Times are a changing Bill (The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson)

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Product:	The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson
Date:	12/05/01 (672 review reads)
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Advantages: Non pretencious readable travel excellence

Disadvantages: You need to have seen a bit of America to get the full hit

As the man says,i come from Des Moines Iowa,someone has to,and coming from Northampton,I can seriously relate to that.Yet again the master of travel writing delivers,and in this case,his definitive book about his own country of birth.

The Americans were up in arms when this came out as the read is a very cynical take on Brysons home country and patriots.I can only assume he’s imbibed this cynicism from living in England for 15 years when he wrote this classic comic read.

The travel log recounts his life and younger years in his birthplace of Iowa and the simplicity and comfort life they’re bought his family and writing family traditions. His dad worked on the local paper and his mother also penned the odd piece now and then.

He tells of the gentile polite nature of middle Americans, if you sneeze out here, its so quiet your neighbor three houses down says bless you..Also the simplicity of the folk there that have tad slow expressions waiting for the brain to catch up.
But he rightfully points out, theres no need for high-speed mental activity where the only thing to do at the weekend, is to take a day trip to the mall to see the wondrous escalators. And as Bill Bryson also says. Iowa is the one place that prepares you for death.

His Iowa’s uncle claims to fame is that he invented $19.98 and had an absurded love of those gadget magazines for things you will only use once, or no one will ever buy.
The coffee warmer which is a hot plate with enough electrical current running through it to down an elephant. As it bleeps away to tell you the coffee is warm, you touch the plate, and wake up ten minutes later with a cold cup of Maxwell house!.

The resulting tongue in cheek odyssey and sardonic script really riled his countrymen, but kept the book at the top of The New York Times book list for a lonnnnnnnnnng time.A kind of therapy yanks are in series need of in my opinion.

The journey begins
in Iowa and he drives in to the neighboring states in a mood of sentimentality and hope to find things of America he loves so much. Trails of orange dust follow his car, try to slip into the exhausts over the open arid plains of Nebraska.

Fields of endless maize sway and whistle as the wind plays its favorite tunes on the authors thoughts and hopes. Some of the places are so empty and still in the mid day heat, one can hear a fly fart quips Bryson.
When he hits steamy Mississippi he recalls the time his dad took them out for the day in an old paneled estate car, low to the ground.

The trips when his dad entrusted mum with a the map, (never a good idea) and they saw the place they were trying desperately to get to from many different angles, tantalizingly imprisoned behind high fences or barbed wire, glimpsed from a far or between distant trees. The mythical county shows they could never quite get at to join the throbbing joyful masses.

He drives through Texas with anon stop drone of the electric chair and Bible radio or Country and Western music. Lyrics like…..
His hands are tiny,
His arms small,
But I lean on the man,
For child support.

Too much C& W can seriously damage your health and I totally agree with that as I worked out in Kansas for a spell in the 1990s.

He visits the small depressing town where America’s most famous Southern writer was born. He changed his name from Mark Clemens to Twain, who can blame him quips the later author as he roles straight out of the sh****le with out as much as a gear change.

I love his description of driving to the tediously slow 55mph speed limit, which Americans have to adhere to on the smaller, endlessly, long A roads. Bryson passes the time in his spacious car by coming his hair,or reading a magazine,counting the quarters.
On a particularly straight bit, getting into the back to look for a discarded sweater before franticly grabbing
at the wheel as a 38-ton lorry barrels towards him.

Or the super highways between the big city’s called turn pikes that suck you in like a cork on a fast flowing river from a small side walk, as you powerlessly watch your turn off go sailing by.

He tells of his experiences with Americans in small town and just how dumb some are. In a souvenir shop he buys a post card and thanks the lady in his broken American Yorkshire accent.”Where are you” from she inquires. I’m from England he answers.”Oh, you speak real well for a foreigner”.

The East coast horrors are particularly worrying in the United States.If you’re a blackman living in urban cities like DC theres an 18-1 chance of being murdered, wow!.More kids are shot by other kids and die in America than the general murder rate in the whole of Greater London!.

On his drive over the bridges that crest the coastline nearing Washington he comments that locals in remote areas complain of tourists and outsiders”spoling” their countryside and views, yet they don’t mind multiplex cinemas and Macdonald’s every ten feet for their convenience.

After veering of into the Appalachians to find Americas mythical Mulugeons, a tribe believed to be of Negro appearance and white complexion, supposedly desenders from the first settlers in this wondrous country. When colorful insects explode on your windshield in the hills you know spring is not far away quotes Bill.

Native Indians were of course the original and unspoken discoverers of the continent. But after gun crazy Americans culled the great herds of the 70 million Buffalo down to a handful in the late 1860s,they started on the Indians who were culled to similarly low levels.
The author does tell you that some Americans insist on calling Buffallo,Byson,but these same people insist on calling Geraniums,Pelaroniums,don’t listen to them he quite rightly snee
rs.

The author heads up into the higher reaches of the State as a late Canadian winter sweeps down blizzards of bone cracking chill. He still enjoys stopping in bad roadside diners and restaurants so he doesn’t have to leave a tip, something he openly admits he picked up from living in England for so long.

A quick diversion to New York sees him shelling out $120 bucks for a pokey hotel room near Manhattan where he had to step outside to turn round. I have been to the Big Apple and couldn’t agree more.
When he was a nipper, his dad bought him there on business. He remembers scanning the other tower blocks with his uncle’s shiny new binoculars looking for naked ladies, only to see more uncles with binoculars looking at him.

One thing New York does have is water fountains, These are really rather useful in humid cities when you have run out of pound coins for a can of coke, yet you never see them outside of London here.

He continues across the heart of America to the desert lands of New Mexico and the grand Canyon.Some of the roads are so rocky and rutted here that your teeth rattle and the car doors are shaken free, flapping in the wind like a wounded Eagle.

He had a similar experience as I did when arriving at the Grand Canyon early in the Spring.As the great monument is at its highest some 6000feet up. Snow can be falling into late June.When he and I were there it was fog bound and gray.
He tells a nice little story where he was desperate to see into the chasm if just for a minute to see the true grandeur of this stunning void. He finally found a track through some lush green forest to a precarious viewing point.
Just for a second the fog lifted and the cavern opened up to reveal its true stunning enormousness has seen it for real and it completely blows your mind. But for Bill the fog closed in just as quick as it came as he trotted of semi content.

As he shuffled up the rooted pat
h through the slush, a young honeymoon couple who had been here three days in the rain longing for a glimpse were knocked back when Bill told them he had glimpsed the forbidden fruit.
They were so upset that they had just missed this mythical glimpse that Bill had to console them in their wellingtons”Well at least you have done tons of shagging!”he quipped. (But only in his head).

Bordering Nevada State that harbors Las Vegas and similar gambling towns has the highest rates of violent crime and highway fatality in America.The prostitution of Vegas also delivers the highest rates of VD!.
Like Bryson three days was enough of this place as you watch endless rows of thick people depositing all their college funds and hard earned dole money into the slots. And like the author, you feel obliged to do it because of the show they have put on.
Incredibly, one major casino will deliver more profits than an airline, and the seats are full every night and day flight.

I resisted the slots where as Bill couldn’t as he saw his first $10 reach fithteen early with a five dollar win, this is the moment to nod your head and assure the people looking on that you are a winner tonight! Of course no one is impressed or looking on as it quickly depreciates to zilch.

Then another ten goes into recover the last note and before you know it you have lost thirty-five dollars.
This one also produces an early profit but only to be sucked into the gleaming money eating machines. Finally you long to run out of money so you can get the hell out of there as your duty is done, the more you win,the more you put back in.That’s the rules.

As he left Ceasars Palace a women dropped four bells as the bandit spat out six hundred dollars. The women obediently started putting it back in. At that point he felt sorry for the women, its going to take a hell of a long time to put that lot back in he mused.

He continues his surge
to the West Coast via Death Valley that is apparently Americas hottest and lowest point that is also half a mile from Americas highest point, Mount Whitney at 14,678ft..
I’m sure there are geological reasons for this anomaly, although I thought there would be deeper holes than 286 ft in America.New Jersey is a hell of a big hole.


The author then heads back across America on a journey back to his home state of Iowa via Mount Rushmore in Wyoming.The guy who blasted these famous faces of Americas Presidents into the mountain actual took14 years to do it.
Gotzon Borglum the genius behind the feat amazingly dropped dead four days before the official opening. As the author says, on a scale of one to ten on the seriously unlucky scale that’s an eleven. And the author says, the next night he has stuck in a hotel watching a repeat of Stop or my mumma will shoot with Stallone, now that’s a twelve on the same scale.

As he headed for Yellowstone Park, he stayed in a small town called Cody who proclaimed to be the birth place of Buffalo Bill.Even though this is far from the truth and the guy only stopped for a pee here once. They decided to buy his original house in another state where he was really born, and proclaim his birth right by re erecting it in Cody.
They also have Jackson Pollock as a real native son, but they didn’t make anything of that because Byson quips,he was a complete w*****r at shooting Buffalo.

He rolls through Yellowstone to find a child hood memory off a famous American postcard of a giant Redwood tree with a hole a car can drive through. But when he found that tree thee was no hole and a no entry sign thank you very much. Sadly there were also a party of German students running around and talking rather loudly like only Germans can (I agree with that one!).
The Redwood one can drive through was a thousand miles away up the coast (I knew that). But you can just about back a mini throu
gh.

Finally as Bill Bryson neared the last few miles of his 13,978-mile, 38 State odyssey, he found that small-unaffected town he remembered from his youth. No Macdonald’s or vulgar shopping malls, just small town pleasant diners and homely shops topped with good old mid west hospitality.

It’s pretty funny and would suit someone who has been to the States and can relate to the situations and the American way of things have seen a lot of the US so enjoyed his “English”take on it very much’
Well at least we can teach the yank writers irony and the art of piss taking to cover up our own insecurities. Great read, Bryson is on form yet again.

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