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’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres.
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The Lost Continent has 43,581 ratings and 2,225 reviews. Leftbanker said. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. Bill Bryson was born William McGuire Bryson on 8th December 1951. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His birthplace was the influence for his novel The Lost Continent. Bill Bryson was born William McGuire Bryson on 8th December 1951. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His birthplace was the influence for his novel The Lost Continent.
He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. Bryson’s acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature – hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache – and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.
’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instea ’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back.
After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states - united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity - he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation. The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson I must preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t (at least the person he is in this book), he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it.
I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson I must preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t (at least the person he is in this book), he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it.
I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans.
I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and I don’t care if someone makes fun of anything and everything American (I’ve done a bit of bashing myself). A dyspeptic man in his middle thirties, whose constant bad mood seems more like someone in their mid seventies, drives around the U.S. And complains about absolutely everything he sees, smells, hears, and eats. If this sounds like your idea of a good time, read Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (Abacus, 1990).
He constantly mocks small towns in America by referring to them by such names as Dog Water, Dunceville, Urinal, Spigot, and Hooterville—and this is in the first five pages. Don’t worry about him running out of clever names for hick towns; Bryson has a million of them and he uses every single one. The only things about which Bryon has a favorable view are natural wonders and the homes of rich people. He marvels at the obscenely-posh residences of ultra-wealthy, early 20th century industrialists on Mackinac Island which were built before income taxes and most labor laws. He would probably be thrilled with pre-revolutionary France or Czarist Russia. One of his very few favorable reviews of American cities was of the ski town of Stowe, Vermont which caters almost exclusively to the rich.
When he is traveling through the southwest he complains about the Mexican music on the radio. He seems more content to resort to chauvinism than to come to some sort of understanding about the culture he is visiting. In my opinion, it’s always more interesting to praise something that you understand than to mock something that you don’t. I would have taken the time to translate a few of the songs and tell readers what they are about. In fact, I have done this and Mexican ranchera music is all about stories of love, heartbreak, and often violence which describe the cowboy culture of Mexico’s northern territories.
Bryson implies that the people who listen to this music are just too stupid to realize that it is only one tune played over and over. He gripes about a weatherman on TV who seems rather gleeful at the prospect of a coming snow storm yet Bryson seems to relish in the idea of not liking anything that he experiences in his journey. His entire trip is like a storm he passes through. Just once I wanted him to roll into some town that he liked and get into an interesting conversation with one of its residents.
Here are examples of the cheeriness with which Bryson opens a few of his chapters: “I drove on and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state.” “What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet?
You can flush a toilet.” (One reviewer called Bryson ’witty.’ ) “I was headed for Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to have to say too often if you can possibly help it.” “In 1958, my grandmother got cancer of the colon and came to our house to die.” This last event must have brought untold joy to the young writer. Tell us more, Bill.
His narrative is more tiresome than any Kansas wheat field he may have passed on his road trip through hell. Most Americans seem to be either fat, or stupid, or both in the eyes of Bryson. I can only assume that Bryson himself is some sort of genius body builder. Just one time I wanted him to talk to a local resident over a beer or a cup of coffee. I wanted him to describe his partner in conversation as other than fat or stupid.
Not even one time do we hear about a place from somebody who lives there. We could just as easily have read the guidebooks as Bryson did and he could have stayed home and saved himself thousands of miles of misery. Whenever someone starts to tell me about somewhere they went I ask them to describe their favorite thing about the trip, be it a place, food, the people, or whatever. If they start to complain about the place I either change the subject or walk away if I can. Travel is supposed to broaden the mind, not make it narrower.
It’s funny how so many Americans begin their reviews of ’The Lost Continent’ with statements such as ’I loved Bryson’s other books but this one is terrible!’ , all because he treats America the same way as he treats everywhere and everyone else. So while many Americans think it’s acceptable - hilarious, even - for Bryson to make disparaging-but-witty comments about non-Americans and the places they call home, it is an utter outrage for him to be anything other than completely worshipful with regar It’s funny how so many Americans begin their reviews of ’The Lost Continent’ with statements such as ’I loved Bryson’s other books but this one is terrible!’ , all because he treats America the same way as he treats everywhere and everyone else. So while many Americans think it’s acceptable - hilarious, even - for Bryson to make disparaging-but-witty comments about non-Americans and the places they call home, it is an utter outrage for him to be anything other than completely worshipful with regard to America and Americans. The unavoidable, undeniable fact of the matter is that Bill Bryson’s ’The Lost Continent’ is not only one of his finest works, but one of the best books ever written by anyone in recent times about the USA and Americans. It is as funny as anything you’ll ever read, as well as being touching, poignant and fascinating.
It is the first book I’ve read since ’Neither Here Nor There’ (also by Bryson) that has caused me to think of calling my travel agent. America has never been half as interesting as it is in ’The Lost Continent’ and Americans ought to be supremely grateful it was written and published. Five stars and highly recommended.
This is the worst book ever. Bryson is a fat, cynical white guy traveling around the country, proclaiming in the subtitle: ’Travels in Small Town America.’
But like most fat white guys, Bryson is scared of small town America. He hates every small town he comes to- whether they’re on Indian reservations, small farming communities in Nebraska, southern towns full of African Americans where the author is too scared to even stop the car, or small mining communities in West Virginia, also where the a This is the worst book ever. Bryson is a fat, cynical white guy traveling around the country, proclaiming in the subtitle: ’Travels in Small Town America.’ But like most fat white guys, Bryson is scared of small town America. He hates every small town he comes to- whether they’re on Indian reservations, small farming communities in Nebraska, southern towns full of African Americans where the author is too scared to even stop the car, or small mining communities in West Virginia, also where the author is too scared to stop. How can you write a book about small town America when you’re too scared to stop in any small towns???
His favorite towns? Pittsburg and Charlotte. (Definitely ’small’ in my world.) Driving through the north woods, crossing the border from Maine to New Hampshire: ’The skies were still flat and low, the weather cold, but at least I was out of the montony of the Maine woods.’ In Littleton, on the Vermont border: ’People on the sidewalk smiled at me as I passed. This was beginning to worry me. Nobody, even in America, is that friendly. What did they want from me?’
At a cemetery in Vermont: ’I stood there in the mile October sunshine, feeling so sorry for all these lukles speople and their lost lives, reflecting bleakly on mortality and my own dear, cherished family so far away in England, and I thought, ’Well, fuck this,’ and walked back down the hill to the car.’ At least he freely refers to himself as a ’flinty-hearted jerk-off.’ Bryson should get off his lazy ass, stop whining about England, and actually stop the car once in a while. This book spouts so much hateful white guy racism that I can’t even bring myself to give it away. While I am 100% against burning or destroying any kind of book, I simply cannot let this one leave my hands. It will probably just find someone who agrees with it’s horrible twisted and pessimistic point of view!
I haven’t decided if I’m going to just bury it in my storage space (which may mean when I leave my apartment someone else might pick it up), or ’accidentally’ drop it in a snowbank outside. At least in spring the pages would all be glued together, and no one would be able to read it ever again. Bryson does two things very well in this book, besides his trademark humour which is happily a constant in this and every other book he’s ever written. He captures the spirit of the land at a very specific time in its recent history: 1987, the high water mark of the Reaganite project. Time and again, he is left demoralized by the mindless affluenza that was the hallmark of American society during the latter half of the 1980s.
More broadly, Bryson leaves a depressingly accurate description of the Bryson does two things very well in this book, besides his trademark humour which is happily a constant in this and every other book he’s ever written. He captures the spirit of the land at a very specific time in its recent history: 1987, the high water mark of the Reaganite project. Time and again, he is left demoralized by the mindless affluenza that was the hallmark of American society during the latter half of the 1980s. More broadly, Bryson leaves a depressingly accurate description of the tawdriness and vulgarity of America’s built environment - a cement desert of motels, burger joints, gas stations, strip malls, freeways and parking lots repeated ad nauseam throughout the Lower 48 - that is painfully recognizable even 25 years later.
If you have ever wondered at the wanton debasement that has been visited on the land by its greedy natives, if you have ever been saddened by the pitiless ugliness that surrounds you in America’s cities, towns and suburbs, then surely this book is for you. Afterwards, read Edward Abbey and Philip Connors to cleanse your soul and to give thanks for the national parks and wildernesses that still do a stalwart job of protecting nature’s beauty and grandeur against a hostile population. PS This was Bryson’s first book. The opening lines - ’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ - must constitute one of the great introductions by any writer in contemporary literature.
When reading this book, American readers may very well feel like they are eavesdropping on a conversation not intended for their ears. This is because Bill Bryson obviously intended this book to be read by a British audience. There are lots of laughs in this book.
His depictions of Iowa made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. For example, his explanation for why so many farmers are missing fingers: ’Yet, there is scarcely a farmer in the Midwest over the age of twenty who has not at some time When reading this book, American readers may very well feel like they are eavesdropping on a conversation not intended for their ears. This is because Bill Bryson obviously intended this book to be read by a British audience. There are lots of laughs in this book. His depictions of Iowa made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. For example, his explanation for why so many farmers are missing fingers: ’Yet, there is scarcely a farmer in the Midwest over the age of twenty who has not at some time or other had a limb or digit yanked off and thrown into the next field by some noisy farmyard implement.
To tell you the absolute truth, I think farmers do it on purpose. I think working day after day beside these massive threshers and balers with their grinding gears and flapping fan belts and complex mechanisms they get a little hypnotized by all the noise and motion. They stand there staring at the whirring machinery and they think, ’I wonder what would happen if I just stuck my finger in there a little bit.’ I know that sounds crazy. But you have to realize that farmers don’t have whole lot of sense in these matters because they feel no pain.
Every day in the Des Moines Register you can find a story about a farmer who has inadvertently torn off an arm and then calmly walked six miles into the nearest town to have it sewn back on. The stories always say, ’Jones, clutching his severed limb, told his physician, ’I seem to have cut my durn arm off, Doc.’ It’s never: ’Jones, spurting blood, jumped around hysterically for twenty minutes, fell into a swoon and then tried to run in four directions at once,’ which is how it would be with you or me.’ This stuff cracks me up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Iowa too. From an American’s point of view, I was at times amazed by the important landmarks Bryson missed seeing or failed to appreciate.
He drove by Monticello, for heaven’s sake! In Springfield, Illinois, he ’drove around a little bit, but finding nothing worth stopping for’ he left -- Springfield, Illinois -- the home of Abraham Lincoln and his burial place!
He passed up touring the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, because it cost too much! He called Gettysburg a flat field -- a battlefield of such varied topography as to make one wonder whether Bryson actually visited it!
He missed Lake Tahoe! He also missed seeing Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine. Nor did he have any lobster along the Maine coast. Yet he felt informed enough to conclude that there was nothing special about Maine. These failings may be forgiven though, because he has lived away from the United States for a long time.
And, to be fair, he traveled far and wide and saw many wonderful places. From his well-written depictions, I’ve regained a desire to see places in the United States I haven’t visited yet, including Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mackinaw Island, Michigan. Overall, I enjoyed the book and enjoyed many laughs in reading it, which is why I like reading Bryson’s books so much.
But he seemed to tire out toward the end of the book and toward the end of his travels. His outlook became more and more jaundiced -- which is not good, when his outlook is generally jaundiced to begin with. Part I is the best part of the book, which focuses on the Midwest and East Coast. Part II, about Bryson’s travels in the West, seems tacked on and unnecessary for the book (except for his description of his drive through the Colorado mountains to Cripple Creek and his depiction of his first view of the Grand Canyon (’The fog parted. It just silently drew back, like a set of theater curtains being opened, and suddenly we saw that we were on th
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Bill Bryson The Lost Continent Pdf To Jpg
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’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres.
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The Lost Continent has 43,581 ratings and 2,225 reviews. Leftbanker said. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. Bill Bryson was born William McGuire Bryson on 8th December 1951. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His birthplace was the influence for his novel The Lost Continent. Bill Bryson was born William McGuire Bryson on 8th December 1951. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His birthplace was the influence for his novel The Lost Continent.
He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. Bryson’s acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature – hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache – and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.
’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instea ’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back.
After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states - united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity - he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation. The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson I must preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t (at least the person he is in this book), he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it.
I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson I must preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t (at least the person he is in this book), he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it.
I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans.
I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and I don’t care if someone makes fun of anything and everything American (I’ve done a bit of bashing myself). A dyspeptic man in his middle thirties, whose constant bad mood seems more like someone in their mid seventies, drives around the U.S. And complains about absolutely everything he sees, smells, hears, and eats. If this sounds like your idea of a good time, read Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (Abacus, 1990).
He constantly mocks small towns in America by referring to them by such names as Dog Water, Dunceville, Urinal, Spigot, and Hooterville—and this is in the first five pages. Don’t worry about him running out of clever names for hick towns; Bryson has a million of them and he uses every single one. The only things about which Bryon has a favorable view are natural wonders and the homes of rich people. He marvels at the obscenely-posh residences of ultra-wealthy, early 20th century industrialists on Mackinac Island which were built before income taxes and most labor laws. He would probably be thrilled with pre-revolutionary France or Czarist Russia. One of his very few favorable reviews of American cities was of the ski town of Stowe, Vermont which caters almost exclusively to the rich.
When he is traveling through the southwest he complains about the Mexican music on the radio. He seems more content to resort to chauvinism than to come to some sort of understanding about the culture he is visiting. In my opinion, it’s always more interesting to praise something that you understand than to mock something that you don’t. I would have taken the time to translate a few of the songs and tell readers what they are about. In fact, I have done this and Mexican ranchera music is all about stories of love, heartbreak, and often violence which describe the cowboy culture of Mexico’s northern territories.
Bryson implies that the people who listen to this music are just too stupid to realize that it is only one tune played over and over. He gripes about a weatherman on TV who seems rather gleeful at the prospect of a coming snow storm yet Bryson seems to relish in the idea of not liking anything that he experiences in his journey. His entire trip is like a storm he passes through. Just once I wanted him to roll into some town that he liked and get into an interesting conversation with one of its residents.
Here are examples of the cheeriness with which Bryson opens a few of his chapters: “I drove on and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state.” “What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet?
You can flush a toilet.” (One reviewer called Bryson ’witty.’ ) “I was headed for Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to have to say too often if you can possibly help it.” “In 1958, my grandmother got cancer of the colon and came to our house to die.” This last event must have brought untold joy to the young writer. Tell us more, Bill.
His narrative is more tiresome than any Kansas wheat field he may have passed on his road trip through hell. Most Americans seem to be either fat, or stupid, or both in the eyes of Bryson. I can only assume that Bryson himself is some sort of genius body builder. Just one time I wanted him to talk to a local resident over a beer or a cup of coffee. I wanted him to describe his partner in conversation as other than fat or stupid.
Not even one time do we hear about a place from somebody who lives there. We could just as easily have read the guidebooks as Bryson did and he could have stayed home and saved himself thousands of miles of misery. Whenever someone starts to tell me about somewhere they went I ask them to describe their favorite thing about the trip, be it a place, food, the people, or whatever. If they start to complain about the place I either change the subject or walk away if I can. Travel is supposed to broaden the mind, not make it narrower.
It’s funny how so many Americans begin their reviews of ’The Lost Continent’ with statements such as ’I loved Bryson’s other books but this one is terrible!’ , all because he treats America the same way as he treats everywhere and everyone else. So while many Americans think it’s acceptable - hilarious, even - for Bryson to make disparaging-but-witty comments about non-Americans and the places they call home, it is an utter outrage for him to be anything other than completely worshipful with regar It’s funny how so many Americans begin their reviews of ’The Lost Continent’ with statements such as ’I loved Bryson’s other books but this one is terrible!’ , all because he treats America the same way as he treats everywhere and everyone else. So while many Americans think it’s acceptable - hilarious, even - for Bryson to make disparaging-but-witty comments about non-Americans and the places they call home, it is an utter outrage for him to be anything other than completely worshipful with regard to America and Americans. The unavoidable, undeniable fact of the matter is that Bill Bryson’s ’The Lost Continent’ is not only one of his finest works, but one of the best books ever written by anyone in recent times about the USA and Americans. It is as funny as anything you’ll ever read, as well as being touching, poignant and fascinating.
It is the first book I’ve read since ’Neither Here Nor There’ (also by Bryson) that has caused me to think of calling my travel agent. America has never been half as interesting as it is in ’The Lost Continent’ and Americans ought to be supremely grateful it was written and published. Five stars and highly recommended.
This is the worst book ever. Bryson is a fat, cynical white guy traveling around the country, proclaiming in the subtitle: ’Travels in Small Town America.’
But like most fat white guys, Bryson is scared of small town America. He hates every small town he comes to- whether they’re on Indian reservations, small farming communities in Nebraska, southern towns full of African Americans where the author is too scared to even stop the car, or small mining communities in West Virginia, also where the a This is the worst book ever. Bryson is a fat, cynical white guy traveling around the country, proclaiming in the subtitle: ’Travels in Small Town America.’ But like most fat white guys, Bryson is scared of small town America. He hates every small town he comes to- whether they’re on Indian reservations, small farming communities in Nebraska, southern towns full of African Americans where the author is too scared to even stop the car, or small mining communities in West Virginia, also where the author is too scared to stop. How can you write a book about small town America when you’re too scared to stop in any small towns???
His favorite towns? Pittsburg and Charlotte. (Definitely ’small’ in my world.) Driving through the north woods, crossing the border from Maine to New Hampshire: ’The skies were still flat and low, the weather cold, but at least I was out of the montony of the Maine woods.’ In Littleton, on the Vermont border: ’People on the sidewalk smiled at me as I passed. This was beginning to worry me. Nobody, even in America, is that friendly. What did they want from me?’
At a cemetery in Vermont: ’I stood there in the mile October sunshine, feeling so sorry for all these lukles speople and their lost lives, reflecting bleakly on mortality and my own dear, cherished family so far away in England, and I thought, ’Well, fuck this,’ and walked back down the hill to the car.’ At least he freely refers to himself as a ’flinty-hearted jerk-off.’ Bryson should get off his lazy ass, stop whining about England, and actually stop the car once in a while. This book spouts so much hateful white guy racism that I can’t even bring myself to give it away. While I am 100% against burning or destroying any kind of book, I simply cannot let this one leave my hands. It will probably just find someone who agrees with it’s horrible twisted and pessimistic point of view!
I haven’t decided if I’m going to just bury it in my storage space (which may mean when I leave my apartment someone else might pick it up), or ’accidentally’ drop it in a snowbank outside. At least in spring the pages would all be glued together, and no one would be able to read it ever again. Bryson does two things very well in this book, besides his trademark humour which is happily a constant in this and every other book he’s ever written. He captures the spirit of the land at a very specific time in its recent history: 1987, the high water mark of the Reaganite project. Time and again, he is left demoralized by the mindless affluenza that was the hallmark of American society during the latter half of the 1980s.
More broadly, Bryson leaves a depressingly accurate description of the Bryson does two things very well in this book, besides his trademark humour which is happily a constant in this and every other book he’s ever written. He captures the spirit of the land at a very specific time in its recent history: 1987, the high water mark of the Reaganite project. Time and again, he is left demoralized by the mindless affluenza that was the hallmark of American society during the latter half of the 1980s. More broadly, Bryson leaves a depressingly accurate description of the tawdriness and vulgarity of America’s built environment - a cement desert of motels, burger joints, gas stations, strip malls, freeways and parking lots repeated ad nauseam throughout the Lower 48 - that is painfully recognizable even 25 years later.
If you have ever wondered at the wanton debasement that has been visited on the land by its greedy natives, if you have ever been saddened by the pitiless ugliness that surrounds you in America’s cities, towns and suburbs, then surely this book is for you. Afterwards, read Edward Abbey and Philip Connors to cleanse your soul and to give thanks for the national parks and wildernesses that still do a stalwart job of protecting nature’s beauty and grandeur against a hostile population. PS This was Bryson’s first book. The opening lines - ’I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ - must constitute one of the great introductions by any writer in contemporary literature.
When reading this book, American readers may very well feel like they are eavesdropping on a conversation not intended for their ears. This is because Bill Bryson obviously intended this book to be read by a British audience. There are lots of laughs in this book.
His depictions of Iowa made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. For example, his explanation for why so many farmers are missing fingers: ’Yet, there is scarcely a farmer in the Midwest over the age of twenty who has not at some time When reading this book, American readers may very well feel like they are eavesdropping on a conversation not intended for their ears. This is because Bill Bryson obviously intended this book to be read by a British audience. There are lots of laughs in this book. His depictions of Iowa made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. For example, his explanation for why so many farmers are missing fingers: ’Yet, there is scarcely a farmer in the Midwest over the age of twenty who has not at some time or other had a limb or digit yanked off and thrown into the next field by some noisy farmyard implement.
To tell you the absolute truth, I think farmers do it on purpose. I think working day after day beside these massive threshers and balers with their grinding gears and flapping fan belts and complex mechanisms they get a little hypnotized by all the noise and motion. They stand there staring at the whirring machinery and they think, ’I wonder what would happen if I just stuck my finger in there a little bit.’ I know that sounds crazy. But you have to realize that farmers don’t have whole lot of sense in these matters because they feel no pain.
Every day in the Des Moines Register you can find a story about a farmer who has inadvertently torn off an arm and then calmly walked six miles into the nearest town to have it sewn back on. The stories always say, ’Jones, clutching his severed limb, told his physician, ’I seem to have cut my durn arm off, Doc.’ It’s never: ’Jones, spurting blood, jumped around hysterically for twenty minutes, fell into a swoon and then tried to run in four directions at once,’ which is how it would be with you or me.’ This stuff cracks me up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Iowa too. From an American’s point of view, I was at times amazed by the important landmarks Bryson missed seeing or failed to appreciate.
He drove by Monticello, for heaven’s sake! In Springfield, Illinois, he ’drove around a little bit, but finding nothing worth stopping for’ he left -- Springfield, Illinois -- the home of Abraham Lincoln and his burial place!
He passed up touring the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, because it cost too much! He called Gettysburg a flat field -- a battlefield of such varied topography as to make one wonder whether Bryson actually visited it!
He missed Lake Tahoe! He also missed seeing Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine. Nor did he have any lobster along the Maine coast. Yet he felt informed enough to conclude that there was nothing special about Maine. These failings may be forgiven though, because he has lived away from the United States for a long time.
And, to be fair, he traveled far and wide and saw many wonderful places. From his well-written depictions, I’ve regained a desire to see places in the United States I haven’t visited yet, including Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mackinaw Island, Michigan. Overall, I enjoyed the book and enjoyed many laughs in reading it, which is why I like reading Bryson’s books so much.
But he seemed to tire out toward the end of the book and toward the end of his travels. His outlook became more and more jaundiced -- which is not good, when his outlook is generally jaundiced to begin with. Part I is the best part of the book, which focuses on the Midwest and East Coast. Part II, about Bryson’s travels in the West, seems tacked on and unnecessary for the book (except for his description of his drive through the Colorado mountains to Cripple Creek and his depiction of his first view of the Grand Canyon (’The fog parted. It just silently drew back, like a set of theater curtains being opened, and suddenly we saw that we were on th
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