This is the worst book ever. Bryson is a fat, cynical white guy traveling around the country, proclaiming in the subtitle: "Travels in Small Town America." But like most fat white guys, Bryson is scared of small town America. He hates every small town he comes to- whether they're on Indian reservations, small farming communities in Nebraska, southern towns full of African Americans where the author is too scared to even stop the car, or small mining communities in West Virginia, also where the author is too scared to stop. How can you write a book about small town America when you're too scared to stop in any small towns??? His favorite towns? Pittsburg and Charlotte. (Definitely "small" in my world.)

Driving through the north woods, crossing the border from Maine to New Hampshire: "The skies were still flat and low, the weather cold, but at least I was out of the montony of the Maine woods."

In Littleton, on the Vermont border: "People on the sidewalk smiled at me as I passed. This was beginning to worry me. Nobody, even in America, is that friendly. What did they want from me?"

At a cemetery in Vermont: "I stood there in the mile October sunshine, feeling so sorry for all these lukles speople and their lost lives, reflecting bleakly on mortality and my own dear, cherished family so far away in England, and I thought, 'Well, fuck this,' and walked back down the hill to the car."

At least he freely refers to himself as a "flinty-hearted jerk-off."

Maybe Mr. Bryson should get off his lazy ass, stop whining about England, and actually stop the car once in a while. This book spouts so much hateful white guy racism that I can't even bring myself to give it away. While I am 100% against burning or destroying any kind of book, I simply cannot let this one leave my hands. It will probably just find someone who agrees with it's horrible twisted and pessimistic point of view! I haven't decided if I'm going to just bury it in my storage space (which may mean when I leave my apartment someone else might pick it up), or "accidentally" drop it in a snowbank outside. At least in spring the pages would all be glued together, and no one would be able to read it ever again.

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.

Probably just as hysterical as Neither Here Nor There: Travels Through Europe, but I enjoyed it a tad less, as it was more of the same thing (Europe, I suppose, was far too fresh in my mind). For that reason alone, I'll be spacing the rest of Bryson's books out.

Nonetheless, what an absolute gift to travel alongside Bryson as he makes his way through America. I learned so much along the way (I've added Colonial Williamsburg and the Henry Ford museum as "must-sees" as a result of the read) but what was the most charming, was how the book is now quite dated (it was first published in 1994). Two of my favorite examples:

"As we were driving we listened to a radio talk show hosted by a man named Howard Stern. Howard Stern had a keen interest in sex and was engagingly direct with his callers. “Good morning, Marilyn,” he would say to a caller, “are you wearing panties?” This, we agreed, beat most early-morning talk shows hands down."

"On Fifth Avenue I went into the Trump Tower, a new skyscraper. A guy named Donald Trump, a developer, is slowly taking over New York, building skyscrapers all over town with his name on them, so I went in and had a look around."

Is it still worth the read? Oh, god yes. Some of my favorite random passages:

On his homestate, Iowa:
"In Iowa you are the center of attention, the most interesting thing to hit town since a tornado carried off old Frank Sprinkel and his tractor last May. Everybody you meet acts like he would gladly give you his last beer and let you sleep with his sister. Everyone is happy and friendly and strangely serene."

On the sign he reads on his way into Alabama:
DON’T LITTER. KEEP ALABAMA THE BEAUTIFUL. “OK, I the will,” I replied cheerfully.

On Amish Country, Pennsylvania and the different sects:
"...they wear simple clothes and shun modern contrivances. The problem is that since about 1860 they’ve been squabbling endlessly over just how rigorous they should be in their shunning. Every time anybody invents something useful or notable, like television or rubber gloves, they argue about whether it is ungodly or not, and the ones who don’t like it go off and form a new sect."

On Mount Vernon, Virginia and George Washington's tastes:
"The house was very much Washington’s creation. He was involved in the daintiest questions of decor, even when he was away on military campaigns. It was strangely pleasing to imagine him at Valley Forge, with his troops dropping dead of cold and hunger, agonizing over the purchase of lace ruffs and tea cozies. What a great guy. What a hero."

One more (The Washington section was solid):
"Out of a populace of 5.5 million, Washington sometimes had as few as 5,000 soldiers in his army—one soldier for every 1,100 people. When you see what a tranquil and handsome place Mount Vernon is, and what an easy and agreeable life he led there, you wonder why he bothered. But that’s the appealing thing about Washington, he is such an enigma. We don’t even know for sure what he looked like. Almost all the portraits of him were done by, or copied from the works of, Charles Willson Peale. Peale painted sixty portraits of Washington, but unfortunately he wasn’t very hot at faces. In fact, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, Peale’s pictures of Washington, Lafayette and John Paul Jones all look to be more or less the same person."

On Caesar's Page, Las Vegas:
"On the way out my attention was caught by a machine making a lot of noise. A woman had just won $600. For ninety seconds the machine just poured out money, a waterfall of silver. When it stopped, the woman regarded the pile without pleasure and began feeding it back into the machine. I felt sorry for her. It was going to take her all night to get rid of that kind of money."

On the Lincoln Memorial:
"The Lincoln Memorial is exactly as you expect it to be. He sits there in his big high chair looking grand and yet kindly. There was a pigeon on his head. There is always a pigeon on his head. I wondered idly if the pigeon thought that all the people who came every day were there to look at him."

On Manhattan (in the 90s):
"For two days I walked and stared and mumbled in amazement. A large black man on Eighth Avenue reeled out of a doorway, looking seriously insane, and said to me, “I been smoking ice! Big bowls of ice!” I gave him a quarter real fast, even though he hadn’t asked for anything, and moved off quickly."

On K Mart:
"K Marts are a chain of discount stores and they are really depressing places. You could take Mother Teresa to a K Mart and she would get depressed. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the K Marts themselves, it’s the customers. K Marts are always full of the sort of people who give their children names that rhyme: Lonnie, Donnie, Ronnie, Connie, Bonnie. The sort of people who would stay in to watch “The Munsters.” Every woman there has at least four children and they all look as if they have been fathered by a different man. The woman always weighs 250 pounds. She is always walloping a child and bawling, “If you don’t behave, Ronnie, I’m not gonna bring you back here no more!” As if Ronnie could care less about never going to a K Mart again."

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.

Hilariously funny, Bryson’s description of the small town America which most of us Europeans don’t know, makes you want take a trip to America, skip all the touristy places, and visit only the never-heard-of no-tourist no-fun towns, such as Des Moines, Iowa.
The part where he describes his long-distance bus trip to New York is unforgettable. Couldn’t literally stop laughing.
Great!

n  As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?'n

Bryson returns to England after ten years and decides to take a road trip full of nostalgic stops. He reflects on many a good adventure with his family and, in particular, his father. Wholly entertaining and engaging!

Audiobook Comments
Read by William Roberts - and he did a fab job. But, it's a pet peeve when an author tells such a personal story but doesn't narrate his own house.

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I read parts of this during an extremely long wait in the doctor’s office with my teenage daughter. There were lots of giggle-out-loud moments, and, of course, I’d interrupt her reading to hand her a short paragraph or two to read. It was fun to have her chuckle also. It also made the wait go by so much quicker. This isn’t my favorite Bryson book by any means, but as always, I thoroughly enjoyed his humor and wit. Many don’t seem to like this book, claiming that Bryson comes off as grumpy and overly critical. I wouldn’t recommend this book if one is sensitive to that sort of tone or feels offended by criticism of certain aspects of America (its consumerism, for example). If you’re the type to take such things personally, do not read this! His humor may be offensive and crass to some, but I didn’t mind it at all. This book was like experiencing a road trip across small-town America with a very witty and observant travel guide.

One of my favorite quotes:
“The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns. Everywhere else in America towns are named either after 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 passers-by such as me who think it the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postal mark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back.”

What a great look at what America is like on a micro-level. Having grown up in small towns in the Midwest, I really identified with the places (unfortunately, for the most part) that Bryson visited in his journey. I loved how Bryson, a Des Moines native, moved away to the UK for 20 years and thus explores the country as a knowing outsider. The tone of the book is almost explaining the US to the British, so it was great to get a fresh perspective on things. Bryson's curmudgeonly displeasure at the many inconveniences he encounters along the way is a constant source of humor.

I can't recommend this book enough. A quick but fascinating and engaging read.

Por lo que veo por aquí a muchos compatriotas de Bill Bryson no les ha gustado nada el retrato que este hace de los Estados Unidos. En parte les entiendo. Imagina que vas a casa de una pareja y de repente una de esas personas se pone a echar pestes de la otra aprovechando, o eso cree, que no le está oyendo. O tal vez es que no le importa demasiado. Al contrario, que se entere, la muy guarra. Y tú no sabes donde meterte, claro.

Un poco así me he sentido yo con este libro, una sensación agravada por el hecho de que fue escrito a finales de los ochenta y ni su estilo de humor, en general, ni muchos de los comentarios que hace han envejecido demasiado bien. Lo de calificar de gordas repugnantes a buena parte de las mujeres con que se cruza, o prácticamente reconocer que se caga de miedo cuando pasa por un lugar con mayoría de población negra no es que haga muy simpático a Bill Bryson, precisamente. Pero incluso dejando esto aparte, ¡Menuda América!, como novela de viajes, no es un ejemplo muy emocionante, atractivo o didáctico de ese género (y se supone que eso es justamente lo que buscas en él). Algo así como el noventa por ciento de este libro se basa en lo decepcionado que se siente Bryson con los lugares que visita, ya desde su Des Moines natal. No hay nada ni nadie que se libre de sus críticas, todo lo encuentra mal: demasiado pobre, demasiado rico, demasiado amable, demasiado avinagrada, demasiado turístico, demasiado vacío, demasiado típico, demasiado genérico. Así todo el rato. No puedes evitar pensar que si no estuviera tan obcecado en ver lo peor allá donde vaya, el viaje sería mucho más interesante. Pero con alguien que parece ir de un sitio a otro de tan mala gana, al final acabas tan aburrido y decepcionado como él. Tampoco se puede decir que él sea un viajero muy dotado para dar con lo más atractivo y singular de cada estado: básicamente lo que hace es llegar a los sitios, ir a los lugares más turísticos y, según él, aburridos, cenar pollo frito e irse al motel a ver la tele antes de caer dormido. No la mejor predisposición para escribir una novela de viajes memorable, desde luego. Sea como sea, entre tanta queja por defecto pasan desapercibidas las críticas en las que quizás tenga razón: la excesiva turistificación mochufa, el descuido en la conservación de determinados espacios o su destrucción debido a intereses empresariales, la construcción de un inmenso no lugar a base de aparcamientos o macdonalds. Con alguien que no para de quejarse, todo cobra la misma dimensión que su desagrado porque las patatas fritas estén blandurrias. A veces surge el Bill Bryson que más tarde (o eso creo, cruzo los dedos, porque solo he leído Una breve historia de casi todo) escribiría libros más sugerentes, y te habla de alguna cosa de más enjundia, como la secta House of David cuyos miembros crearon un equipo de béisbol que compitió por todo Estados Unidos, y llevaban un pelazo y unas barbas impresionantes. Ese SÍ es el tipo de historias que me gustaría leer.

Y ahora hablemos de la traducción de esta edición de Mondadori, que creo que sigue siendo la actual de Random House, y que tiene tela marinera. Ya por lo pronto es bastante más verbosa que el texto en inglés de Bryson. Del tipo de poner un «deglutir» cuando Bryson escribe sencillamente «eat». Pero no solo eso. El texto español tiene a veces un airecillo castizo que no sé hasta qué punto le conviene a un libro que habla sobre Estados Unidos. Así, por ejemplo, «food for though» se convierte en «pitanza para el caletre», y cuando en la página 85 Bryson se sorprende de poder encontrar aún una tienda «five and dime» de las de antes, el traductor la convierte en un todo a cien. Podría hacernos entender que un «salad bar» es como un buffet de ensaladas, pero prefiere hacer la equivalencia con, atención, un bar de tapas (p. 324). Poco antes, en la página 320 se come un trozo, así, porque sí, y por si queda alguna duda de que ha sido intencionado, omite la frase en el siguiente párrafo que alude al fragmento desaparecido.

(Para quien quiera más datos, el original:

«... slept another fitful night, lying in the dark, full and yet unsatisfied, staring at the ceiling and listening to the Shriners across the street and to the ceaseless bleating of my stomach. "Hey, what is all this crap in here? It's nothing but chocolate. This is disgusting. I want some real food. I want steak and mashed potatoes. Really, this is too gross for words. I've a good mind to send this all back. I'm serious, you'd better go and stand by the toilet because this is coming straight back up in a minute. Are you listening to me, butt-face?"»

»And so it went all night long, God, I hate my stomach.»

La traducción:

«... antes de rendirme al sueño con la panza llena pero insatisfecho, contemplando las paredes y oyendo a mi pesar los berridos de los Capillistas al otro lado de la calle.

»Y así paso la noche.»

También lo de los Shriners-Capillistas daba para una nota explicativa sobre quiénes son esos misteriosos señores, y una bastante interesante, de hecho, pero, bueno, pa qué)

Pero lo mejor, lo que casi me hace perdonarle al traductor todo lo anterior (a pesar de hacerme salir corriendo a consultar el diccionario) es su traducción de «But I needn't have worried». Que es: «Pero no hacía falta tanta impetración». ¿No es sencillamente sublime?

Just freaking ew. I was settling in, getting ready for a good time with this book, until - right in the beginning, mind you - Mr. Bryson said something that left an utterly disgusting taste in my mouth.

(context: he's talking about how grossly overweight women are in Des Moines, and how they all look like elephants in children's clothes... and then as you think he couldn't get any more repulsive, he says:)

I will say this, however - and it's a strange, strange thing - the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable, as soft and gloriously rounded and naturally fresh-smelling as a basket of fruit. I don't know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque...

Like I LEGITIMATELY SHUDDERED.

So not only is Bill Bryson mean-spirited, he's also misogynistic AND creeps on teenage girls. So revolting. I knew he was going to roast small-town America somewhat before I picked up this book, but this is just trash and I don't want to read any of it any further. Also, I'm promptly removing all of this creep's books from my shelf. No thank you.

Bill Bryson wrote this book more than 30 years ago during his first extended stay in the US after spending more than a decade living in the UK. He seems to have had various motives for touring the US, among them assuaging a mild amount of guilt he felt for abandoning his native land, and also reminding himself why he left in the first place. I think he may have satisfied both of these desires in some small way. However, one motive he clearly states for traveling through backroads America of the 1980s is that, like all of of children of the first television generation, he was looking for the America of his childhood, not as he lived it, but as he saw it on TV. But although he has been looking for the America of Jim and Margaret Anderson and Ward and June Cleaver, he seems to keep finding himself in the America of Barney Fife and Jethro Bodine. The descriptions of the author's interactions with small town hospitality industry are often hilarious, despite the sympathy that one sometimes feels for the hapless targets of his scathing criticisms.

This is not a travel book in the mode of those by Jack Kerouac or William Least Heat Moon, in which the author searches for the soul of America, and possibly his own. And since his travels were more than 30 years ago, much of the travel information is outdated, especially since Bryson often seems to be looking for places most people don't want to go. But it will make you laugh and, if you are an American, Bryson will likely describe at least one place with which are familiar, so that you can compare his prejudices and evaluations with your own.

I first read this book years ago and what struck me this time around was the constant casual misogyny from Bryson. Every woman, apart from his family members, is described in terms of how attractive she is. Her age and style of dress is often also held up to ridicule. To be fair, Bill Bryson is scathing about most of his fellow countrymen as well. It all got a bit tedious.