Last Flight Out

by Randy Wayne White

Release Date: 01 February, 2002

Edition: Hardcover

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Real Adventure

This is a very nice entry by a writer better known for his
fiction, but this is a collection of "real adventure" stories,
and White does a first-class job of describing some of his
travels.
The series of short stories relates the writer's adventures as
he has traveled to remote, and some not so remote, places around
the world, wherein he has been seeking adventure beyond that
experienced by most of us in our everyday world. As such, his
stories will excite genuine interest and further curiosity on
the part of readers who wish to know more about experiences
in those areas denied to most of us.
Most of his adventures are funny to read, although we can also
understand some of them were definitely not funny at the time
of the experience. So we can vicariously enjoy travel to distant parts of the world, as well as the encounters with
"foreign" cultures. After all, even coon hunting in Ohio is
foreign to most of us in our modern civilized world.
Some readers will no doubt be unhappy at the "macho" aspect
of some stories, but most men wish, in their hearts, for such
adventures in far-away places, and those same men wish for
exciting, even dangerous, encounters without kids and womenfolk. Well, not all the time, of course, but a time or two
in their lives, and in this day and age, in the U.S., most
men are denied even the occasional dangerous adventure.
So, if we can't go to all those places, and encounter the wild
and dangerous, we should be able to enjoy reading about them.
And White provides some nice stories of such adventures he has
taken.
Most of his encounters have been short-term, frequently very
brief, because he wrote them for a magazine and was on assignment, but, nonetheless, they are real, and we should
enjoy whatever closeness these stories provide.
As a matter of fact, one possible criticism of this work is
that the stories are too short, really, and we wish White had
been able to flesh them out and expand his impressions. In several of the stories, we can feel the writer's rush, and compression of thoughts, as he has to comply with a magazine's
demands and deadlines.
But settle back for some visits to strange places, and odd characters, when you read White's stories.
They are a lot of fun.

It's good, but not his best work

I love Randy Wayne White's writing. And Last Flight Out is good - "Survival Spanish" had me in stitches and "Those Who Hide Behind the Caskets of Innocents" captures the sentiments of America better than anything I have read on 9/11. I also enjoyed his unraveling of the "Mossman" tale in Sun Valley (we've got folks like that in Oregon, too). Yet after finishing the collection of his essays, I was left wanting. To judge Last Flight Out fairly, there is much to like here, but it pales in comparison to his earlier work. The humor and matter-of-fact writing style that makes him so enjoyable is still present, but the articles are a bit testosterone leaden for my taste. For example, White's bantering about travel in rural Cuba (in "Cuba"), his bragging about "dangerous friends" in Central America in "Bike Cops" and his scoffing at those Americans who were too intimidated to fly after 9/11 in the introduction wore a bit thin on me.

If you are familiar with Randy Wayne White, you will find much to like and laugh at here. If you are browsing for adventure / travel books, I recommend starting with Batfishing in the Rainforest first.