Commentary: Trek Stars 15: Just Like Batman & Robin

Meyer Part 6: Confessions of a Homing Pigeon.

After a string of successful mystery and adventure books, Nicholas Meyer chose to tell a more personal story for his fifth novel, Confessions of a Homing Pigeon. The book is an autobiographical coming of age tale about George Bernini, an American boy who is sent to France to live with his alcoholic Uncle Fritz after his parents are killed in a trapeze accident.

This week, Mike and Max discuss the personal nature of the novel and how it deals with universal themes of adolescence, the reasons why Meyer felt compelled to tell this story, the similarities to Catcher in the Rye, how the book works as a road story, how this novel’s style differs from Meyer’s other novels, whether or not the book suffers from “The Dawson’s Creek Syndrome,” why the 14-year-old protagonist reminds Mike of Roy Scheider, what makes this book Meyer’s Driving Miss Daisy, and how the book is essentially the story of Robin the Boy Wonder gone wrong.