The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson

The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson

I should preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t, 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.

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.

Because Bryson had lived in England for ten years before he wrote this book he feels infinitely superior to everyone that he left behind in Iowa and elsewhere in rural America. His new status as a European allows him to use such British words as windscreen, kerb, tyre, and phone kiosk without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. You wonder if he also talks with a phony English accent.

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.

In Holcomb, Kansas he turns his ire to Truman Capote’s book, In Cold Blood. He discounts it by saying that it isn’t seminal. A page later he complains about how dumb a group of kids are who live there because they haven’t read it. Which way is it going to be, Bill? Adults have been complaining about the stupidity of children since some people have been older than other people. Even if kids today are 100 times dumber than those of a generation previous, it’s a pretty tired subject for a travel writer.

If he ever had a decent meal in any of the restaurants he visited he forgot to tell his readers about it. He did chronicle all of the bad food to which he was subjected. He describes bad food and then goes on to tell that he ate so much of it his pants no longer fit. I thought that you are supposed to suppress the bad memories? I tend to remember only the good meals I have experienced and I surely don’t bother to write about the awful ones.

It just doesn’t seem that he had a bit of fun on his trip. Why bother to travel if it’s such a burden? There is plenty of bad food back in England. Travel is also a great opportunity to meet new people. If Bryson ever actually had a conversation with anyone he also kept that a secret from his readers as well.

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 is an example 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.”

“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 filed 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 or 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.

Bryson finishes by saying that at least he didn’t get shot or mugged, the car didn’t break down, he didn’t get approached by a Jehovah’s Witness, and he still had a clean pair of underpants. “Trips don’t come much better than that.” Maybe this is true for you, Bill, but my trips come a hell of a lot better than that. I’m out to have fun, learn something, and meet people. I’ll wash my underwear when I get back home.