A writer is trapped on a plane that can never land.

(from One Story #66)

We have been circling the city now at an altitude of between seven thousand and ten thousand feet for, according to our best estimates, around twenty years.

Yeah, it’s got “writer” in the title, but if this is meta-fiction then the metaphor is so obscured as to be rendered harmless. This is a think piece on what it would like to live the rest of your life on a peaceably hijacked plane. Food and fuel concerns are sci-fi’d away, and other technical objections are ignored, so the reader’s concentration is directed mostly at the interaction between passengers, and the way they while away the time. It’s an interesting enough premise, and the premise serves as the plot, with nothing much happening besides the hijacking that sets the table in the first place. So you’re along for the ride, upon an interesting idea with nowhere to land.
Here‘s an interview with Manuel Gonzales specifically about this story.

Recently, Dan Wickett of The Emerging Writers Network, asked me to join an “e-panel” wherein literary-minded bloggers are all asked the same questions via email. Then their answers are intermingled into something resembling a roundtable. Here‘s the link to that interview. As always, please tolerate my typos.

They Might Be Giants, “Shoehorn With Teeth”