The Lost Continent: Travels In Small Town America (1990) - Plot & Excerpts
The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill BrysonI 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 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.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.
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. It's true. 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. Hurrumph! 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 the edge of a sheer, giddying drop of at least a thousand feet. 'Jesus!' we said and jumped back, and all along the canyon edge you could hear people saying, 'Jesus!' like a message being passed down a long line. And then for many moments all was silence, except for the tiny fretful shiftings of the snow, because out there in front of us was the most awesome, most silencing sight that exists on earth.")). *There is some swearing in the book.
What do You think about The Lost Continent: Travels In Small Town America (1990)?
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." This is the memorable first line of Bill Bryson's first travelogue. Unfortunately, it's the best line in the book, and it's downhill from there.According to Bryson, the American people are stupid and fat, the towns are ugly, the countryside is boring, and everything is overpriced. He even fails to be impressed by Yosemite and Yellowstone, which takes some doing. If I were American, I might be offended. As an Irish person who has visited America several times, I just find it tiresome. How many different ways can you say that people are fat?This negativity would be excusable if it was funny, and very occasionally Bryson manages a witty remark (I liked his comment about how Utah is the one place where you are never bothered by Mormon missionaries, because Utah people assume that everyone there is Mormon already). However, the overwhelming snobbery and grumpiness drowns out everything else. Bryson would be a terrible travelling companion.If The Lost Continent had been the first Bryson that I read, I would never read another. Fortunately, it's not; I enjoyed Down Under and A Walk in the Woods, and I count A Short History of Nearly Everything among my favourites. It seems that Bryson mellowed from a grumpy 30-something to an older man who can actually enjoy travelling and life in general.
—Fiona Hurley
I've read quite a few of Bill's books and I truly love them but had I read this one first, I don't think I would have chosen to read any others. This was written by a very different sort of Bill Bryson. This was a snide, irascible Bill. Not that you don't get glimpses of the harrumphing, old(ish) man in his other books, you do but you also get the appreciative, thoughtful, more aware Bill. This book was funny; I won't lie, I laughed. Bill always makes me laugh. But it was less witty-funny and more mean-funny. Know what I mean?I get that it was written in the 80s (88 is still the 80s, right?) and it was a whole different world and many things were acceptable then (16 Candles/Long Duk Dong) which would be considered mortifying now. The fact is that Bill evolved and changed into a much better person and a much better writer, so we can just chalk this one up to youthful(ish) indiscretion.What did I discover about small town America in the late 80s early 90s? Everything was awful and even when it seemed good it was awful. There were some exceptions. I can't for the life of me remember any of them because mostly everything was awful.
—Chrissy Vassiliadis
Ok, if you had a slightly cynical and funny uncle who doesn't want to say too much in front of your parents because he doesn't want to get in trouble about corrupting you and using curse words in your presence but as soon as your parents walk out of the room he tells you what he really thinks of Las Vegas, well, Bill Bryson could be that uncle. Now, I must admit to a fist-pumping appreciation of midwestern courtesy, which Bryson admires and misses as he travels across the country, so my bias is clear, but I would have liked this book even if Bryson and I didn't share small town midwestern experience. Usually travel books/memoirs of this nature are either impossibly hip or stullifying dull. Bryson transcends both those expectations and writes a breezy, personable book about returning to his home country and driving around for a few months. His takes on over-eager waitresses and white trash tourists are spot-on and his descriptions of the paradoxes associated with mind-numbing long drives and beautiful emerging vista will be recognizable to anyone into long road trips. This was my first Bryson book; I'll check out more soon.
—RandomAnthony
