The Lost Continent

Title: The Lost Continent – Travels in Small Town America

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher: Black Swan, 1999 (First published 1989)

ISBN: 9780552998086

Pages: 379

Bill Bryson is the king of travel writing. Just read any one of his works and you are hooked for life. But the trouble with Bryson is that he stimulates such a keen longing in you to see those places and share in his strenuous journey through lesser known places. With Google Street View, we can in fact make it happen somewhat – virtually. This book is about an incredible journey of epic proportions. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Bryson spent most of his adult life in England where he met his wife. He returned briefly to the US and made this tour of the small towns of the country in two stages in 1987-88. Travelling a staggering 22364 km (13978 miles) across 38 states, the author sets a perfect example for all travel writers. Visit to some towns are a repeat of the childhood trips the Bryson family undertook in the continent. In his inimitable style, he takes the readers along a voyage that transcends time and space. Even after a gap of three decades since the book was first published, the narration is crisp and not even a trace of datedness is visible anywhere, except perhaps the availability of better navigation systems now. Readers are assured of a refreshing experience hurtling along with Bryson in his small car across the mountains and valleys of continental America.

The journey avoids big cities as far as possible and follows small towns that don’t offer any distinguishing features except the ubiquitous motel, restaurant, gas station and a few stores. The author claims that America is a nation so firmly attached to small town ideals and so dedicated in its fantasies to small town notions. This enables them to adopt instant friendliness with strangers. In short, it represents everything good in the mores of the society. The first stage of Bryson’s travel took place in October when autumn was silently shedding its leaves to make way for the onset of winter. The book brings the atmosphere alive with a catching reflection of the afternoon. By four o’clock, daylight was going. By five, the sun would drop out of the clouds and was slotting into the distant hills like a coin going into a piggybank. Cold came in instantly and the traveler would long for home.

One difficulty that flummoxed the traveler was the inability of paper maps to size up in scale to show small roads. The continental size of the nation is also partly to blame. Intersections were not clearly discernible causing Bryson to lose way and wander aimlessly on the back roads. That was an era before Sergey Brin and Larry Page had even thought of founding Google, let alone its nectar for travelers – the Google Maps. There are some remarkable firsthand observations in the book. While encountering the Trump Tower in New York, Bryson makes a prescient statement that ‘a guy named Donald Trump, a developer, is slowly taking over New York, building skyscrapers over town with his name on them’ (p.190). Remember, this was in 1987. Now we know what Trump was really keen on back then! Being the land of plenty and richness, there are so few things that last for more than a generation. Americans revere the past only as long as there is some money in it, says the author in a rather unkind manner overlooking the several huge museums he had gone into.

Readers are amazed to notice the racial tensions prevailing in the South of the country. Traditionally, the South was in favour of continuing with the scourge of slavery and went on a civil war to let the barbarity continue. They lost humiliatingly against the Unionists led by Abraham Lincoln. Racial tensions were still simmering in the background during Bryson’s journey. Interactions between the races seem to be small, as the author could ‘see’ and report about blacks and whites chatting at bus stops and a black nurse and a white one travelling together in a car. The civil rights movement gathered momentum in the 1960s and the process of assimilation had still not reached its goal even after two decades. Mississippi is stated to be still racial, as the author claims that he listened to a radio news broadcast about two black men raping a white girl (p.117). Till a few years ago, blacks were not used to sit in restaurant luncheon counters. This was not against the law, but they simply did not dare to do so. In Appalachia, Bryson observes poverty at its worst, even among the Whites. But this poverty is nothing when compared to that in the third world. Forty per cent of the poorest people in the region owned a car and a third of those had been bought new.

Like any other title by Bryson, this one too is immensely satisfying and a real page-turner. His wit and deft handling of awkward situations provide many hours of pleasure to the reader. Like an ideal patriot, there is nothing which enlivens him more than the sight of his home in Iowa at the end of the grueling journey. The scathing criticism of content in American television is matched only by the biting contempt he feels towards the evangelists and pompous promoters of religion. At the end of the journey, Bryson is grateful not only for the good condition of the car, the pleasant weather and safe roads, but for not encountering a single Jehovah’s Witness on the way.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star