Fate is the Hunter

 

From: Oxsan
Date: 16 Apr 2001
Time: 23:26:01

I have thoroughly enjoyed my second reading of Fate Is The Hunter by Ernest K Gann. I like the book, I like the man and find none of his philosophy offensive or even much out of line with my own. I can't imagine how in the world I got down on the guy. It is possible of course that I have him confused with someone else I read in 1961---lots of water under the bridge since then. Or it is possible that I was hypercritical on some point at that time in my life that I don't even have a vestigial memory about. I thoroughly recommend the book. I have not read any of Gann's other books. The Gentleman Aviator, The Company of Eagles, and several others are fiction and I am usually less drawn to that than I am to biography, autobiography and non-fiction, but I might like them very much. Gann is a fine writer. He is dead you know. He was born in 1910 and died at his retirement home on San Juan Island in Puget Sound in 1991 of acute kidney failure. He was active in writing first one thing or another right up to his death. He also had four yacht sized sailing boats which were his hobby focus in his later days.

Fate Is The Hunter is primarily addressed toward the way each pilot faces the stress of the danger of his chosen vocation--and he illustrates a varied number of ways that different men meet the challenge. Gann believed in a very eclectic way of looking at danger in aviation. He believed in the efficacy of planning and trying to forecast trouble, but he also recognized, even though he could not well define, the instinctual warnings that begin to come to pilots with massive experience as being in some cases more effectual than all the planning in the world.

I am always eager for my pilots to use both!---and others!

You ought to read it. It is fast to read.

Love

Dad,granpa,ami

PS. My apologies to Mr. Gann for badmouthing him for forty years.