a reality show called “Semen Pirates” that might destroy any self-respect he has left.
In the aftermath of the crash and the chaotic week that follows, Lucy, Normal, and Captain Hank Swagger are all about to discover what it means to be on board at the center of a “miracle.” Along its darkly comical, fast-paced way, THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING asks serious questions. Has “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” become “If the event’s on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, does it matter that it never happened?” Does our constant bombardment with information and updates make it harder or easier to get at the truth? Is it all an illusion?
About the author: Jon Methven has worked as a paperboy, a dishwasher, a Ponderosa meat cook, a pizza deliverer, a golf course grounds crewman, a barbecue seasoning filter employee, an illegal barbecue seasoning filter employee since he was living in Australia without a work visa at the time, a bartender, a mascot at Yankee Stadium (Mr. Popcorn), a journalist, a taste tester, and a cubicle dweller. He knows things you can only dream of knowing, or can learn if willing to work for minimum wage. His work has appeared at Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, n+1, The New York Times, and New York magazine, and he currently writes the “Analytically Speaking” column that appears Mondays at The Awl.
He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
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Book
Published 2012-06-01 by Simon & Schuster |