1971: Wheels by Arthur Hailey

The Author:

Arthur Hailey (1920-2004) has appeared once on this list already, for 1968's bestselling-novel, Airport.  Born in England, Hailey dropped out of high school due to financial stress, later joining the Royal Air Force during World War II.  In 1947, he moved to Canada and later gained dual citizenship.  

He went on to have a long and successful career in film, television, and publishing, appearing on the top ten annual bestsellers list five times and taking the number one spot twice.

The Book:

Wheels is to the automobile industry what Airport is to aviation.  While there are many subplots, dealing with everything from race to the artist's dilemma, the real protagonist is the automobile industry itself, in all its flawed grandeur.  Overall, it sees the auto industry on the verge of bigger and better things, while still calling it out on its failings (e.g. unethical salesman, management issues, etc.).  

While Wheels certainly benefited from Hailey's previous successes, its popularity can be delved into more.  I find Hailey similar to Michener and Uris, even though the latter are historical fiction writers.  All three have plenty of character subplots, but their stories are not about the characters.  Michener writes about the land, Uris about political and social climates, and Hailey about industries.  Perhaps one reason I find Hailey so dry is that he's trying to be educational.  People like Hailey, Michener, and Uris used fiction to illustrate their extensive research.  So the question is why did this type of novel become popular at this point in time, that is to say, the late 60s-ealry 70s?  As soon as I asked myself that, I remembered David Foster Wallace's idea of the "vocational travelogue":

"'Vocational Travelogue' is a shorthand way of acknowledging that for a long time one reason people used to read fiction was for a kind of imaginative tourism to places and cultures that they'd never really get to see...modern tech has also created such extreme vocational specialization that today few people are in a position to know much about any professional field other than their own; and thus that a certain amount of fiction's 'touristic' function now consists in giving readers dramatized access to the nuts and bolts of different professional disciplines and specialties."

In 1978, Wheels was adapted into a miniseries starring Rock Hudson:

This is the best image I could find

As far as Hailey goes, you know what you're going to get.  If you are interested in the auto industry of the late 60s and early 70s, Wheels is for you.  Otherwise, you can skip it.




Bestselling novels of 1971:

1. Wheels by Arthur Hailey
2. The Exorcist by William Blatty
3. The Passions of the Mind by Irving Stone
4. The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
5. The Betsy by Harold Robbins
6. Message from Malaga by Helen MacInnes
7. The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
8. The Drifters by James Michener
9. The Other by Tom Tryon
10. Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Also Published in 1971:

Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Grendel by John Gardner
Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


Sources:

• Hailey, Arthur. Wheels. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1971. Print.

Wallace, David Foster. "Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama." Science 22 December 2000: pages 
     2263-2267. Web.

1968: Airport by Arthur Hailey

The Author:

Arthur Hailey (1920-2004) was born Luton, Bedforshire, England.  The son of a factory worker, financial challenges led Hailey to drop out of high school.  When World War II hit, Hailey joined the Royal Air Force, In 1944, he married Joan Fishwick.  In 1947, he moved from the UK to Canada, becoming a naturalized citizen with dual citizenship in 1952.  He divorced Fishwick in 1950 and married Sheila Dunlop in 1951, to whom he was married the rest of his life.

In 1955, Hailey wrote the screenplay initially broadcasted in April 1956, titled Flight into Danger, about an old fighter pilot who is on a commercial plane when the pilot and copilot succumb to food poisoning.  1980's Airplane! is largely based on the film version of Flight into Danger, titled Zero Hour!   Flight into Danger and another of Hailey's television plays were adapted into novels.  In 1965, Hailey published Hotel, an inside look of the hotel industry that placed 8th on the annual bestsellers list.  His next hit was Airport (1968), followed by Wheels, the #1 bestseller of 1971, The Moneychangers, the #2 bestseller of 1975, and Overload, the #3 bestseller of 1979.  He also published Strong Medicine (1984), The Evening News (1990) and Detective (1997).

The Book:

Length: 440 Pages
Subject/Genre: Airports/Extreme Realism

Airport takes place at the Lincoln, Illinois international airport, over the course of a day.  The main character, Mel Bakersfeld, has to deal with the a massive snowstorm, disgruntled employees, angry residents of a nearby community, and terrorist threats, in addition to a number of personal issues.  Mel's personal issues are the least interesting part of the novel.  The people all have their roles to play, but the main character of the novel is the airport itself.  

What Michener or Uris are to history, Hailey is to industry.  Airport is meticulously researched, and in many ways reads like a non-fiction account, which is not always a good thing, as it relies on details and infodumps that are not very pretty.  As such, the plot is pretty contrived, but this is to an end: to create the various circumstances that the airport and its staff must respond to.  The novel is more of an exposé on the inner workings of an airport.  

The 1960's and early 70's are often referred to as the golden age of air travel, and the entire industry still had an exotic feel.  It's easy to forget that the airplane was only 17 years older than Hailey.  Hailey himself was 18 years old at the time of the first transatlantic commercial passenger flight.  Hailey already had bestseller status, which is a great way to sell more copies of following releases.  Add that to an industry that was booming and still mysterious, and it's not surprising that Airport became a bestseller.

Like most bestsellers, Airport was made into a film starring Burt Lancaster in 1970.  Helen Hayes won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the film.

The airplane-disaster-film genre being at its peak, three increasingly bizarre sequels followed the 1970 film.  
First was 1974's Airport 1975, starring Charlton Heston.

Followed by Airport '77 (1977) starring Jack Lemmon.  In this one, art thieves hijack the plane and crash, the plane ending up stuck under water.

And finally, The Concorde... Airport '79

Airport was pretty dry, overall, and the characters were two-dimensional plot devices.  The novel is more interesting as an inside look at the functioning of an airport, but written in layman's terms.  If the subject is something you want to know more about, Airport is a good read.  Otherwise you'll likely be bored.

Bestselling novels of 1968:

1. Airport by Arthur Hailey
2. Couples by John Updike
3. The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes
4. A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré
5. Testimony of Two Men by Taylor Caldwell
6. Preserve and Protect by Allen Drury
7. Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
8. Vanished by Fletcher Knebel
9. Christy by Catherine Marshall
10. The Tower of Babel by Morris West

Also published in 1968:

Arthur C. Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey
Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward