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June 28, 2001

Men Who Are Out of It: Physically, Mentally, Socially

By JANET MASLIN

"This is the place to see America, not down there, where the show is almost over," maintains the peripatetic narrator of Walter Kirn's new novel, and he ought to know. Ryan Bingham is a corporate consultant who flies so frequently that the book's title, "Up in the Air," refers to his usual state. Psychically as well as physically, he
dwells in a perfect, dispassionate, climate-controlled limbo that is endemic to his times.
Analyzing that condition is Mr. Kirn's principal mission here, one that he accomplishes with sardonic, lethally sharp
acuity. "This is a Tuesday, third millennium, and breakfast is poppyseed muffins," Ryan tells one fellow passenger.
"That's all I know."

In the universe that Ryan calls Airworld, Mr. Kirn finds the makings of archly devastating post-social satire. Ryan, whose inner clockwork is frighteningly well described, is a contemporary creature of habit. Skilled in the art of counseling corporate workers to look on the bright side of being fired, he roams from city to interchangeable city in
dispassionate tranquillity. He likes the sameness of airplane food and prefers to cut his meals into squares before he
eats. He finds that airport chapels are "restful and perfect for catching up on paperwork."

When he touches down in a room run by a favorite hotel chain and admires its utter blandness, Ryan imagines an
army of like-minded individuals: "I can almost hear the guests' sedatives kicking in as I pass their doors." When he
talks to a flight attendant, he appreciates the built-in detachment: "For all she knows her morning is my night." And
when Ryan considers his own nature, he finds the greatest virtue in efficiency and neutrality. "I'm like my mother — I
stereotype," he acknowledges. "It's faster."

"Up in the Air" does such a savagely incisive job of explaining what makes Ryan run that it's a book worth its weight
in frequent flier miles — the only thing he cares about, by the way. As "Up in the Air" begins, Ryan is within a hair of
accruing one million miles on his account and of enjoying all the meaningless glory that attends such a coup. The root
of all the book's plotting and paranoia lies in Ryan's fear that someone will steal his miles, study his psyche or
otherwise exploit his status as one of Great West airline's most addicted customers. Beyond this, the book neither has
nor really wants much of a destination.

The dazzle of Airworld is enough, since Mr. Kirn conveys it with such clever, lacerating skill. And if "Up in the Air"
has more trouble on its earthbound stopovers, that is to be expected. Though plot developments embroil Ryan with
family members and conspiracy theories, this smartly acerbic novel works best as social criticism, located somewhere
between Joseph Heller's "Something Happened" and Kurt Andersen's "Turn of the Century" in its knowing glimpse of
cool, businesslike anomie and mounting paranoia. Ryan's fear that he is somehow being controlled by omniscient
marketing forces is only the latest, most scarily astute version of a well-established, dehumanizing modern scenario.

Because Mr. Kirn has also been a critic, his book incorporates more than the usual awareness of cultural phenomena,
like "the best seller or near-best seller, heavy on themes of espionage, high finance and the goodness of common
people in small towns," that is liable to be read in midair. And because he has readily analyzed the work of others, his
latest novel (after "Thumbsucker" and "She Needed Me") might be expected to be uncommonly self-aware.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company