Generation Bubble

Fly Away Home: Anthony Toth’s Pan Am Glam

Around Mr. Toth’s hobby one senses an air of melancholy. His garage he has transformed into a cenotaph to a technological optimism whose final death throe came when the Concorde was decommissioned in 2003 (futuristic supersonic flight is now a thing of the past). Perhaps Mr. Toth, an employee of United Airlines, chose to render immortal the glittering past of a defunct competitor because that competitor died an innocent’s death of virginal purity, never having sullied itself in the trenches of the fare wars. No, Pan Am’s eopch is one of crystalline integrity and specificity, like a beautiful insect trapped in amber, into which the materialist historian Anthony Toth seeks to breathe life into once more — at least until his condo is foreclosed on.