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At 28% in, I've decided to quit and call it an official DNF. But yes, I'm going to rate and review it anyway, because Bryson deserves it.
The Lost Continent was born when Bryson was struck by nostalgia and an urge to reconnect with his home after his father died. He says he wanted to see if the magic places of his youth were as good as he remembered. So he journeyed back to America, borrowed his mom's car, and set out, initially planning the type of road trip vacation his father took the family on when he was a kid, but soon morphing his meanderings into a quest to find the perfect small town. From his musings, I think he wants some sort of Pleasantville (yes, the movie) that has alcohol and a college.
From the beginning, where Bryson describes his parents and the family vacations, he fails at being cynically and sarcastically amusing. Instead, he comes across as mean-spirited, condescending, and impossible to please. His dad, who was probably a nice guy, is portrayed as an idiotic, short-tempered cheapskate, and his mother is a bland lump whose commentary is limited to saying "I don't know, dear" or offering you a sandwich. Every place he stops is just ruined by the discovery of a rusty car up on blocks, or an unmown yard, or the prevalence of modern cookie-cutter architecture instead of fine Victorian houses. If he happens to drive past a big box store, well, that town is marked off the list! Inhabitants of the towns sometimes cause their hometown to be crossed off, too. These people have the nerve to speak with an accent, or be overweight, or play their music too loudly. Funny, all of them have lower IQs than Bill. Several times in my short 84+ page foray into this waste of time, Bryson wrote judgmental comments about how racist America is--not just the South--and yet managed to sound like a racist doing so. More faults with towns included the lack of a view, the lack of a bookstore, traffic, bad weather. Whenever he stopped to tour some landmark, like the birthplace of a famous person, for example, it was too expensive, too boring, too crowded; if the place seemed okay, Bryson just resorted to bashing the person for their shortcomings. He repeatedly fabricates derogatory names for things--Crudbucket Ohio, Senator Poontang, the Blackbutt Indians.
All this negativity has become overwhelming and tedious. I stopped reading, but consulted the 14 page index (can you believe it includes an index?) in the back and scanned several things of interest looking for some redemption. Alas, he wasn't really kind or generous to Colonial Williamsburg, Cooperstown, Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains, Donald Trump, Barry Manilow, Asheville/Biltmore Estate, Melungeons, Mexican music, or anything else. I wish I'd never paid money for this, and I wish I'd never gotten around to reading it. Though I enjoyed A Walk In The Woods, One Summer, and most of all, In A Sunburned Country, I still have a few unread Bryson books on my shelves, and now fear something I may've found funny in the new books might seem snide and tainted with this newly discovered side of the author.
The Lost Continent was born when Bryson was struck by nostalgia and an urge to reconnect with his home after his father died. He says he wanted to see if the magic places of his youth were as good as he remembered. So he journeyed back to America, borrowed his mom's car, and set out, initially planning the type of road trip vacation his father took the family on when he was a kid, but soon morphing his meanderings into a quest to find the perfect small town. From his musings, I think he wants some sort of Pleasantville (yes, the movie) that has alcohol and a college.
From the beginning, where Bryson describes his parents and the family vacations, he fails at being cynically and sarcastically amusing. Instead, he comes across as mean-spirited, condescending, and impossible to please. His dad, who was probably a nice guy, is portrayed as an idiotic, short-tempered cheapskate, and his mother is a bland lump whose commentary is limited to saying "I don't know, dear" or offering you a sandwich. Every place he stops is just ruined by the discovery of a rusty car up on blocks, or an unmown yard, or the prevalence of modern cookie-cutter architecture instead of fine Victorian houses. If he happens to drive past a big box store, well, that town is marked off the list! Inhabitants of the towns sometimes cause their hometown to be crossed off, too. These people have the nerve to speak with an accent, or be overweight, or play their music too loudly. Funny, all of them have lower IQs than Bill. Several times in my short 84+ page foray into this waste of time, Bryson wrote judgmental comments about how racist America is--not just the South--and yet managed to sound like a racist doing so. More faults with towns included the lack of a view, the lack of a bookstore, traffic, bad weather. Whenever he stopped to tour some landmark, like the birthplace of a famous person, for example, it was too expensive, too boring, too crowded; if the place seemed okay, Bryson just resorted to bashing the person for their shortcomings. He repeatedly fabricates derogatory names for things--Crudbucket Ohio, Senator Poontang, the Blackbutt Indians.
All this negativity has become overwhelming and tedious. I stopped reading, but consulted the 14 page index (can you believe it includes an index?) in the back and scanned several things of interest looking for some redemption. Alas, he wasn't really kind or generous to Colonial Williamsburg, Cooperstown, Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains, Donald Trump, Barry Manilow, Asheville/Biltmore Estate, Melungeons, Mexican music, or anything else. I wish I'd never paid money for this, and I wish I'd never gotten around to reading it. Though I enjoyed A Walk In The Woods, One Summer, and most of all, In A Sunburned Country, I still have a few unread Bryson books on my shelves, and now fear something I may've found funny in the new books might seem snide and tainted with this newly discovered side of the author.
