Po-tee-weet? 

Sherman Alexie begins Flight with a brief epigraph:

      "Po-tee-weet?"

   --- Kurt Vonnegut,

    Slaughterhouse-Five

Excerpted from the SparkNotes entry for Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five:

"'Pooteeweet!' The jabbering bird symbolizes the lack of anything intelligent to say about war. Birdsong rings out alone in the silence after a massacre, and 'Poo-tee-weet?' seems about as appropriate a thing to say as any, since no words can really describe the horror of the Dresden firebombing. The bird sings outside of Billy’s hospital window and again in the last line of the book, asking a question for which we have no answer, just as we have no answer for how such an atrocity as the firebombing could happen."

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Do you know about the Ghost Dance?

Flight, Chapter 3:

     "Do you know about the Ghost Dance?" I ask.

     "No," Justice says.  "Teach me."

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I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know

Flight, Chapter 1:

          I love Blood, Sweat & Tears because they're ugly and

     because they rock hard.  And because they were my

     mother's favorite rock band.  her favorite song was the

     one called "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know."        

          She used to sing that to me when I was a baby.  I re-

     member her singing it to me.  I know I'm not supposed

     to remember it.  But I do. 

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Call me. . .Ishmael?

Compare the opening pages of Flight with this famous first sentence (and paragraph) from Herman Melville's 1851 Moby Dick:  

     "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."