The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson

   1989; 299 pages.  Full Title: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Travel Memoir; Americana; Anecdotal Humor; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    A little bit about the author, Bill Bryson, mostly courtesy of Wikipedia.

 

    He was born in 1957 in Des Moines, Iowa, and grew up there.  In 1973 he visited Britain, then opted to stay there.  He married, moved back to Iowa in 1973 to get his college degree, then moved again to Britain in 1977.

 

    His father, Bill Bryson Sr., died in 1986.  Shortly thereafter, Bill Jr. journeyed back to the US and made two long sightseeing trips, mostly by car, to the less touristy places in America.  The first one was in the fall of 1987; the second in the spring of 1988.

 

    This book chronicles those journeys, blending in a healthy dose of memories about his dad, along with the author’s trademark style of wry humor.

 

    Wikipedia notes that The Lost Continent was Bryson’s first travel book.

 

What’s To Like...

    Bill Bryson divides up the two legs of his odyssey into 28 chapters.  The first trip is to the East, and takes 34 days, 6,842 miles, and 19 chapters.  The second phase covers 7,136 miles (total: 13,978 miles) but only 9 chapters; Bryson discovers that things are farther apart in the West.  By the end, he’s traveled through 38 of the 48 contiguous United States.

 

    For the most part, he adheres to the subtitle’s goal of visiting small towns, but he occasionally hits the large cities as well, including Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Las Vegas, where his slot machine luck was spookily similar to mine the one and only time I played the slots there.

 

    There’s no Table of Contents in my paperback version, but there is a 13-page Index in the back which lists, among other things, all the small towns mentioned in the book.  In addition to the author’s personal impressions of each stop, the text is full of fascinating touristy and historical tidbits concerning those places.

 

    It was fun to compare my experiences with Bryson’s in places we’ve both been to.  He bemoans Boston’s freeway system; I almost had a head-on collision doing that once.  He was wowed by the colonial attire in Williamsburg, Virginia; so was I.  He cringed while driving through the ghetto area of Philadelphia; I did likewise.  He had a blast in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park; so did I.

 

    The book is a trivia lovers delight.  You’ll learn the proper way to pronounce “Cairo”, the city in Illinois, not Egypt.  The Melungeons in Appalachia will mystify you.  You’ll visit Mark Twain’s home in Hannibal, Missouri, and nearly plummet to your death off a “scenic road” in Colorado.  You’ll delight in eating at a genuine Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant, although Bryson doesn’t give its location. (Hey, I was born and raised in that part of the country.)  And that's just a small percentage of Americana highlights you'll read about in The Lost Continent.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Apposite (adj.) : apt in the circumstances, or in relation to something.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.0*/5, based on 5,152 ratings and 879 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.81*/5, based on 63,169 ratings and 3,597 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns.  Everywhere else in America towns are named after either the first white person to get there or the last Indian to leave.  But the Amish obviously gave the matter of town names some thought and graced their communities with intriguing, not to say provocative, appellations: Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, to name but three.  Intercourse makes a good living by attracting passersby such as me who think it is the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postmark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back.  (pg. 135)

 

    People in the West like to shoot things.  When they first got to the West they shot buffalo.  (. . .)

    Many people will tell you that you mustn’t call them buffalo, that they are really bison.  Buffalo, these people will tell you, actually live in China or some other distant country and are a different breed of animal altogether.  These are the same people who tell you that you must call geraniums pelargoniums.  Ignore them.  (pg. 214)

 

“Hah doo lack Miss Hippy?”  (pg. 58)

    The profanity level in The Lost Continent is higher than what you’d expect in a travelogue, although I wouldn’t call it excessive.  There were eleven instances in the first 20% of the book, including a couple of f-bombs.  I don’t recall any “adult situations”, although some of the author’s comments on female physiques might be viewed as misogynistic by today’s standards.

 

    Some reviewers were turned off by Bill Bryson’s negative and/or snarky opinions of a portion of the little towns he visited.  They have a point, but I imagine it’s difficult not to become a bit jaded if you drive to, and walk through, dozens upon dozens of tourist traps like Bryson does.  After a while, all of the gift shops look the same.

 

    Other reviewers weren’t thrilled with Bryson’s writing style, which is folksy and often goes off on irrelevant tangents.  Again, they have a point, but this is an early Bryson effort.  It's the ninth book of his I’ve read, and I can say that with time, his technique becomes more refined, without losing its edginess we devoted readers all expect and look forward to.

 

    All in all, I enjoyed The Lost Continent, especially since it brought back childhood memories of family vacations where we rode around in station wagons, slept in tents, and cooked our own meals.  We got our cheap thrills by doing things like feeding the black bears on the roads in the Great Smoky Mountains and walking around on the Gettysburg battlefield, two places that Bill Bryson also visited.  Those were good times.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last thing.  In walking through the touristy area of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Bryson comes across a shop called the “Irlene Mandrell Hall of Stars Museum and Shopping Mall”.  Now there’s a name that I haven’t heard in a long while.

Rabbit, Run - John Updike

   1960; 255 pages.  Book 1 (out of 5) in the “Rabbit” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Highbrow Lit; Americana.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

 

    He’s only 26 years old, and already Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom feels like his life is in a rut.  It wasn’t always this way; just a few short years ago he was the star of his high school basketball team, setting a local scoring record not once, but twice.

 

    But those days are gone, and now he finds himself both a husband and a father.  Lately his wife Janice bores him.  He loves his 2½-year old son, but taking care of a toddler is a lot of stress.  And now Janice is pregnant again, so he’s about relive the joys of raising a newborn.

 

    His job bores him even more.  His career consists of making the rounds to demonstrate a device called a “MagiPeel Peeler”, with which you too can experience the bliss that comes from paring vegetables and fruit.  Yawn.

 

    Harry can feel it, there’s a better life out there somewhere, waiting for him.  He just has to go find it.  But how can he do that, what with a wife, soon-to-be two kids, and a dead-end job tying him down?

 

    Run!  Rabbit, run!

 

What’s To Like...

    Rabbit, Run was published in 1960, is arguably John Updike’s most famous novel, and was such an immediate hit that he developed it into a 5-book series.  This book’s been on my TBR shelf for quite a while; I decided to read it after learning that its fictional setting – the city of Brewer – is patterned after Reading, Pennsylvania, birthplace to both the author and myself.

 

    It was fun to experience life in 1959 America again.  Diners had jukeboxes that cost you a dime per song; smoking in a hospital waiting room was normal; you could fill your car’s gas tank at the local Esso or Amoco station for $3.90; and enjoy the night’s cool breeze by hand-cranking down the car window.  “Gay” in those days meant “merry”, and you could buy a brand new paperback novel for 35 cents.  Indeed, the price printed on the paperback that I read, a 1962 issue, was “60¢”.

 

    Brewer/Reading is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and that means both shoo fly pie and fosnachts get mentioned.  On Rabbit’s first “run”, he takes the very real “Route 222” to get away, and considers going to nearby places such as Pottstown, West Chester, Bird in Hand, Paradise, Mascot, and (my personal favorite) Intercourse, all of which do exist in southeastern Pennsylvania.

 

    Harry of course is the central character, but several secondary ones get a lot of personal attention as well, including his wife, son, high school basketball coach, fallback lover, and an Episcopalian minister.  The book’s theme reminds me of another highbrow novel I read a couple years ago, Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (set in the 1920’s and reviewed here).  In both books, the protagonist becomes jaded with living the great American lifestyle, and seeks alternatives.

 

    If you like anti-heroes, Harry’s your guy.  He thinks he’s irresistible to women (and in fairness, sometimes it seems like he is), he flees from his wife and son on the spur of the moment, everything is always somebody else’s fault, and at one point he flirts with the minister’s wife by slapping her on her fanny.  He’s not very likeable, yet there is a certain charismatic optimism about him.

 

    The ending is good, but not great.  Harry hasn’t improved one bit and about all you can say is that he’s now resolved to start thinking about resolving the issues in his life.  I’m guessing that sets up the next book in the series, at least I hope so.

 

Excerpts...

    The door is locked.  In fitting the little key into the lock his hand trembles, pulsing with unusual exertion, and the metal scratches.  But when he opens the door he sees his wife sitting in an armchair with an Old-fashioned, watching television turned down low.

    “You’re here,” he says.  “What’s the door locked for?”

    She looks to one side of him with vague dark eyes reddened by the friction of watching.  “It just locked itself.”  (pg. 10)

 

    “The boy’s taken his truck,” he tells Mrs. Springer.

    “Well let him get it himself,” she says.  “He must learn.  I can’t be getting up on these legs and running outside every minute; they have been at it like that all afternoon.”

    “Billy.”  The boy looks up in surprise toward Eccles’ male voice.  “Give it back.”  Billy considers this new evidence and hesitates indeterminately.  “Now, please.”  Convinced, Billy walks over and pedantically drops the toy on his sobbing playmate’s head.  (pg. 128)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4*/5, based on 413 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.58*/5, based on 52,620 ratings and 3,256 reviews.

 

“It’s a strange thing about you mystics, how often your little ecstasies wear a skirt.”  (pg. 108 )

    I found an unexpected number of nits to pick with Rabbit, Run.

 

    For starters, John Updike’s writing style is both unusual and difficult.  The sentences are often long, descriptive passages abound, chapters are nonexistent, even paragraph breaks are rare, and there are only three dividing spots, coming at pages 7, 114, and 221.  The present tense is deliberately overused for the sake of presenting Harry’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts.  Despite all this, John Updike’s skill at writing makes the reading bearable; lesser writers are not encouraged to emulate him.

 

    None of the plot threads get tied up.  Who will Harry go back to: Janice, Lucy, or Ruth?  Or maybe all the above?  How well will Jack Eccles’ Christian faith hold up through all of this?  Will Marty Tothero recover from his stroke?  Or next time will Rabbit run farther and longer than he’s ever run before?

 

    Again, I’m assuming these things will be dealt with in the subsequent books in the series.  But the fact that there are four more books makes me fear that nothing is going to get resolved very quickly.

 

    5½ Stars.  So why was Rabbit, Run such a mega-hit when it came out in 1960?  I suspect it was due to the fact that it has a bunch of cussing and fairly-explicit sexual situations in it, which was rare for a highbrow novel written towards the end of the Eisenhower era.  Back then there was no such thing as an R-rated movie and the Rolling Stones were forced to change the lyrics of their hit to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  But by the end of the decade the musical Hair would have full frontal nudity and California's Haight-Ashbury area would be celebrating its “Summer of Love”.  The times they were a-changin’.

Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis

   1922; 370 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Laurels : None listed, but Wikipedia notes that the controversy that Babbitt sparked was influential in the decision to award the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature to Sinclair Lewis.  Genre : Satire; Highbrow Lit; Americana.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Any way you look at it, George F. Babbitt is living the good life.  He’s got a loving wife and three darling kids: two daughters, Verona and Tinka; and a son, the eldest, Ted, in high school, and who George plans to send to Law School when he graduates, something that wasn’t an option for him when he was growing up.

    George does all the correct things he’s supposed to do as a fine, upstanding citizen of the Midwest city of Zenith.  He’s a diehard Republican and very much anti-union.  He’s a dues-paying member of the Elks, the Boosters Club, the Zenith Athletic Club, and the Chamber of Commerce.  He attends the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, pastored by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew, who enlightens George as to what he should think about things like disarmament, tariffs, and Germany.

    He plays golf, albeit not very well.  He hobnobs only with other fine, upstanding men, and scratches their backs, if you know what I’m saying, in exchange for them scratching his.  His best friend is Paul Riesling, an old college chum, whom George admires very much.

    If George F. Babbitt isn’t the richest or most influential man in Zenith, it’s not from a lack of effort.  He’s comfortably middle-class, and he’s sure all the rich, upstanding men in Zenith hold him in high regard.

    But every once in a while lately, a vague feeling of discontent tries to nudge its way into George’s thoughts.  He dreams about getting away from it all by going camping with his friend Paul up in the rustic woods of Maine.  Just to escape for a bit from the stress and hubbub of making money and raising a family in Zenith.

    Thank goodness such rebellious thoughts never stay long.  Failure to strictly abide by the set-in-stone middle-class standards could impact his fine, upstanding status in the community.

What’s To Like...

    Babbitt was published in 1922.  The Great War was over, so was the post-war recession, and optimism ran rampant in the United States, particularly if you were a white middle-class businessman.   The story is set in the fictional city of Zenith, somewhere in the Midwest.

    I was impressed with Sinclair Lewis’s depiction of life in the early 1920’s.  Prohibition was in full-swing, but home-brewed beer and alcohol was easy to come by if you had connections.  Air-conditioning was non-existent, so a lot of houses had a “sleeping porch” (I slept in one once!) to cope with the summer heat.  There are milk trucks, paper-carriers, and a furnace man.  The trolley was the main way to get around the city, and you took the train to go to another city or state.  Cars were certainly common, but you had to “crank the Ford” to get it started.

    Paradoxically, I was amazed at how much society back then resembles today’s social/political climate.  George is vexed because his kids don’t seem to listen to him.  The churches feel it’s their place to influence elections, and evangelists are mostly interested in making money.  Cocaine-use is a problem and business executives perpetrate shady deals.  Anti-immigrant sentiment runs high and “fake news” is cited when one doesn’t like what’s written in the newspapers (see the second excerpt below).  Science is viewed as being in opposition to religion, and leftist “long-hairs” are leading kids astray.  Despite Prohibition, morals are loosening, probably due to fads such as Feminism and New Ageism leading people astray.

    The main theme of Babbitt concerns the consequences of “going against the flow”, in terms of marital fidelity, politics, and religion.  The Status Quo may be corrupt, but it’s also extremely powerful.  The “rebels” of Society might offer tempting alternatives, but in the end, they’re just as shallow and phony as The Establishment.  You step out of line at your own risk.

    There were a fair number of typos in the book, which is not uncommon for a “Public Domain” edition.  Most of them were word splits: motor-cycle, basket-ball, high lights, week-end, to-night, etc.  and they might be just scanning inaccuracies.  It’s also possible that English grammar was slightly different a century ago.  Languages evolve.

    I liked the “lingo” that Sinclair Lewis uses - slangy idioms like “snoway talkcher father”, “pleasmeech”, “Jever”, and “frinstance”.  It sets the down-home tone of the novel quite effectively.  I enjoyed the séance, and chuckled at the mention of Theosophy and Pentecostals.  I learned a new Latin phrase, “hinc illae lacrimae”, which roughly means “that is what those tears were for”, and I felt that comparing the Babbitts/McKelveys dinner date with that of the Babbitts/Overbrooks encapsulates the whole message of the book.

    There is a small amount of cussing, mostly in the dialogue, and about what you’d expect from fine, upstanding middle-aged men.  There’s one roll in the hay, and it’s done off-screen.  The pacing is somewhat slow, but that’s the norm for a typical highbrow book, and it’s balanced by Sinclair Lewis's excellent writing.  The ending is both hopeful and cynical.  Giving more details about that would entail spoilers.

Kewlest New Word ...

Zob (n., slang) : a good-for-nothing; a fool.  (a Yankeeism).

Others: En brosse (adj.; phrase); Picaresque (adj.); Supercilious (adj.); Credulous (adj.).

Kindle Details...

    The “public domain” version of Babbitt is always free at Amazon.  There are various other e-book editions available, each of them has assorted extras.  The most expensive of these was $5.38.  I went with the freebie.   

Excerpts...

    He stood before the covered saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato.  He was thinking.  It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children.  What was it all about?  What did he want?  (loc. 3489)

    He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot.  He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled.  “All lies and fake figures,” he said, but in a doubtful croak.  (loc. 3958)

 “Say! I know what was the trouble!  Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night.”  (loc. 2281)

    I don’t have anything significant to quibble about.  There were a poopload of characters to meet and keep track of.  The book is heavy on character studies and light on action and adventure.  But those are things I expect from a highbrow novel, and let’s face it, it is unlikely that a middle-class, middle-aged white suburbanite would have many thrills and spills in his life.

    What impresses me is the immediate and significant impact that Babbitt had on the American public.  It is unsurprising that his caustic and poignant depiction of the average businessman of the time sparked heated debate between his fans and detractors, which of course resulted in it becoming an instantly bestseller.

    Indeed, because of it, “Babbitt” is now an official word in our language (Really.  It’s in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Google it), meaning “a materialistic and complacent businessman conforming to the standards of his social set”.   Ditto for the milquetoast practice thereof, which are called “Babbittry”.

    8½ Stars.  One last tidbit about Babbitt.  J.R.R. Tolkien was so influenced by the book that he called his newly-imagined Halfling creatures “hobbits” as a tribute to it.  The Bilbo Baggins character we meet at the beginning of The Hobbit, before he gets corrupted by going on an adventure with the dwarves, is a perfect and deliberate example of a Babbitt.

    So says Wikipedia in its post on the novel.  Curiously, this is totally absent from their post on the word "Hobbit".