The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
by Ken Dornstein
The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky depicts the life of Ken Dornstein's older brother David, a talented writer who'd been a passenger on the 1988 Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland as a result of a terrorist bombing.
Although David's work was never published, he had generated a collection of numerous journals and stories for many years. Following David's death, Dornstein took up the responsibility of reading all of the writings contained in what David had often referred to as "The Dave Archives," utilizing them as a primary source for understanding and coming to terms with David's fate, and in a sense, his own.
Eccentric yet Insecure
Dornstein portrays his brother vividly and empathetically. Larger than life and theatrical, David was a creative young man hell-bent on making his mark on the world. As Dornstein remarks, "He played out every idea to the end." David wrote instead of slept; staged elaborate stunts to make a point; and approached ordinary, everyday life with the intention of reinventing it into something extraordinary.
But as talented and impassioned as David was, he was unable to set realistic goals for himself. His persistent ruminations in his journals regarding life and his place in it reveal his frustration as he consistently runs into dead ends and fails to bring his inventive efforts to any satisfying fruition.
Family Life Among the Dornsteins
Dornstein and his brother grew up enjoying the comforts of middle-class life in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but they also suffered its most stereotypical afflictions. Their mother was mentally unstable and drifted in and out of her children's lives once she and her husband divorced early on. Their father, who eventually remarried, was materially providing but emotionally distant.
The two brothers ultimately turned to each other for stability and support, with David assuming the more instructive, paternal role. Hence, Dornstein's adulthood quest in the absence of his brother becomes to define himself as a separate entity, a task he finds immensely difficult at the beginning of his pursuit.
Signs of Possible Abuse History
The focal point upon which Dornstein's narrative rests is not necessarily the tragedy of the plane crash, but a more elusive, psychological disaster that occurred decades before. While it leaves no physical trace of itself except in David's writings and perhaps in his "over the top" behavior that seemed to cry out for recognition and decoding, Dornstein uncovers the strong possibility that David had been sexually abused as a child for several years by a male neighbor. It's almost as if the plane crash itself symbolized all the emotions David could not express, understand, or perhaps tolerate, representing an actual explosion parallel to the one building up inside of him for years that could never manage release.
Dornstein's Own Self-Discovery
What is truly beautiful about Dornstein's memoir is not just his commitment to awarding his deceased brother a literary visibility, but in turn, his own. Throughout the ten-plus years Dornstein dedicates to unraveling the "truth" about David, he gradually begins to discover himself as a separate human being with separate needs and feelings from his brother. He too craves the immediacy and delicious rawness of life David sought, but without the drastically self-destructive tendencies that David exhibited. Along the way, Dornstein begins to release his hold on David while securing his own sense of self, without compromising devotion to either.
The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Reading & Literature
Latest Articles