Middle-of-the-road Bryson, but still entertaining...
Written: Dec 19 '04 (Updated Feb 02 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Bryson's usual wit, style, and humorously incisive observations...
Cons: ... with the occasional overdone joke.
The Bottom Line: Diverting light reading for planes, trains, or automobiles. Amusing, entertaining, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.
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| slarter's Full Review: Bill Bryson - I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on... |
Bill Bryson is part travel-writer and part social commentator. In Notes from a Small Island, he turned his eye toward his adopted home of Britain, his place of residence for almost two decades. The results were entertaining, endearing, and often riotously funny. Upon his return to the United States, he found himself in a curious position: secure in his identity as an American, he nonetheless found himself baffled by the changes 20 years had wrought in his homeland. As he describes his recollections, he says, "I would like to think that they chart a sort of progress, from being bewildered and often actively appalled in the early days of my return to being bewildered and generally charmed, impressed, and gratified now." His collected essays on this subject have been published in this entertaining little volume entitled I'm a Stranger Here Myself.
In typical Bryson style, and appropriate to the medium in which they were originally published (a weekly column), the essays focus on whatever happened to catch his imagination that week. At times the subject is the small, New Hampshire town in which he resides, sometimes the minutiae of everyday life, and at other times, the monumental idiocy of governmental organizations and the corporate world. A goodly number of the essays are reflections on slice-of-life occurrences sprinkled with Bryson's trademark wit. Others focus on an issue-du-jour that happens to have caught the author's interest – fast food, obesity, accident statistics, air travel, and other assorted societal ills come under his scrutiny. Often this latter category yields some of the funniest material; sometimes nothing is more amusing than the truth.
There are occasions, however, when Bryson's wit, acerbic though it may be, becomes a little too clever. Granted, a column-length essay can only contain so much information, but at times (likely moments of extreme writer's block) he chooses to focus on a particular pet peeve to the exclusion of all others, and runs the joke into the ground. At least three essays of the seventy are extended lampoonings of the over-intricate instructions associated with tax forms, computer help programs, and car rental insurance policies. While these essays are smile-worthy for the first several paragraphs, they become a little wearying after a page or two, no matter how witty the concept.
Bryson is at his best, though, in his social commentary. Of particular annoyance to him is the homogenization of American culture, and the inexorable trend toward greater convenience and less character. He deplores the suburbanization of commerce, the decline of the quaint and charming small town centers. He is irritated by Americans' dependence on the automobile, and the attendant growth of featureless parking lots and mega-malls. He laments the catastrophic incompetence that characterizes many governmental acronyms (FDA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc.), proving time and again that truth can be stranger than fiction. All too often, the reader will find himself nodding along, a wry smile flickering over his lips, as the words 'Why am I not surprised?' flit through his brain.
As far as light reading goes, one generally can't go wrong with Bryson's work. His prose is conversational, accessible, and reads quickly. I'm a Stranger Here Myself is quite perfect for sporadic reading, since its inherently episodic nature delivers short, bite-sized bits of humor that can be experienced almost at random. There is a certain extra enjoyment that can be obtained in reading it straight through, though--often humor is a cumulative affair; the more of it experienced, the more outrageous the hilarity. As far as Bryson goes, this isn't his best work, but it is predictably entertaining. That is, I think, precisely what it's meant to be, which is no bad thing.
© SL, 2004
...it may be too late for the actual write-off, but I think I just unintentionally wrote my first lean-'n'-mean book review. How about that? Wonders never cease, apparently...
Recommended:
Yes
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slarter
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