The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

(Book Review)

Having thoroughly enjoyed the last Bill Bryson book I read, I thought I would move onto this book. (Plus a friend had it on audio book, and burned me a copy).

Bill Bryson left America while in college during the 1970s and spent most of his adult life living in Britain. This book is about him returning to America at the age of 36 to do some travelling around middle America and write about his experiences.

Needless to say, a lot has changed since Bryson's childhood. However the title of the book (along with some of the blurbs that go with it) is somewhat misleading, because it implies that the whole book is a lament for the lost America of Bryson's youth. Although that theme does pop up now and then, more than anything else this is just a travelogue. Bryson spends most of the time describing things like the tacky tourist traps he visits, the arguments he gets into with waitresses, and the annoying accents of people in the South.

A travelogue of mid-west America is a pretty boring subject, so it represents a challenge for the writer to make the material interesting. And if anyone is up to the challenge, it's Bryson. He's got a real acid pen, and he's not afraid to use it. If he thinks a certain town is a dump, or a certain tourist attraction is a rip off, he'll tell you in no uncertain terms. And once he gets into the deep South, he brings with him all of his Northern stereo-types and preconceptions. In short, he is not a writer at all worried about offending the people he's describing.

I'm not sure I would have had the patience to read this cover to cover as a paperback, but as an audio book I loved it. Bryson's wit and commentary are just the perfect kind of things to have on in the background while you're puttering around the apartment. In fact I found myself staying inside more, and making up more excuses to clean around the place just so I could continue listening.
(By the way, it turns out my copy is missing disc 8 out of 10 discs. Because this is a travelogue, and doesn't contain a continually evolving plot to keep track of, I didn't even notice this until my 3rd time listening through. I'm going to go ahead and review this book anyway, but if you want to make a note that I missed a couple chapters and thus take this review with a grain of salt, go ahead).

Michigan makes a brief appearance in this trip. Bryson talks about the horrors of Detroit. Greenfield village (which I remember visiting on a family vacation once) gets a nice write-up. Grand Rapids only gets named dropped (as in "I drove past Grand Rapids") which is a shame because I'm sure it would have been funny to get Bryson's take on it. And then Bryson spends some time up North in places like Traverse City and Mackinaw Island (places I remember from family vacations and Church youth group Bike trips).

Parts of this book sounded vaguely familiar, and I think the part on high way billboard signs in particular might have been part of a book of essays I had to read in high school. Since this book was first published way back in 1988, it's entirely possible it could have been showing up in model essay composition books by the time I was in 11th grade or so.

Listening to the book I would occasionally forget that it was 20 years old. For example Bryson spends a lot of time complaining about how stupid and politically apathetic college kids today are, but those kids he's talking about are all around 40 now.
(As someone who was still in elementary school in the 80s, I don't have a good idea of what the college scene was like then. But it does seem that many people like to harp on how shallow and apathetic the 80s generation was. On the other hand, I remember reading Howard Zinn once saying that contrary to popular belief, many of his students in the 80s were passionate about political causes).

As someone who has spent most of his adult life living abroad, I identified with much of Bryson's experience of returning home and looking at your own country through new eyes. And when Bryson talks about aging and the crisises of mid-life, I was shocked to realize he was at the time of writing not all that much older than me. (Okay, at 36 he's got a good 7 years on me now, but the way time's been flying by I'm sure I'll be coming to that bend before I know it).

It is interesting to think how much America had changed since Bryson was a child in the 1950s. I compared my own experience and thought if I were to go back to America now and do a travelogue, would things have changed all that much since my childhood. Of course now we have cellphones, DVDs, internet and facebook, but I think in terms of the structure of the cities and roads things are more or less the same.

In Bryson's case, he noted how the town centers have disappeared and everything is replaced by suburban shopping malls and driving culture.
As someone who lived several years in Britain, he was particularly surprised when he tried to walk through town how all the parking lots were separated by concrete barriers, and to get from one to the other you were supposed to get in your car and drive the short distance. He describes the weird stares people gave him when he climbed over the concrete barrier and walked across to another parking lot.

This is something we are so used to in America we don't often think about it, but it really is an unhealthy oddity of our culture. Anyone who has tried to walk down 28th street can attest that it is not very pedestrian friendly. And cyclists take their own life into their hands when attempting these roads. And have you ever tried to walk to into a mall? I remember once trying to walk to Grandville mall several years ago, and finding the whole thing was built like a fortress against pedestrians.

As global warming, the energy crisis, and peak oil become more and more of a problem, I think we are going to have to seriously think about redesigning American cities so people at least have the option of walking or biking if they want to.

And finally, listening to how Bill Bryson was able to come up with funny stories and witty commentary about even the most boring cities in small town America, I have become re-inspired with my "better know a city project". I don't think I'll ever reach Bryson's level, but at least I have a new standard to aim for in my own travelogues.
It is a cruel irony that I'm becoming re-inspired with this project just as I no longer have the time to do it (see previous post) but I hope to get in a couple more travelogues before school starts. And there's always summer break.

Link of the Day
Great satire from "This Modern World"
5 Years Later Neo-cons discuss their Regrets,
and Remember when they told us the war would pay for itself?

The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson: Book Review (Scripted)