the Essence of Airportness

Our son Mike is visiting us for the week. He flew in from Vancouver. Mike is a loveable, quirky English major. It is always fun to hear who and what he is reading.

During a past semester one of his professors made a reference to Airport Novels. He called it a category or a genre comparable to Science Fiction, Political Thriller, Mystery, Historical Romance etc. etc. This is interesting because, any airport bookstore has an inventory of titles from a variety of categories. But the actual books in an Airport bookstore also belong to an overall category called Airport Literature or Airport Novels. That is in the words of a bona fide UBC professor of English. And that surprises me.

Anyway, Mike decided to check out the Vancouver Airport Bookstore - more or less in search of the Essence of Airportness. Mike has never bought anything in an Airport Bookstore before except for boxes of Smarties and bags of SPITZ. (that’s because never has any extra money)  So he was sort of mesmerized.  He was in fieldtrip mode and looking a lot like your average UBC student: Cute, Curious and Intellectual. Like he should be reading Dostoevsky or Don Delilo. He settled on a  Nora Roberts book and began leafing through, reading paragraphs here and there and noticing ALL SORTS OF THINGS.  It did not take him long at all to realize that he is not and never will be a Nora Roberts fan. As he reached out to put the book back onto it’s pile someone bumped into the back of him.  The book flew out of his hand and landed on the floor several feet away. Another customer rescued it but instead of just putting it back on the table where it belonged, came across the distance to return it to Mike. As if he and the book belonged to each other. “Excuse me, I think you may have dropped this.”

Mike was a mixture of horrified and embarrassed. “Do I look like I read Nora Roberts books?” he wondered, almost out loud. It was a moment of awkward self-examination. Like getting caught with “your hand in the cookie jar,” so to speak. Like the Christmas I gave my boys tickets to a Backstreet Boys concert and they practically died. “Do we look like Backstreet Boys fans?”

Too bad that Mike felt he was inappropriately typecast, I wonder if Nora Roberts  knows that she has been put into a weird category herself. How does a New York Times bestselling author feel, knowing that the Vancouver literary community describes her as an Airport Author?

Actually, she probably loves that distinction. I bet she makes a fortune from her Airport Bookstore sales, way more money than any UBC professor and probably a lot more than Dostoevsky ever imagined!