Word: bache
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Flying and Flying. Eight years pass. Anyone who knows Bach's life may imagine these years cinematically like the kaleidoscopic scenes of old movie biographies. There are Bach and his tiny, dark-haired wife piling more and more children into a series of secondhand cars and planes as he moves: from Long Beach to Maplewood, N.J., for a job as associate editor of Flying magazine; back to Long Beach to become Flying's West Coast editor; from Long Beach to Ottumwa, Iowa, to become editor of The Antiquer, a magazine about old planes. There is Bach, funny and forbearing with...
Through the book titles, then, we see Bach flying and flying and flying. But not before he appears in a flashback at age 17 polishing a friend's plane for flight lessons. Then he is off. In an F-84, thundering toward the target on a mock strafing run. In tight formation with the National Air Guard, tensely but proudly crowding in under his flight leader until the rudder of Bach's plane is blackened by the leader's exhaust. The voice of the late John F. Kennedy rises through a dissolve that shows a New Jersey Air Guard unit...
...style is highly personal and full of description. As a parable, Jonathan is little more than a narrative skeleton supporting a number of inspirational and philosophic assertions. Bach also points out that he disagrees entirely with Jonathan's decision to abandon the pursuit of private perfection in favor of returning to the dumb old Flock and encouraging its members toward higher wisdom. "Self-sacrifice," says Bach, "is a word I cannot stand...
...believes that an individual has extraordinary powers that can only keep on growing if he develops himself at all costs. Bach means all costs. This is a doctrine given considerable lip service in the U.S., which likes to remember itself as the land of the rugged individualist. But such counsel is rarely followed, in part because of sentimentality and fear of ridicule. One of the funnier episodes in Bach's life was the moment a little over two years ago when Captain Richard Bach quit the Iowa Air Guard ?and the weekend jet flying he loved ?rather than...
Then, well before Jonathan was published as a book, Bach left his wife and six children. "Part of me felt like a rat," he admits, "but I had to ask myself if I could live there any longer. And I couldn't." Recently he has settled a good deal of money on the family and established them in a large house near Lake Michigan. He and his wife Bette are on easier terms. Neither will discuss persistent rumors of another woman, though Bach says that freedom was the real issue and suggests that he will never again be able...