The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson

Oct 03, 2012 Leftbanker rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson

I should preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t, he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it. I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and I don’t care if someone makes fun of ev...more The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson

I should preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t, he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it. I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans. I should also say that I have lived a full one fifth of my life outside of the United States and I don’t care if someone makes fun of everything American (I’ve done a bit of bashing myself).

A dyspeptic man in his middle thirties, whose constant bad mood seems more like someone in their mid seventies, drives around the U.S. and complains about absolutely everything he sees, smells, hears, and eats. If this sounds like your idea of a good time, read Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (Abacus, 1990).

He constantly mocks small towns in America by referring to them by such names as Dog Water, Dunceville, Urinal, Spigot, and Hooterville—and this is in the first five pages. Don’t worry about him running out of clever names for hick towns; Bryson has a million of them and he uses every single one.

The only things about which Bryon has a favorable view are natural wonders and the homes of rich people. He marvels at the obscenely-posh residences of ultra-wealthy, early 20th century industrialists on Mackinac Island which were built before income taxes and most labor laws. He would probably be thrilled with pre-revolutionary France or Czarist Russia. One of his very few favorable reviews of American cities was of the ski town of Stowe, Vermont which caters almost exclusively to the rich.

When he is traveling through the southwest he complains about the Mexican music on the radio. He seems more content to resort to chauvinism than to come to some sort of understanding about the culture he is visiting. In my opinion, it’s always more interesting to praise something that you understand than to mock something that you don’t. I would have taken the time to translate a few of the songs and tell readers what they are about. In fact, I have done this and Mexican ranchera music is all about stories of love, heartbreak, and often violence which describe the cowboy culture of Mexico’s northern territories. Bryson implies that the people who listen to this music are just too stupid to realize that it is only one tune played over and over.

He gripes about a weatherman on TV who seems rather gleeful at the prospect of a coming snow storm yet Bryson seems to relish in the idea of not liking anything that he experiences in his journey. His entire trip is like a storm he passes through. Just once I wanted him to roll into some town that he liked and get into an interesting conversation with one of its residents.

Here are examples of the cheeriness with which Bryson opens a few of his chapters:

“I drove on and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state.”

“What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet? You can flush a toilet.” (One reviewer called Bryson "witty.")

“I was headed for Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to have to say too often if you can possibly help it.”

“In 1958, my grandmother got cancer of the colon and came to our house to die.” This last event must have brought untold joy to the young writer.

Tell us more, Bill. His narrative is more tiresome than any Kansas wheat field he may have passed on his road trip through hell. Most Americans seem to be either fat, or stupid, or both in the eyes of Bryson. I can only assume that Bryson himself is some sort or genius body builder. Just one time I wanted him to talk to a local resident over a beer or a cup of coffee. I wanted him to describe his partner in conversation as other than fat or stupid. Not even one time do we hear about a place from somebody who lives there. We could just as easily have read the guidebooks as Bryson did and he could have stayed home and saved himself thousands of miles of misery.(less)

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Oct 01, 2011 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's funny how so many Americans begin their reviews of 'The Lost Continent' with statements such as "I loved Bryson's other books but this one is terrible!", all because he treats America the same way as he treats everywhere and everyone else.

So while many Americans think it's acceptable - hilarious, even - for Bryson to make disparaging-but-witty comments about non-Americans and the places they call home, it is an utter outrage for him to be anything other than completely worshipful with regar...more

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Mar 13, 2008 Ciara rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hateful, bigoted, fat white men and racists

Recommended to Ciara by: Salvation Army

Shelves: don-t-read-these

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 a...more 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.

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Dec 31, 2008 Andrea rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No one I care about. Go read something else - life's too short.

I was really excited to read this book, as I love observational memoir-style writing - especially when it deals with travel and cultural habits people keep with food. And at first I thought his observations were snarky, spot-on, and funny. But as the book wore on (like, about 25 pages or so in), I started to become appalled at how really shallow and mean he started to sound: everyone he encountered was disgusting, stupid, or fat - or all three - and the places he visited never measured up to the...more

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Jan 05, 2008 Michael rated it 1 of 5 stars

While in the Frankfurt airport killing time, I decided I needed something to read while waiting in the airport and on the long flight back. During my vacation, I had already read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom, Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, and Yves Simon's Freedom and Community, as well as most of two issues of CCC and an issue of Hypatia. I was a bit tired of academic voices and theory (though I had enjoyed everything I read, except perhaps Simon, whose Thomistic perspective irked me a...more While in the Frankfurt airport killing time, I decided I needed something to read while waiting in the airport and on the long flight back. During my vacation, I had already read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom, Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, and Yves Simon's Freedom and Community, as well as most of two issues of CCC and an issue of Hypatia. I was a bit tired of academic voices and theory (though I had enjoyed everything I read, except perhaps Simon, whose Thomistic perspective irked me and whose writing seemed dry), so I went to the bookstore and perused. The English section was limited, so I was left trying to decide between a collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood and The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson.

Bryson, a native Iowan who had moved to Britain, had been haunting me for years. If someone was knowledgeable of travel writing, they asked me about him. I have some acquaintances who have been shocked that I hadn't read any of him. I was holding Atwood's book and Bryson's book, weighing the pros and cons of each. So I read Bryson first paragraph:

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbie and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.

and decided I had to read this. Iowa-deprecating humour? I was excited. Maybe this book would be worth the astronomical 14 Euros (which, with the exchange rate, is about 1 million dollars).

I admit I was chuckling a lot during his first few pages, and even occasionally throughout the rest of his book. However, it wasn't before too long that his book just began to annoy me. Every attempt at humor in his book, besides some self-deprecation or making fun of his family, is targeted shots at those who are different from him. Bryson's book seems like a good example of how to enact the construction of "normal." Overweight? Here's a few jokes thrown at you. An accent that isn't accepted as standard? He'll mock you incessantly. Differently abled and in the same room as Bryson? You're there for one purpose alone: to stare at because you're a freak.

I haven't quite finished the book, and I probably will (I only have about 50 pages left), but I have to say I'm greatly disappointed. The sour icing smothered the cake when he announced that, feeling incredibly visible and alone in a nearly all black Southern town, that he now knew what it was like to be black in South Dakota.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Bryson, but you have no idea what it's like to be black anywhere. If anything, Bryson's book is a chronicling of his extreme naiveté at his own unearned privilege.

It seems like the only group not worth mocking in his book are queer folk, and that's probably because they are so invisible to him that they're not even on the radar to mock. Jokes about other people can be amazingly funny, but a book constructed completely on mocking others, a book that seems to function mostly as a reinforcement of normalcy, fails to continue to be funny. It's just tiring.

I should have picked up Atwood's book instead.(less)

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Dec 06, 2007 Tommy rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: snobs

Shelves: tossed_out_on_the_lawn

Well, ain't it somethin for dat rascally Mr. Bryson wit all o dat funny Northern talk to make his way down here to Dixie and spend some time wid us! We sure do 'ppreciate you takin us into your rich and well-knowed book, Mr. Bryson. And yer gosh-darn-right, God save all those poor folk who done shopped at K-Mart! They should've spent their nickels at Crate & Barrel had they knowed what to do wid demselves.....

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Dec 16, 2011 Zuberino rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, middle-america, americana, travel, humour, small-town, 1980s

Bryson does two things very well in this book, besides his trademark humour which is happily a constant in this and every other book he's ever written. He captures the spirit of the land at a very specific time in its recent history: 1987, the high water mark of the Reaganite project. Time and again, he is left demoralized by the mindless affluenza that was the hallmark of American society during the latter half of the 1980s.

More broadly, Bryson leaves a depressingly accurate description of the...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Hayes marked it as could-not-finish · review of another edition

Sometimes he's so funny, and spot on. And then he goes off the deep end. The snark and the southern bashing and the racist comments just got to me. Can't finish this.

page 44: [somewhere in downstate Illinois]

Afterwards I retired with a six-pack to my motel, where I discovered that the bed, judging by its fragrance and shape, had only recently been vacated by a horse. It had a sag in it so severe that I could only see the TV at its foot by splaying my legs to their widest extremity. It was like l

...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Benjamin Duffy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: humor, non-fiction

As an experiment, if you ever decide you might like to read this book, first pick it up and simply read the opening sentence of each chapter. If I had done so, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the rest, and I would have been just as well off.

The Lost Continent and I got off on the wrong foot. I knew something was amiss when the first chapter consisted of nothing more than Bill Bryson taking an enormous steaming dump on his home state of Iowa. Not a cutesy, ironic dump; nor even a sardonic-...more As an experiment, if you ever decide you might like to read this book, first pick it up and simply read the opening sentence of each chapter. If I had done so, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the rest, and I would have been just as well off.

The Lost Continent and I got off on the wrong foot. I knew something was amiss when the first chapter consisted of nothing more than Bill Bryson taking an enormous steaming dump on his home state of Iowa. Not a cutesy, ironic dump; nor even a sardonic-yet-affectionate dump; but a real, live, mean-spirited, rhetorical bowel movement. Here, I'll sum up the entire first chapter for you, in my own words: Iowa is boring and all the people there are fat and slow-witted. Plopbbt. (And that's Iowa, the state where his parents lived. Wait until you see what he does to Mississippi and New Mexico. Or, better yet, don't.)

This was all very unpleasantly surprising, partly because of the way I've approached Bryson's written catalog in reverse chronological order. Having read A Short History of Nearly Everything, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Made in America, and At Home: A Short History of Private Life, I had formed a mental picture of Bryson as a fifty-something professorial type: rambling, erudite, a bit geeky, smart-assed but in a wry, self-effacing manner, with a fierce populist streak.

With that expectation in mind, The Lost Continent was a shock, as it is the work of a thirty-something Bryson, snarky and evidently angry. And I generally like snark and anger: Anthony Bourdain is one of my favorite writers. But where Bourdain leavens his writing with humor and occasional tenderness, The Lost Continent is just relentlessly negative, never passing up the opportunity to take a cheap shot.

Ironically for a book titled "travels in small-town America," Bryson appears to hate 90% of the small towns he visits on his road trip, speaking disapprovingly of their poverty, their inhabitants' provincial ways and funny-sounding accents, yet he waxes ecstatic over such non-small places as Savannah, Charleston, and Times Square (!). I actually agreed with quite a few of his sentiments; e.g., how tacky, inauthentic, and Disneyland-like some of our national historic sites have become, but his voice makes even those shared sentiments hard to swallow.

The last quarter of the book is the best part, as it slowly becomes apparent that this book is an elegy to his recently-deceased father, and perhaps a regret for having spent his adulthood in England rather than America, but it was honestly too little, too late for me. Maybe I would have enjoyed this book more if I'd read it when it was new, or at least before I read so much of his later, better work, but as it is, I couldn't really recommend this book to anyone, either as a first Bryson or a tenth.(less)

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Jun 26, 2008 Rachel added it

Perennial (an imprint of HarperCollins) would like to convince you that Bill Bryson "serves up a colorful tale of boredom... that takes us straight into the heart and soul of America" and that he does so with "razor wit and a kind heart."

Falsely post-racist "humour", and the sarcastic inner monologue of an unhappy, isolated man don't serve up a "touching", "truthful", "observant", "intelligent", "witty", "genuinely funny", "hilarious" travel memoir. Much less a "dazzlingly good [book]... sensiti...more

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Dec 19, 2008 Claire rated it 1 of 5 stars

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who's noticed the fact that Bill Bryson is a smug bastard who casts a pall of depressing sarcasm over everything he writes about. I mean, I'm all for sarcasm in most cases, but it's as though all of his subjects are cheapened and made despicable by his prose. In The Lost Continent, he turns every small-town inhabitant into an ignorant, obnoxious caricature. The book has virtually nothing to offer, unless you, too, are hell-bent on whining about the const...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: cynical people who ride the metro

This was a good metro book, but it didn't live up to my expectations. This is the first Bill Bryson I've ever read, and I love travelogues, so I assumed I would love his writing. But, really, he's kind of an ass, and sometimes he's just mean . . . and not in a good way. It got better as it went along, but there were a lot of points when I just wanted to say, "well if Britain is so great, why don't you move back there and just shut up!?"

I've heard that this isn't one of Bryson's best (I think it...more

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Mar 30, 2009 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Americans, Midwesterners, People coming to America and those that want to 'get outta here'

Shelves: travel, humor, autobiographical-novel, travelogue

Ha, oh America!

As much as I hesitated to read a travelogue about America while living abroad (I mean, shouldn't I be reading about my host country), my diminishing pile of books from home lead me to this humorous Bryson tale.

I've now had a couple of encounters with Bryson's writing and each time, seem to grow more and more fond of his haphazard style of not only traveling but writing as well. How many other authors dare pay tribute to their deceased housmaid in the middle of a book or drop in ra...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it

Shelves: read-2012

If you, like me, come to this from more recent Bryson (A walk in the woods, a brief history of nearly everything, home, etc.), go ahead and skip this. If you REALLY love small town america, skip it. If you are republican, skip it, if you are offended by the crude, skip it.

Still there? Okay, there is a lot to like about this book, but it is smothered in a large helping of overwrought, overly self-indulgent cynicism. Bryson is funny, at times uproariously hilarious, and these moments just work. R...more If you, like me, come to this from more recent Bryson (A walk in the woods, a brief history of nearly everything, home, etc.), go ahead and skip this. If you REALLY love small town america, skip it. If you are republican, skip it, if you are offended by the crude, skip it.

Still there? Okay, there is a lot to like about this book, but it is smothered in a large helping of overwrought, overly self-indulgent cynicism. Bryson is funny, at times uproariously hilarious, and these moments just work. Read the first chapter. If you find his description of Des Moines insulting, you won't like this, but if you can see past the gruffness, amid the hilarity is a love of this town he simultaneously cannot help but hate. These are the moments that work well, where Bryson sees past the schmaltz of small town charm and exposes what is wrong with it. There is something wrong with everything, and he really wants to get at it and rip it to shreds in hilarious ways.

When the book doesn't work, however, is when it is too self-important. Listening, for example, to Bryson proclaim about race is pitiful. He is so disconnected from the history or racial tensions in the US that every time he opens his mouth he is wrong. He is trying to get at the tensions, to expose hypocritical behavior, but he is unaware or willfully ignoring so much nuance that feels like being berated by an ignorant church lady. This applies elsewhere. He is so intent, for instance, on making an American's Don't Exercise screed that while driving through the Smoky Mountains, which he doesn't walk through, he stops at a few scenic overlooks, notices other cars at them and claims that there were no hikers at all. This occurs numerous times. It isn't like he is exactly wrong--American's don't hike that much--it is that he is going so far outside of reason to make his point that it fails to work. This is a tactic that works fine for humor (and when he is exaggerating for the sake of a joke, you will laugh out loud and frighten the people at Starbucks), but less so for social critique.

Bryson as a younger man is too bitter, too compelled to make his points and too ready to bend the truth for everything to come off very well. Later on, when he stopped trying to make political points for the sake of his own agenda and used the absurdities of human behavior (which is inherently political when one chooses a side to laugh at) as fodder for smart comedy or exasperated guffaws about humanity, Bryson became someone that you NEEDED to read. This early on, however, he is funny, he is smart and he has things to say--it's just that he's so sure that what he has to say is brilliant that he bludgeons his readers with self-righteous banality.

So gird your loins if you want to read this: there is plenty to get from this, plenty of laughs, many poignant pieces about his father and some interesting examination on nostalgia, but they're buried in some real stinkers of self-indulgent, unwitty snark.(less)

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Mar 24, 2009 wanderaven rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, travel

The quote on the cover of this book is by New York magazine and says, "The kind of book Steinbeck might have written if he'd traveled with David Letterman instead of Charlie the Poodle."

Thus proving my theory that any and every situation can be improved by the presence of a dog.

As others have mentioned, Bryson tends to be fairly degrading towards minorities in this book, depending on the situation. HOWEVER, throughout this book, Bryson is degrading towards everything... all people, white, black...more

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Jan 11, 2009 Lorenzo Pilla rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Cynics who dislike the US

Bad. Bad. Bad. While Bryson can be funny at times, I quickly grew tired of him and eventually he just annoyed me with this one. I would have stopped in the middle, but for my book club's sake, I plodded through, skimming some sections toward the end. This isn't real travel writing. Bryson was a longtime expat in England who returned to the US apparently so he could cynically criticize just about everyone and everything he saw here. I got the feeling that he had pitched the book idea to his publi...more

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Sep 07, 2008 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel, humor

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...more 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.(less)

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Sep 25, 2007 Meghan Davison rated it 3 of 5 stars

In a lot of ways, this is like most of Bryson’s other books. It’s a travel narrative in which he mocks just about every thing and every one he comes across, complete with Bryson’s characteristic zingers that elicit inappropriately loud chuckles—even if you are on a cramped airplane next to a man who says with his glare that he finds your laughing both creepy and disdainful. I speak from experience, it’s best to read Bryson alone, or at least somewhere where it’s appropriate to laugh. But there i...more In a lot of ways, this is like most of Bryson’s other books. It’s a travel narrative in which he mocks just about every thing and every one he comes across, complete with Bryson’s characteristic zingers that elicit inappropriately loud chuckles—even if you are on a cramped airplane next to a man who says with his glare that he finds your laughing both creepy and disdainful. I speak from experience, it’s best to read Bryson alone, or at least somewhere where it’s appropriate to laugh. But there is also something different, inferior about this one. In most of Bryson’s other books, he picks on everyone he comes across, but his writing feels jovial and charming, not mean spirited. And he’s even willing to turn that wit around on himself—which is an easy task as he’s a portly and eccentric man. But all that’s missing from this book—he comes off as condescending and cruel, like a man who moved to England and returned to the US not to celebrate it but to prove how superior he has become. He especially loves to pick on women he runs across in small towns, who in Bryson’s eyes are always heavy, grumpy, and dragging half a dozen rude kids. As one who has just driven across the country, I appreciated how Bryson was able to so aptly capture some parts of the country (i.e. the sheer boredom of driving across Ohio, the pain of having to listen to Christian radio), but at times his writing also felt very artificial. Often he relies on stereotypes—the dopey diner waitress, the twangy southern woman. I’m pretty familiar with these stereotypes, why not use your 200 pages to tell me something about small town America that I don’t know? This is one of Bryson’s earlier books, and luckily he learns how to control his sarcasm, because his later books are real gems. If you’re going to read Bryson, I wouldn’t start with this one. The only thing worse than going on a disappointing road trip is reading about a guy going on a disappointing road trip. Towards the end of the book Bryson redeems himself: his humor becomes less cruel and more charming and he actually seems to enjoy himself and find a little Midwest pride. But it was too little too late for me to really love the book.

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Jan 28, 2009 Wendy rated it 3 of 5 stars

**Mid-book review** Here's a rare combination - love the writing but the writer comes off as a first-class a**hole. Is it because I'm getting older? I loved Bryson about ten years ago. In this book anyway, Bryson writes awful, snotty comments about people who aren't just like him. Once in a while he will admit as much - which is the reason I'm sticking with the book.

**Now I've finished the book - Bryson mellows a bit toward the end and seems a bit less awful. Perhaps he made up a bit of the snot...more

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Oct 14, 2007 Betsy Wachter rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the older generation

Bill Bryson's works are not great literature but are usually informative and enjoyable. After living in England for 20 years, Bryson returned to his home town of Des Moines, Iowa, and from there journeyed around the country looking for the perfect small town. I was pleased to learn that one of the town's closest to his image was my hometown, Idaho Falls, Idaho. I was not pleased to learn that the nearby National Reactor Testing Station had discovered that plutonium was leaking from some of its w...more

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Sep 12, 2011 Marcie marked it as started-no-plans-to-finish-soon

This book is infuriating me. Bryson is being a jerk toward Iowa and pretty much everywhere else in the US, as far as I can tell. He's relating the story of his rediscovery of the US after years living in the UK, which he accomplishes via roadtrip, snobbery and no small amount of whining. If he visits a town with just a gas station and feed store he calls it "dead," "sleepy," "dull." If the town has developed & has lots of stores and bowling alleys and fast food restaurants he calls it, "manu...more

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Oct 03, 2007 MikeS rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: humor

The Lost Continent seems very much like an “after the return” sequel to his Notes from a small island, particularly in the way Bryson travels through rural towns of unremarkable podunkery in an effort to better understand and come to grips with society and culture and his place in it. Some of the observations are (true to Bryson form) quite hilarious while others come across as exploitative and unnecessary “filler” material. While I understand most of this is extremely ironic, it often tends to...more

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Aug 07, 2007 Gail rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-authors, memoir

As much as I am enjoying Bryson's books, this one was not as humorous (to me) as Walk in the Woods (I've got more of his travelogues to plow through, so that's something to keep in mind this early in the game). I felt as though, with this early book of his, some passages were rushed just so Bryson could say he'd he'd traversed the entire U.S. in just 300 pages. And as funny as it is to hear Bryson rip this country's rednecks and retards a new one, it got a little repetitive in this book. My favo...more

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Oct 08, 2008 Erinn rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who enjoyed many family road trips as a child.

The best parts about this book are the moments when I felt as if I could hear my own voice as a child stuck in the back seat of a red Chevette as my dad drove us all over tarnation. Bryson's accounts of childhood roadtrips are hilariously intertwined with his journey down memory lane on a cross country trek of disappoinment and glee. The sad undertones to some of his accounts really hit home to a near 30-year-old who realizes places and events of childhood just aren't quite as big, quite as pret...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Laurie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book: part humor, part travelogue, narrates Bryson's road trip across the United States and back again. Bryson travels without strict itinerary, and with frequent stops in small towns across the country. The narrative is written in classic Bryson style, with frequent diversions to explain the origin of many of life's oddities, and with constant sideline commentary. As is usually the case with Bryson, the narrative is illuminating, amusing, and shows Bryson's sense of adventure. It was a ple...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Kevin Larose rated it 5 of 5 stars

It wouldn’t be mucho f an exaggeration to say that one of my lifelong desires is to take a cross-country car trip. My dad and I would sometimes talk about doing it someday; pointing the car east, sampling the local flavor, maybe take in some sporting events, who knew? We never got around to doing it, and I’ve long since made peace with the fact that this desire will almost certainly never be fulfilled. However, reading books like Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent allows me to at least vicariously...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Meg rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to love this book, as I hold a romantic notion of small town America and have generally enjoyed my own travels (albeit realizing that some of what I love is blatant tourist traps). However, I just couldn't get too into this book. Everytime I would almost get into the book, Bryson would describe how actually this beautiful place does suck, or the place is great, but its filled with fat American tourists. At a certain point, I wondered what compelled Bryson to continue his journey...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Lindsay added it

I had to abandon this one around Chapter 4, unfortunately. I really enjoyed A Walk in the Woods, and find Bill Bryson hilarious .... except, apparently, when he's writing about women. You wouldn't think that within 40ish pages a travel writer could cause such insurmountable disappointment in a reader, but it definitely happened to me with this book. The types of things that make you lose interest and faith in a writer....

Page 6
"Iowa women are almost always sensationally overweight––you see them...more I had to abandon this one around Chapter 4, unfortunately. I really enjoyed A Walk in the Woods, and find Bill Bryson hilarious .... except, apparently, when he's writing about women. You wouldn't think that within 40ish pages a travel writer could cause such insurmountable disappointment in a reader, but it definitely happened to me with this book. The types of things that make you lose interest and faith in a writer....

Page 6
"Iowa women are almost always sensationally overweight––you see them at Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines on Saturdays, clammy and meaty in their shorts and halter tops, looking a little like elephants dressed in children's clothes, yelling at their kids, calling out names like Dwayne and Shauna. Jack Kerouac, of all people, thought that Iowa women were the prettiest in the country, but I don't think he ever went to Merle Hay Mall on a Saturday. 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, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked."

Page 8

"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."

Page 29
"Feeling self-conscious, I went into a dark place called Vern's Tap and took a seat at the bar. I was the only customer, apart from an old man in the corner with only one leg. The barmaid was friendly. She wore butterfly glasses and a beehive hairdo. You could see in an instance that she had been the good-time girl since about 1931. She had "Ready for Sex" written all over her face, but "Better Bring a Paper Bag" written all over her body."

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Nov 17, 2012 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: humor, travel, bookcrossing-com

I didn't get but a couple of pages into the book and I started laughing out loud. I have found that I like Bill Bryson's travelogues/stories. At times, he seems a bit of a sarcastic curmudgeon but that just adds to the humor. He puts on pages, some of the things we only dare to think in moments of frustration, irritation and amused observations. When my family heard me laugh as I read this book, I felt I had to read them some of the humorous excerpts. Now they want to read Bryson's book.

Note: T...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Erwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bill Bryson's road trip in the Autumn of 1987 and then Spring of 1988 around the inland part of America. The journey was made just after Bryson's father passed away, much like the last part of Jim Rogers' Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip as the author comes to terms with this moment of life transition.

For most readers, this book is too close to home. They will be offended. Many reviewers on Amazon call Bryson an "cynical, arrogant, snob". For readers living outside America, the book...more Bill Bryson's road trip in the Autumn of 1987 and then Spring of 1988 around the inland part of America. The journey was made just after Bryson's father passed away, much like the last part of Jim Rogers' Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip as the author comes to terms with this moment of life transition.

For most readers, this book is too close to home. They will be offended. Many reviewers on Amazon call Bryson an "cynical, arrogant, snob". For readers living outside America, the book will ring true and be more enjoyable. Bryson actually attacks this "America is Forever the Greatest" notion toward the end.

Back in 1987, I recall a similar road trip that my parents arranged from Seattle to Florida and back, passing through some of the same locations that Bryson documents. Turns out that the Interstate project, though started with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, was mostly completed by the mid-80's, easing nationwide travel by road, and inspiring many road trips.

I've driven the Seattle to San Diego portion of America several times, and it's surely much more exciting than the inland portion of America that Bryson chose to document. I planned to do Seattle to San Diego to South Texas to Florida to Maine via car last year, but ended up cancelling. After considering all that Bryson wrote, I still don't have much interest to see the inland portion of the country. Bryson just confirmed it for me. Population density is too low, regions and attractions are too far apart. Perhaps if you are a private pilot.

On a side note, in Early 2011, the Chinese Expressway system (85,000 km) surpassed the length of the US Interstate Highway System (76,000 km) though the US total jumps to 92,000 km if you include State Highways. Of course, the Chinese will surpass this in another year or two.

Back in the late 80's, Bryson's "Small Town America Tour" points out that:
* American Small Town's are either: Expensive Tourist Traps, Abandoned Ghost Towns, or FSG (Fast food, Strip malls and Gas stations)
* Small town Americans are Stupid. Provides lots of examples.
* America is a violent country. Guns are everywhere.
* American Television is Stupid. Provides lots of examples.
* Even in the 80's, America was already full of fat fat people (5 x worse now - see http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult...)

Here's Bryson on the women of his native state: "I will say this, however--and it's a strange, strange thing--the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable ... 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, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked."

Publishers Weekly wrote: "Some of Bryson's comments are hilarious--if you enjoy the nonstop whining wisecracks of a 36-year-old kid".(less)

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