The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson, "The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America," (London: Abacus Books; 1990), 293 pages.

In the late 1908s, Bill Bryson, an England-based American writer, returned to the United States to retrace the travels taken on family vacations during his youth. The travels he took were the material for this book. Bryson wanted to visit what he called the magical places of his youth, or perhaps more accurately, the places he visited on family vacations of his youth that formed magical memories for him. Motivated by the recent passing of his father, a semi-famous baseball writer, and looming middle-age, Bryson returned to his home town, borrowed a car, and set out to see small town America. His journey was not just a retracing footsteps of old trips, it also took on a quest to find the dreamy small town of the movie of his youth, a timeless place where Bing Crosby would be the priest, Jimmy Stewart the major, Fred Macmurray the high school principal, and Henry Fonda the owner of the gas station. Bryson called this fictional town Amalgam, a mixture of the picturesque towns encountered in fiction.

Bryson traveled from Des Moines, Iowa to all corners of the lower 48 states of the United States. The book contains detailed descriptions of the places he visited, together with reflections from his childhood. Bryson writes with perception, accuracy and wit. He captures the vast contrasts in the United States, the gaps between the wealthy and the poor, the prevalence of violent crime, and America's large scale abandonment of small town "high street" commercial life in favor of large scale commerce of big box stores and shopping malls. Bryson praises the staggering physical beauty of the United States while simultaneously recoiling at the homogenization of its look alike suburban developments, gas stations, motels and fast food outlets frequented by overweight hicks wearing bad clothes.

The Lost Continent established Bryson's reputation as a humorous travel writer. At times he is a rude smart-alec that prompts deep belly laughs in reader. At times he is cruel when he makes fun of the local residents of the small towns he visits. At the time of the writing of this book, Bryson has lived outside the United States for a long time. This book shows that the America of his youth is gone; Americans' way of life and their towns and cities have changes from how he remembers them. It’s as though Bryson is a foreigner in his own country and he is disgusted with a lot of what he sees. Despite his smart-alec outrage and humorous put-downs, Bryson writes quite beautifully about the places he visits, most notably the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, and numerous small towns in New England and the Mid West. The book also contains many historical fact that enable Bryson to provide a back story to the places he visited thereby acting as a story teller and educator for the reader. Bryson's eye for detail, love of useful facts, historical details, and good yarns are his great strength. His gift is to tell great stories about significant human achievements and follies that move and excite people. In The Lost Continent we see the potential he developed later on in more serious and scholarly books.

If this book has a weakness it’s the uneven pace. Bryson starts slowly, describing in great detail his travels on the Iowa and Illinois back roads. It’s as though he is travelling slowly, but writing a lot. By the end of the book, Bryson covers great distances with less detail. As times it appears as though he is racing across the western states as though he is on a deadline to traverse these great distances in a short period of time and in as few pages as possible so he can flop over the finish line in time for his return flight to England. The pace is that of a sprinter compared to the leisurely stroll at the start of the book. If you can get past this minor blemish, Bryson's "culture shock" and humorous self-obsession with how America has changed, you should enjoy this book for its moments of serious reflection and first-rate story telling about things that both tarnish and make America great. These alone are worth the purchase price of this book.

“Supreme Courtship: A Novel,” by Christopher Buckley

“Supreme Courtship: A Novel,” by Christopher Buckley (New York: Twelve / Hachette Book Group; 2008), 285 pages.

American political institutions have been previously satirized by Christopher Buckley in Thank You For Smoking (political lobbying), Florence of Arabia (diplomacy), and Boomsday (Social Security). In Supreme Courtship, Christopher Buckley satirizes the method of appointing justices to the United States Supreme Court.

Buckley mocks the difficulties sitting Presidents face when nominating a person to the Supreme Court. The stumbling block is the body that can either confirm or not confirm the President’s nomination, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. In Supreme Courtship, the President of the United States unsuccessfully nominated two successive candidates for one vacant seat on the court. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who asked the President to appoint him to the open seat on the Supreme Court, blocked both appointments for entirely spurious or bogus reasons. The President was so angry at the Senate committee for rejecting his perfectly capable nominees that he decided to chose as his third nominee the star of a reality television courtroom show. Naturally, his advisers try to convince him against making such a nomination but the President would not be deterred. The television judge, somewhat reminiscent of Judge Judy, is vivacious, feisty, outspoken and blunt, and not above being convinced by the President to be a nominee to a position she considers herself unqualified to hold. To the horror of Washington insiders (except the President) and to the delight of the public, the President’s third nominee (the television judge) is nominated for the vacant court position, and thereby made subject to confirmations hearings, all while keeping down her day job of being a television star. The Senate Committee is outraged, as is the nominee’s television producer husband who thinks her obligations to fulfill her television contract are more important than being placed on the Supreme Court. From this premise, the story unfolds in two parts; the humorous preparation for the hearings and the actual confirmation hearings, and second, after her confirmation, her actions as a Supreme Court judge during three important decisions, the most important being one that decides the result of a presidential election.

Buckley again succeeds in satirizing America’s political institutions. His method this time is to highlight the juxtaposition between the snobbish, elitist, east-coast educated Washington insiders and the populist, plainspoken vivacious television star of the people, a person who didn’t want to be a Supreme Court judge, who admits that she’s not qualified for the job, but accepts the nomination because the President asked her. Nonetheless, there are a few aspects of this book that some readers may find objectionable. For example, there is some profanity, but not of such frequency to make it all that memorable. There is some implied adultery or fornication that is neither explicit, nor essential to the story. In fact, it could be argued that the entire sub-plot consisting of the romantic relationship between two characters was only included to enable the author to use a play on words in the title. Without this contrived relationship, there would be no courtship to enable the book to be titled Supreme Courtship.

Putting these quibbles aside, the strength of this book’s humor is that it plays to the average American’s distain for Washington D.C. and Washington D.C. insiders. Buckley mocks the Supreme Court justices (who try to one-up each other in their use of Latin legal terms), the hypocrisy of Congressmen who speak of their years of “public service” but really mean “self service.” He also mocks the Washington D.C. establishment’s distain for non-elites that refuse to ingratiate themselves with these insiders, the sort of people that didn’t go to the right college, have memberships of the right club, and live in what is now pejoratively called “flyover country,” the vast expanse of the United States that rests between the two coasts. Despite this stinging rebuke of the American ruling class, Buckley is optimistic about America, average American’s, and the resilience of the institutions of American government. To Buckley, these institutions are so resilient and American people so full of good sense, that, in his view, even a vivacious, feisty and blunt television judge can be placed next to the clowns running one of the highest institutions in the country and against the prevailing wisdom of all, except the general public, do a good job and make the right decisions when it really counts. Who could not enjoy a story such as this?

Boomsday: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Boomsday: A Novel, satirist Christopher Buckley, (New York: Hachette Book Group; 2007), 318 pages.

In Boomsday: A Novel, satirist Christopher Buckley turns his attention to the excesses of the baby boomer generation, and their negligent handling of the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. Buckley’s book imagines an inter-generational public policy war between profligate, entitled, self-indulgent baby boomers and the younger generations that will be stuck with the bill for funding the ponzi schemes known as Social Security and Medicare. The major character in the novel is the aptly named Cassandra Devine, an exceptional student that gained admission to Yale, only to find out after her admission that her father had spent her tuition money on a business start-up, and that she would be forced to pay for college through joining the army. After a brief time in the army, and 10 years in Washington D.C. as a public relations specialist, Cassandra spends her nights as a blogger who campaigns against the excesses of the baby boomers. One night she suggests that baby boomers be given financial incentives to kill themselves by age 75 so as to save their country from the financial burden of caring for them. The idea catches on among the younger voters stuck will the bill for funding baby boomer Social Security and Medicare, and becomes a major public policy issue during a Presidential election.

Buckley’s well written satire again exposes the ridiculousness and comical ways in which Washington D.C. operates. Nonetheless, as entertaining as Buckley’s book is, we should ask ourselves what becomes of the chaos that the main character causes? What does she achieve by proposing such an outrageous policy that becomes the focus of an election campaign? Apart from creating chaos and humorous satire, Buckley seems to say that very little is resolved. Sure, there are interesting and outrageous political debates, and many conflicts and arguments, but in the end, the only thing that has improved is the career prospects of the participants while the issue of the solvency of the major entitlement programs is “kicked down the road.” Most of the characters have better jobs in the end. Perhaps the greatest irony is what happens to Cassandra: in the great tradition of solving political problems, she is appointed to the position of Commissioner for Social Security and thereby made responsible for the running of the system she vociferously opposed. The chief critic is made responsible for administering the system she criticized.

Buckley’s gift is his ability to shine a light on the looming financial calamity facing the U.S.A. in a quick-witted, humorous, and outrageous manner. He’s again written an enjoyable book that mocks American political institutions in a manner that only an insider can, while making “Cassandra-like” warnings of a potential fiscal calamity.

Florence of Arabia: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Florence of Arabia: A Novel by Christopher Buckley, (Random House: New York; 2004), 272 pages, ISBN-10: 1400062233.

In Florence of Arabia: A Novel, Christopher Buckley satirizes the practice and practitioners of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Buckley’s approach is to demonstrate the impact of United States’ ill-thought-out, bumbling, inappropriate, and poorly executed imposition of American’s beliefs and modern progressive views in two fictional Middle East countries.

Buckley’s satire focuses on a career State Department diplomat (Florence Farfalitti) and her single-minded devotion to her career. This devotion appears to be at the exclusion of everything else: she appears to have no family, spouse, or interests outside her career. Florence’s life changes when she becomes part of a diplomatic incident where a wife of a prominent Middle Eastern diplomat approaches her seeking asylum in the United States. The wife is denied asylum, is returned to her home country, and publically beheaded. Florence is outraged by her country’s abandonment of her friend, the asylum seeker. Her outrage spurs her into frenzied activity that produces a policy document outlining plans for changes to the United States Middle East policy to one where female emancipation/liberty/equal are discussed, supported and encouraged. The bosses in the State Department angrily reject Florence’s proposals; however, she is privately recruited by un-named American backers in a secret mission to impose equal rights for women in the fictional Middle East emirate of Matar, the “Switzerland of the Gulf.” She recruits a varied team of experts to implement her plan via the medium of television. Her television station targets repressed Middle Eastern women through a provocative line-up of programs that includes “The Thousand and One Mornings,” a day-time talk show that features self-defense tips to be used by women against their boyfriends during Ramadan. There is also a popular soap opera that features characters that appear to be based on the Matar royal family. There is also a situation comedy about an inept but ruthless squad of religious police.

Florence’s plan, once implemented, changes the Middle East, but not in the way she intended. While the television station programming is very popular and profitable, it provokes a religious backlash against the television station, its staff, the ruling regime of Matar, and eventually a political struggle for the control of the emirate. Chaos, death and an uprising ensue.

The targets of Buckley’s satire in Florence of Arabia are the practitioners of United States foreign policy. Diplomats are hilariously portrayed as dithering do-nothings, whose obsequiousness and timidity towards ruthless tyrannical allies results in the death of persons who seek nothing but liberty. On the other hand, activist diplomats that seek to plant the succulent root of women’s equality in the barren soil of the Middle East end up causing turmoil, instability, death, and harm to the cause they originally intended to promote. Florence of Arabia is fiction/satire: nothing like this could ever happen in real life, could it? To this reviewer, it triggers memories of previous administrations’ “doing God’s work” in Somalia, and expanding democracy in the Middle East, by imposing it on Iraq. Florence of Arabia is both engaging and humorous, while simultaneously appearing as though it could be a non-fictional, cautionary tale for those starry-eyed idealists seeking to change the world for the better through diplomacy.

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley, (New York: Random House; 1994) 228 pages.

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley is a satirical fictional romp that exposes the repugnant work of a tobacco industry lobbyist in Washington D.C. The story follows chief tobacco industry spokesman Nick Naylor, a man desperately trying to save his job from being given to a younger but equally ambitious female co-worker. Naylor is a seasoned media performer who uses rhetorical flourishes, double-talk, manipulation, scientific skepticism to attempt to make the weaker argument stronger, namely, that there is no scientific evidence that smoking is damaging to your health. He plies his trade at conferences, television talk shows and interviews. Naylor knows his days as chief spokesman are numbered and, in a series of interviews, attacks and humiliates critics of the tobacco industry. Naylor gets extensive publicity for his clients in a series of high profile interviews, but his success proves short lived for he is threatened, kidnapped, and poisoned to a state close to death, an event he also uses to gain positive publicity for the tobacco industry. From hereafter, Naylor's life and career begin to unravel. His initial success in obtaining positive publicity for smoking is rapidly followed by an alienation of his lobbyist friends, him becoming a suspect in a F.B.I. investigation into his kidnapping, and the unexpected death of his only patron in the tobacco industry (the tobacco industry's chief industrialist). Nick is left alone to use his wits to defend himself against his co-workers, the F.B.I., a Senate Inquiry and ultimately criminal prosecution.

Buckley's booking is a ripping yarn, a fast moving and engaging close-up examination of the sewer that is political lobbying in Washington D.C. A notable feature of this book is Buckley's ability to make the reader sympathetic to such a loathsome character as Naylor. Perhaps its that Naylor is an under-dog - him against the smokers, scientists, medical profession and media - that makes us delight in his deceptive use of sham rhetoric to dissemble, obfuscate, bluster and charm in such a manner that we find him, at times, both outrageously funny and charming. It is no wonder his protagonists refer to him as Satan. Or, perhaps, we are somewhat sympathetic to the character because he embodies a rugged individuality that can be so appealing - the lone individual (with considerable financial backing mind you) standing up to the self-righteous, sanctimonious, busy-body, know-alls that proliferate Washington D.C. who want to govern, regulate and control all aspects of our lives. Nick Naylor stands up to them, but ultimately both he and his opponents are portrayed in unflattering light, as equal pigs with their snout in the Washington D.C. trough.

Thank You For Smoking may not be enjoyed by lobbyists or federal regulators and other do-gooders, but it is very enjoyable for the rest of us. If you read it in public, don't be surprised if you laugh out loud.

"In a Sunburned Country'" by Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, (New York, Broadway Books, 2001)

ISBN 0-7679-0386-2.

Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country (also titled Down Under in some markets) is an account of his travels in Australia in the 1990's. The title, as Bryson acknowledges, is taken from a poem much beloved in Australia, but hardly known elsewhere. The fact that this poem is largely ignored and overlooked outside Australia is very appropriate considering that Bryson's book is about a largely ignored and overlooked country. The world outside Australia knows that its there yet, for the most part, considers it not worth of its attention. This is quite understandable when you consider that Australia is a largely and empty country. Its also a long way from nearly everywhere, making access difficult, expensive and time consuming. Its population is small by world standards and its place in the world is largely peripheral. Its sports are of little interest, and it doesn't cause trouble or upset other nations. Bryson's view is that we are all the poorer for our ignorance of Australia: to him its a fascinating place populated by good-natured people where interesting things happen. Bryson takes it upon himself to evangelise to the world with a message that we should pay a lot more attention to this ancient and distant land.

Bryson's recalls a series of journeys. In the first section, he spends a few days in Sydney prior to traveling to Perth by train on the Indian-Pacific Railway, the second longest train journey in the world after the Trans-Siberian Railway. He breaks his train trip at the old mining town of Broken Hill, and makes a side journey by four wheel drive vehicle to the opal mining town of White Cliffs, notable for its inhabitants' tendency to live in underground accommodation dug into the hills, done primarily to escape the oppressive heat.

In his second narrative, Bryson explores Sydney and its surrounds, before traveling west by car through the Blue Mountains to various agricultural and horticultural areas. He drives onward to Canberra (Australia's unusual capital city), Adelaide (the only major city not to be settled convicts), and then to Melbourne, where he is joined a former newspaper colleague who shows him the sights of the region.

Bryson then travels by car from Sydney to Surfer's Paradise. During this journey north up part of Australia's ridiculously long east cost, he detours to visit the site of an Aboriginal massacre, a place even ignored or forgotten by Australians. After a plane flight to tropical Cairns, he "dives" on the Great Barrier Reef. After another plane flight to Darwin, he and a colleague drive south through the Northern Territory to Alice Springs, and then to Ayers Rock/Uluru. His final narrative comprises an account of his exploration of the Perth region, and his exploration of the coast of Western Australia north of Perth.

It would not surprise readers familiar with Bryson's other book to know that he again excels at meshing his pithy, humourous and sometimes sarcastic observations with a wide and detailed reading of history (both recent and not so recent), which place many events in context, and gives rise to occasional hilarity. For example, Bryson was startled to read that in 1967, the then Australian Prime Minister (Harold Holt), while one day walking along the beach, plunged into the surf for a swim and was never seen again. Bryson was both astounded that a county could have a Prime Minister that could just disappear, and that news of this event had failed to reach him. He later views Holt's official portrait in Canberra, and visits the beach where he vanished. Upon leaving the beach, a guide almost as an afterthought, tells him that a memorial was built to honor Holt, and the memorial was a municipal swimming pool.

Bryson's incurable curiosity, wide reading, enthusiasm, optimism and openness to the unfamiliar is engaging and effective. His genuine enthusiasm and love for Australia and makes this book immensely enjoyable and makes every reader want to pay more attention to this exciting, isolated and overlooked destination.