“Richly romantic, whimsical, and uplifting, The Man Who Ate the 747 is a flight of fancy from start to finish.” So says the back flap of the little book I was unfortunate enough to choose to read, and would in fact very much like to incinerate, but I’ll have to settle for doing it with words rather than fire, as I’m not terribly good with matches but do fairly well using words to get my point across. And this is a point I’m eager to make: The Man Who Ate the 747 is an absolutely abominably bad book and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t wish to die of sheer boredom or frustration that such a horrible book actually exists. Romantic? Whimsical? A flight of fancy? Oh, definitely. And I’m Ernest Hemingway after a few too many drinks and a sex change. The only way this book is a flight of fancy is if you’re taking some kind of drug while reading it. A strong drug. Seriously strong. Strong enough to make Ben Sherwood’s two-dimensional characters and predictable plot seem appealing. Strong enough to make jerky, forced prose and clumsy scraps of “romance” seem “rich” and “whimsical”. So this has got to be really strong stuff, dig? While I generally wouldn’t recommend either drugs or this book, if you’re bent on doing one, you might as well have the other. I wish someone would have given me this warning, because The Man Who Ate the 747 is so bad, it’s almost painful. The screaming inside my head got louder with every page I turned. I was surprised I hadn’t gone deaf by the time I finally reached the end. The Man Who Ate the 747 is one of those books where, in the immortal words of Mark Twain, “Once you put it down, you can’t pick it up.” The Man Who Ate the 747 tells the story of J.J. Smith, a Keeper of Records for The Book of Records, Sherwood’s fictionalized version of The Guinness Book of World Records. J.J. is experiencing creative burnout in terms of his career – there are very few exciting new records for him to record, and his boss’s patience with him is wearing thin. Just in time to save himself from being fired, he catches wind of what might be the greatest record yet: in Superior, Nebraska, a man is eating a Boeing 747 to prove his love for a woman. J.J. travels to Superior, where everyone is awed by his worldly demeanor and perfectly symmetrical nose – everyone, that is, except for Wally Chubb, the man eating the giant plane, and Willa Wyatt, the blonde, honey-eyed editor of the local newspaper for whom he’s eating it. Wally isn’t interested in setting any record, and Willa, a little keener than most of the folks in Superior, knows that any fame J.J. could bring Superior would be short-lived, and just wants him to go away before anyone gets hurt. Especially her, as, in what would be a plot twist in a different book, she finds herself falling in love not with the man eating the 747, but with an official for a certain Book…From J.J.’s arrival in Superior, the book follows a predictable path as J.J. convinces Wally to go for the record to impress Willa and then falls for her himself. J.J. and Willa’s relationship seems to go relatively smoothly, barring the inconvenience of Wally, until The Book decides to drop Wally’s record. J.J. receives this news while dining with Willa and her family but brushes off their questions by claiming everything to be fine. That night, Willa and J.J. consummate their relationship to the sound of rain falling on the tin roof of her trailer, but the next day, J.J. answers a call from his boss and learns that he has to leave for Greece to document a new record attempt. Immediately. He leaves Willa without an explanation as the town empties of the reporters who no longer have a story. Sensing that Willa is hurting and angry, Wally, in his crowning moment, breaks J.J.’s perfect nose and runs him out of town, figuring that’s the end of it. It isn’t, of course, as J.J., realizing what he must do to win Superior’s forgiveness and Willa’s love, leaves Greece in the middle of timing an attempt to break the world record for motionlessness and returns to Superior. He and Willa realize that they are meant for each other, et cetera, and Wally finally recognizes the person who was been there for him all along, loving him in her own quiet way: Willa’s best friend, Rose. Convenient, yes? One of 747’s biggest flaws is that its characters are flat, two-dimensional creations, which makes them very hard to like or empathize with. The good guys (Wally and Willa) are given multitudes of good qualities and not enough bad ones to flesh them out and make them seem human, and very little back story is provided to explain why they are the way they are. The bad guy (J.J., for most of the book) seems like a pompous jerk who is obsessed with his records and statistics, and isn’t given any redeeming qualities until near the end of the story, when he makes a public apology to the town and finally settles down with Willa. Perhaps the best example of this is the scene in which J.J. talks to Wally before sending him out to meet the media.“She sure is pretty, isn’t she?” “Yes, beautiful.” “Prettiest girl in the world. You got a record for that?”“Nope, too subjective,” J.J. said. “but I’ve done some research in this area. I know a thing or two. Turns out symmetrical features are the key to human attraction. Men with well-proportioned facial bone structure have sex four years earlier on average than asymmetrical men.”J.J. nudged his way in front of the mirror and examined himself. “I’m nothing special to look at,” he said “but I do have a perfectly symmetrical nose.” J.J. goes on to list the characteristics and measurements of his nose, further proof of his vanity, which isn’t a trait most people admire or desire.“What about feelings?” Wally asks later. “What about true love?” “Love?” J.J. says. “I hate to break it to you, but its all brain chemistry. You see a pretty girl and you get a blast of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. That’s why you feel excited. Same with happiness. It’s just an electrical impulse from your left prefrontal cortex.”I’d like to take a piece out of your left prefrontal cortex, is the reaction I had upon reading that. Honestly, who could like J.J.? He is portrayed as sanctimonious, cold, vain, and condescending for so much of the book that when he finally loosens up and lightens up as he falls in love with Willa, he’s not believable. When J.J. was about to leave town with the reporters, leaving Willa crying by her truck, I actually cheered as Wally broke his nose.You know a book is bad if you smile when the hero gets his nose broken.As bad as or worse than the lifeless characters is Sherwood’s awkward, jerky style. One would hope that if the plot is ridiculous and the characters flat, at least the writing might be good. Nope. Not here. Look at the way the book begins.This is the story of the greatest love, ever.An outlandish claim, outrageous perhaps, but trust me. I know about these things. You see, I was Keeper of the Records for The Book of Records. I sifted through the extravagant claims of the tallest, the smallest, the fastest, the slowest, the oldest, the youngest, the heaviest, the lightest, and everyone in between.Okay, we get it. You measured things. The repetition is redundant and pretentious, and even though this is the beginning of J.J.’s narration, leading into a flashback, he’s still got that unshakeable know-it-all air that makes me want to strangle him, and it certainly isn’t conducive to a good storytelling mood.Furthermore, the book makes me ache for compound sentences. I never fully realized the value of a conjunction until I read The Man Who Ate the 747. After J.J. receives the call about Wally’s record being excluded from The Book, the narration goes like this:J.J. sat down with a thud on the porch steps. He stared out at the puffy clouds rising in the west. Ten-footers. Not even close to the world record, 25 feet 5 ½ inches, but they were gorgeous. He wanted to run for the fields, disappear into all those flowers. What on earth was he going to do now?When Sherwood’s writing wasn’t busy making me irritated, it was being overly cliché and saccharine to the point of risking crossover to tacky purple prose. 747 oozes sap like a Vermont maple tree, and it’s not even good at it. It’s not even tasteful sap. J.J. and Willa’s morning after is a prime example of how not to write anything, ever. She touched J.J.’s feet with one of her own. She took his hand. Looked at his long fingers. He had touched every part of her, and now she tingled with the fingerprints of love. He coughed. “You awake?” she said. He muttered something. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “It’s wonderful. You are wonderful.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “That’s just your oxytocin talking.”Need I say more? The Man Who Ate the 747 is not “an extraordinary novel,” it is not “a delightful and surprising book from start to finish,” and my heartstrings were only tugged thinking of the myriad other people who may also have made the same mistake in reading it. It was slow-moving, clumsily written, and awkwardly executed, and I have no idea how a book so completely awful got published. To anyone who has already read it, I offer my condolences, and to anyone planning to, my sincere hope that he’ll change his mind. To the author: Ben Sherwood, I’m sorry. These words may be difficult for you to read now, but I’m sure one day you’ll look back on this and laugh, remembering your folly of writing an outrageously bad novel. It’ll all be okay.But please don’t try to write another one.
My cousin gave me one of Sherwood's other books, 'Getting Into Guinness', about the author's attempt to break a record printed in the Guinness Book of World Records, and this one was mentioned within. Clearly the author has a fascination with breaking records, as that was the focus of this one too, albeit a fictional record.Main character John Smith, J.J. to distinguish him in the long familial line of John Smiths before him, is an employee for the Book of Records still looking for the record that will make him the prized employee of his company. He devoted half his life to memorizing all the obscure records in the book, but knowing he was just an average guy in all ways, abandoned any hope of getting in on his own merit. When a letter from small-town Nebraska comes to J.J. indicating a man is eating an entire 747 airplane, he pins his hope on the unfathomability of the potential record.Wally, the fellow eating the plane, isn't doing it for the record. He merely wants his life-long crush Willa to notice him. Willa is in charge of the local newspaper, and even since Wally began eating the plane, she has never included him in a single story in the paper. Wally has always been a little 'odd' in everyone's mind, a social outcast, and Willa doesn't seem to echo the feelings he has for her.J.J. brings instant fame to the Nebraska town, but fears the failure that would come if his bosses decide that it's not record-worthy. Willa is concerned all the attention her town is getting will in the long run be more harmful than the short boost to the economy that they will get while Wally is eating the plane. Wally continues to eat the plane, and feel jealousy when J.J.'s arrival in town finally gets Willa's heart racing.All in all, a cute small town love story, but mostly fluff. All of the records in J.J's encyclopedic brain are real, as of the time the book was published, but the love story and the attempt at eating a plane were fake. In this day and age, it wouldn't surprise me if someone did try it, although the real book would not allow the record, as they have condemned gluttonous eating records as too dangerous to those who would attempt them.
Do You like book The Man Who Ate The 747 (2002)?
[spoilers]Attention authors, current and aspiring: putting your characters in a coma so they can miracously emerge at the story's climax is a wretched plot device. The campy ending reflects one of the book's major flaws - it lacks originality. It's disappointing that a book about a man eating a 747 could be so boring, but if you fill the pages with bland characters and stock revelations, I suppose anything can happen. Will our leading man, John Smith, discover that love can't be summed up in statistics? Can love-wary Willa learn to trust him, even after he seemingly betrays her and her town? Will Wally realize that his dream girl has been right beside him all along? Don't think too hard about the answers - the author obviously didn't.Not that this book was a total waste of time. For example, I learned that it seems to be relatively safe to eat an entire airplane. It was also kind of interesting to learn about the records compilation process, and the kids' letters to The Book are cute. But you'll have no trouble finding a better book about either star-crossed lovers or quirky Midwesterners. Pass on this one.
—Alison Looney
4.5 starsadore this charming and original love story. It is full of small town warmth and spirit and it is sure to inspire you, at least a little. I wouldn’t want anyone to eat a 747 for me, but I had to admire Wally ingenuity. It’s amazing to find out what foods you can put ground up metal into. It should have included a few recipes in the back The quirky characters and plot will bring a smile to your face. This was not at all what I expected, but I cannot recommend it enough. At only 250 pages it is a quick, worthwhile read. It’s my favorite book so far this year.there's more on my blog http://stacybuckeye.wordpress.com/200...
—Stacy
Por vezes necessitamos de leituras galopantes, com histórias fora do comum e com vocabulário que nos impede sequer de pensar que existem dicionários. Esta é uma dessas histórias!Um triângulo amoroso em que cada vértice tem as suas falhas sociais gira em torno de um potencial recorde do Guiness que coloca uma aldeola do interior norte-americano nas luzes da ribalta mundiais. Dois homens enfeitiçados pela mesma mulher tentam mostrar-lhe atabalhoadamente os seus sentimentos: um comendo um 747, outro tentando tornar o feito do primeiro num recorde do Mundo.Pelos olhos de um Juíz de Recordes de discurso enciclopédico do "World Book of Records", a história desenrola-se na primeira pessoa a um ritmo frenético,com mudanças constantes nos acontecimentos, tudo temperado com pernonagens de muita personalidade e individualidade.Um livro perfeito para férias, que permite ao cérebro descansar de leituras mais técnicas e pesadas. Um verdadeiro passatempo, no sentido literal do termo.Santarém, 09 Outubro 2007(Maria João Freire)
—Maria João
