I’m Bob Seay and this is another Book Byte from High Plains Public Radio.
I’ve been reading The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson. I selected this book because I’ve enjoyed other books by Bill Bryson. The Mother Tongue, an excellent book about the origins of the English Language, is one of the most fascinating non-fiction books I have ever read. I enjoyed A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything. I highly recommend these books. As a writer, Bryson is undeniably funny and clearly very smart. The Lost Continent was published in 1989 and is one of Bryson’s earliest books. It is also the first of several travel books that he has written. In all, he has published over 20 books. He is one of my favorite writers.
Bryson grew up in Iowa because, as he writes, “somebody had to.” He moved to the United Kingdom in 1973, when he was 22 years old. He returned to Iowa and the United States in 1987, following the death of his father, but stayed only for a short time before he returned to England.
The Lost Continent is about the road trip Bryson took across America after his father’s death, as he retraced the family vacations of his childhood. There were two such trips, one going East from Iowa and one going West. They appear in the book as two separate sections. In all, Bryson visited and wrote about his travels in 38 states. The book is about his observations and experiences during those trips.
In this book, Bryson is not only re-discovering America, he is also finding his voice as a writer. Bryson is a mixture of clever observational humor and astute social commentary which can be cutting at times. He blends intellectual curiosity with post-modern cynicism and is frequently sarcastic. He tempers all of this with healthy amounts of self-deprecating humor, perhaps in the belief that if he is going to poke fun at others then he also needs to make fun of himself.
Naturally, I was excited when HPPR asked me to do a Book Bytes segment for Lost Continent. As I said, I am a fan. But I had not read this book.
I expected a nostalgic travel book, a kind of one-man road trip buddy pic or buddy book, I guess, with Bill driving and his memories as a passenger. A kind of Baby Boomer reflection of mid-twentieth century America. I’m not quite old enough to be a Boomer, but I enjoy the feel-good narratives that usually come with books like that.
What I discovered was something else.
Bill Bryson is not a political writer. His humor is observational, not ideological. His observations about climate change, science, religion, and culture seem to indicate an inclination to the Left, but he avoids overtly political statements.
I, on the other hand, am a political reader and a highly partisan one at that. Perhaps it is because of the current political climate, but as I read this, I found myself thinking about a lost political continent and how that came to be.
As I said, I enjoyed this book. It made me think. I love Bryson’s attention to detail and conversational style. And I laughed at things that, as a politically left-of-center person, I probably should not have laughed at.
But somewhere among the stereotypes of overweight Midwesterners, rural accents, and the boring sameness of small towns, I began to understand how the Left lost rural America and rural American voters. There is a snarky, mean-spirited tone that obscures any affection Bryson may have for the flyover states; a condescension that only underscores what many Midwesterners and people on the Right say about what they call “the political elite.” Bryons complains, and rightfully so, about the homogenization of American towns, where every town has the same fast-food franchises, the same stores and hotels, and the loss of the uniqueness of small, locally owned businesses. But too often, instead of praising those small business owners that are still hanging on and the communities that support them, he uses them and their way of life as a punchline.
As I read, I kept reminding myself that The Lost Continent was written in the late 1980s, a period defined by comedic cynicism. This was the time of Dave Letterman, George Carlin, and Seinfeld. Bill Bryson is in that same vein, with perhaps an even more dry sense of humor. These jokes were funny when they were written. But, like a lot of the jokes on Friends or The Office or so many shows of the period, they haven’t aged very well.
Bryson memorializes small town America before it was lost, before the death of manufacturing and the rise of chain restaurants.
Liberals and Progressives like me could use this same book to understand how we lost that same continent in the last election.
