A short life of the author
Richard David Bach (born 23 June 1936) is an American writer and aviator whose novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) was one of the most astonishing publishing phenomena of the twentieth century — a brief, allegorical fable about a seagull who refuses to accept the limitations of ordinary gull existence and devotes himself to the perfection of flight, transcending the physical world through sheer passion and practice. The book sold over 44 million copies worldwide, was the bestselling book in America in 1972 and 1973 (the only book other than the Bible to achieve this), was adapted into a film (1973) with a Neil Diamond soundtrack, and became a sacred text of the New Age spiritual movement. It also provoked violent critical contempt: reviewers dismissed it as kitsch, pseudo-philosophy, and narcissistic wish-fulfillment. Both the adoration and the contempt tell us something real about the book.
Life
Bach was born in Oak Park, Illinois — also the birthplace of Hemingway, a fact that neither writer would find amusing in comparison. He attended Long Beach State College briefly, then enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he trained as a fighter pilot. Flying has been the central activity and central metaphor of his life: he has owned and flown dozens of aircraft, barnstormed across America in a 1929 Detroit-Parks biplane, and survived a near-fatal crash in 2012.
After leaving the Air Force, Bach worked as an aviation journalist and editor, contributing to Flying magazine and other aviation publications. His early books — Stranger to the Ground (1963), about a night flight in an F-84F fighter, and Biplane (1966), about cross-country flying in a vintage aircraft — are straightforward aviation writing of high quality: precise, evocative, and infused with a love of flight that is the most genuine emotion in all of Bach’s work.
Nothing by Chance (1969)
Nothing by Chance is Bach’s most appealing book — an account of a summer spent barnstorming across the Midwest in a 1929 biplane, offering rides to farmers and small-town residents for three dollars a flight. The book captures the romance of flying, the landscape of rural America, and the pleasures of an itinerant life with a warmth and specificity that the later, more philosophical works sometimes lack.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
The book tells the story of Jonathan, a seagull who is dissatisfied with the narrow existence of fighting for scraps of food on the fishing boats. He wants to fly — not for survival but for the pure joy and mastery of flight. He practises aerobatics, reaches impossible speeds, is outcast from his flock, and eventually achieves a spiritual transcendence that allows him to move beyond the physical world entirely. He returns to teach other gulls the meaning of flight and freedom.
The story is told in a prose of deliberate simplicity, accompanied by photographs of seagulls in flight by Russell Munson. The book’s appeal — which is real, whatever one thinks of its philosophy — lies in its celebration of the refusal to accept limitation, the pursuit of excellence for its own sake, and the belief that consciousness can transcend physical reality.
The critical case against the book is that its philosophy is shallow — a mixture of pop-existentialism, Eastern mysticism, and American self-help thinking that flatters the reader’s sense of specialness without requiring any actual intellectual or moral effort. The critical case for the book is that it does what fable does: it communicates a simple truth with emotional force, and the truth that passionate commitment to mastery can transform a life is not trivial, even if the book’s presentation of it is.
Illusions (1977)
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is Bach’s second most popular book — a story about a barnstorming pilot who meets a former messiah named Donald Shimoda, who has resigned from the job of saving humanity and now offers philosophical teachings from the cockpit of his Travel Air biplane. The book extends the themes of Jonathan Livingston Seagull — the reality of consciousness, the illusory nature of physical limitation — in a more explicitly human context.
Collecting Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970, Macmillan) in first edition with dust jacket brings $100–$400. The true first edition is identified by specific points including the publisher’s address and the absence of review quotes. Illusions (1977, Delacorte) brings $20–$60. Nothing by Chance (1969, Morrow) brings $30–$80. Signed copies are available through Bach’s public appearances. The massive print runs of Jonathan Livingston Seagull mean that later editions are worth very little.