Out Of My Mind: The Discovery Of Saunders-Vixen

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Overview

One of our best-loved writers, author of the phenomenal bestsellers The Bridge Across Forever, One, Running from Safety, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, returns with a brilliantly conceived narrative about the nature of creativity. Bach's journey begins as he puzzles over design modifications for his airplane, a Piper Cub. Perfect designs--simple and practical--seem to come to him out of the blue. But one day when a design appears, along with a fleeting glimpse of an intriguing woman, Bach sets out to discover the source of the visions. The journey leads to a startling destination: a parallel universe where a British airplane manufacturer--Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company Ltd.--makes superb biplanes and solves problems ...
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Overview

One of our best-loved writers, author of the phenomenal bestsellers The Bridge Across Forever, One, Running from Safety, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, returns with a brilliantly conceived narrative about the nature of creativity. Bach's journey begins as he puzzles over design modifications for his airplane, a Piper Cub. Perfect designs--simple and practical--seem to come to him out of the blue. But one day when a design appears, along with a fleeting glimpse of an intriguing woman, Bach sets out to discover the source of the visions. The journey leads to a startling destination: a parallel universe where a British airplane manufacturer--Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company Ltd.--makes superb biplanes and solves problems for perplexed aviators. There Bach meets Derek Hawthorne, his guide through Saunders-Vixen and the new world whose possibilities are just unfolding. There Bach also meets his muse, an unforgettable young aircraft designer named Laura Bristol, who teaches Bach the beauty of simplicity and practicality.

Editorial Reviews

USA Today
Piloted by the bestselling author of Jonathan Linvingston Seagull, this wonderous tale takes off into the realm of thought and spirit touching down in a parallel universe where a remarkable, young muse teaches the beauty of simplicity and practically.
Publishers Weekly
Fans of the author or of small planes might enjoy this slight parable by Bach, still best known for Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but others will find it a flat experience. In a tale that could easily be retitled "Zen and the Art of Piper Cub Maintenance," narrator Richard Bach is having problems with the door latch of his plane. As he searches for a solution, designs begins to come to him from nowhere until one day, through one of the designs, he glimpses the image of his "love messenger." Believing that "everything is exactly as it is for a reason," Richard devotes long passages to pondering the whys behind seeming minutiae--such as why his lovely messenger tucks a pencil in her hair, concluding finally--following quite a leap of logic--that she must come from another, computerless, time. Richard's obsession with the lovely messenger and her designs eventually leads him to the discovery of a parallel universe--England's Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company Ltd., circa 1923--an aviation Shangri-La, where the answers to questions lead to more questions. Simplistic to the point of parody, with questions sometimes broken down into jerky individual elements ("Are you telling me that Geoffrey de Havilland? Copied? The design? Of your airplane? And called it his?"), this New Age parable is almost ludicrous in its strain for profundity. Line drawings. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull is back, still flying after all these years. In his latest fantasy, the author is puzzling over a modified design for his Piper Cub when a vision of loveliness appears, enticing him to a parallel universe. There he learns the joys of simplicity from designer Laura, who works for the Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Shangri-la for aviation buffs, as imagined by the enormously popular author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and other gossamer semifictional New Agey manifestoes. It's a dream vision experienced by a designer of airplane parts (the author) whose technical-mechanical problems land him, as it were, in •1923 parallel," an alternative England of yesteryear where lovely Laura (with whom Bach ardently discusses "partial-pressure disk design") and strapping Derek guide him through a "world" where fliers' dreams (only briefly, alas) come true. "Could the search for a working door latch have driven me out of my mind?," Bach thoughtfully inquires. "Quite possibly," the reader murmurs in reply, "quite possibly."

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780385334907
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 9/28/2000
  • Pages: 112
  • Product dimensions: 5.49 (w) x 8.27 (h) x 0.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Richard Bach is the author of ten other books: Stranger to the Ground, Biplane, Nothing by Chance, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Gift of Wings, Illusions, There's No Such Place as Far Away, The Bridge Across Forever, One, and Running from Safety.

He has a Web site at www.richardbach.com.

Read an Excerpt

The problem was the door. It wouldn't stayopen.

On a Piper Cub, the door is in two pieces -- one wide trapezoid for the top half, with plexiglass for a window, another for the bottom half, covered in yellow fabric, the same as the rest of the airplane. The bottom half works fine because as soon as it's unlatched it drops right down, and the weight of it keeps it there.

The top half, though, pivots upward, and there's a weak little catch to hold the door open when pilot or passenger enters or leaves the cockpit. The catch will hold the door open while taxiing, and through takeoff.

The view from a Cub with the door open is widescreen technicolor three-dimension stereo sound, the grass and treetops dropping away, one's heart soaring above. Wind pours by, a '28 convertible ratcheting down its mountain curve with a side missing, instead of the top. To splash in that wind . . . That's why people like me enjoy messing around with airplanes.

Except the top half of the door slammed shut. When I flew any faster than 65 miles per hour, the pressure of the wind overpowered the latch, and stam! there I was in a half-closed cabin, cut off from my river of wind. Vexing, vexing.

I thought about it for days, after I met the problem. It haunted me.

At work, trying to write, there it was, turning slowly in space between my eyes and the computer screen, the image of that latch. A bigger latch of the same type wouldn't answer. The force of the wind increases as the square of the speed, I knew. The door would slam down at 70 mph instead of 65.

Remove the door? No, I thought. Sometimes, in the winter, in rainstorms . . . I don't want the side of the airplane open forever.

A hook, ascreen-door hook. On an airplane? What would I screw it into, the wing fabric?

Drifting down the aisles of the hardware store, the image drifting with me. Not magnets, not pressure catches, not window locks. Nothing would work. There was no way to anchor the latch to the wing. The image faded when I went to sleep.

Next morning early, not even awake, there floated the picture of that latch again. I groaned at the sight. Was it going to follow me through yet another day, taunting me with my mechanical incompetence?That picture floated in early light just long enough for me to understand, then it was gone. No image in the air, no problem humiliating me, no nothing. Empty air.

I didn't need to be prodded. I grabbed the pad at my bedside, slashed down a drawing of the new design. Work? Of course it will work! Why didn't the Piper Cub factory design a latch like this in 1939?

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews
  • Anonymous

    Posted January 23, 2002

    Not for most flyers

    I guess I am a little prejudice against a man who got married, had six kids and then left them all because he did not believe in marriage. This tale is interesting but it does not capture the essence of flying as it tries to do. The whole seperate but parallel universe is just to far out. It is a captivating idea for a fairy tale, but this is not what the aviator seeks. I think his description of the Saunders-Vixen facility and aerodrome must be a lot like what heaven must be like, but the story seems to lead no where. He never even takes to the sky in one of the Saunders-Vixen's machines. For some books that define what flight is, try Coonts's 'The Cannibal Queen' or anything by Gahn.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 10, 2001

    BACH IS BACH

    Mr. Bach always writes from the heart and psyche. A short book is only less understanding of the universe. When I want to feel airplanes in my soul, any one of his books will take me there. Saunders-Vixen is an elegant hors doeuvres. Mr. Bach has inspired me for 33 years and was most responsible for me taking pen in hand and writing a book. It is nothing at all like his books, but his inspiration was with me.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 1, 2000

    Balderdash Bach

    ?This book is for DIE HARD Bach fans only. If you have every one of his other books, and cling to every word that Richard Bach has written, buy this book! It will complete your collection. However, if you are looking for a good read, even a bit of enlightenment, or a short fantasy journey into the possible/impossible realms, don't bother. I found the story to be tedious, a quick read, but a boring flight. Great topic for exploration, but Bach's treatment of it is cursory and uninspired. Bach seems to still be floating on Jonathon¿s wings . . all air, no substance.

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