The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Bradway
Format: Paperback
Pages: 273
Price: $ 25
In an auditorium packed with fans bent double with helpless mirth, Bill Bryson — “the Beatles of travel writers” and author of the bestselling A Short History Of Nearly Everything — assures us that getting paid for making fun of people in his books is his biggest “legalised scam”.
We are only too happy to be scammed by this endearingly funny man in glasses and beard. After all, poor Bill had to suffer an absentminded mother who sent him to school wearing his sister’s lime green Capris, looking just like “Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity”, and a father known for his “disinclination to wear underpants” or anything below the waist (rather like the Disney ducks Dewey, Huey and Louie) in the presence of cops. These and other reminiscences cram Bryson’s latest book.
This looks suspiciously like an elongated spin on his Granta story (Fat Girls in Des Moines), with leftovers from his small-town Lost Continent (“I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.”). As scams go, it isn’t half-bad, reading like a cross between Gerald Durrell’s My Family And Other Animals and Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men In A Boat. The laugh-a-minute gaze into mid-20th century eccentricities in the Mid-west isn’t particularly wicked, but it lingers like his George’s Chili Burger: “gone in minutes, but the farts, it was said, went on forever”.
In place of Big Bang theories in Short History, we have here a comical bang that leaves classmate Willoughby “smoking lightly from the top of his head, and asking for someone to get word to his mom that he loved her,” while his Dad goes into litigation and psychotherapy. In place of the deadly Aussie wildlife (Sunburned Country), we have the waitress who is arrested for using her bust as a tray, Uncle Dee whose unfortunate hole in his throat had a colourful effect on the way he eats, two pages on Milton Milton’s father’s disastrous attempt to dive into a pool, and the doddering Grunds at the shop (Mrs G covered in dust, possibly dead many years, Mr G who could have been eased out of his trousers without him realising). Readers will also remember Katz (who takes the rap here for stolen cratefuls of beer and counterfeit driving licenses masterminded by Bill) as the alcoholic in the far funnier A Walk In The Woods.
{{/usCountry}}In place of Big Bang theories in Short History, we have here a comical bang that leaves classmate Willoughby “smoking lightly from the top of his head, and asking for someone to get word to his mom that he loved her,” while his Dad goes into litigation and psychotherapy. In place of the deadly Aussie wildlife (Sunburned Country), we have the waitress who is arrested for using her bust as a tray, Uncle Dee whose unfortunate hole in his throat had a colourful effect on the way he eats, two pages on Milton Milton’s father’s disastrous attempt to dive into a pool, and the doddering Grunds at the shop (Mrs G covered in dust, possibly dead many years, Mr G who could have been eased out of his trousers without him realising). Readers will also remember Katz (who takes the rap here for stolen cratefuls of beer and counterfeit driving licenses masterminded by Bill) as the alcoholic in the far funnier A Walk In The Woods.
{{/usCountry}}Only Bryson could squeeze juice from something as bland as Iowa in the 50s. He looks back with unabashed nostalgia to an innocent time of tornadoes and tea rooms, comics and the mimeograph, stripteases in fairgrounds, and words no longer heard (icebox, bobby socks, dime store, Cinerama, daddy-o), when men wore hats and ties everywhere, milk still came in bottles and the postman on foot. “I grew up possibly in the scariest period of American history and had no idea of it.” Bryson the adult mentions racism, Commie-bashing McCarthyism, the Cold War, the H bomb, Sputnik.
But all Bryson the kid had was the insular optimism of suburbia. “It was the last time people would be thrilled to own a toaster,” he says. “We didn’t need to know about seatbelts, airbags, smoke detectors, bottled water, or the Heimlich manoeuvre.” “Goodness me, but we were happy people in those days.” The only gloom is over pretty Mary O’ Leary showing her chest to everyone but him, and Bill has our deepest sympathies.