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A review by tylerand
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson
1.0
If you think that all Southern people are uneducated religious zealots who hate black people and speak unintelligibly, you’re going to love this book!
I am an Anglophile myself, but I still love my own country. Bryson seems to think every person in small-town America is a backwards hick. Insinuating that farmers purposefully injure themselves and insert their limbs and digits into farm equipment is beyond degrading. It was the feeblest attempt at being funny. Farmers are the backbone of our country and grow and harvest much of the food we eat. Everyone in the U.S. has a part to play in society, even those (apparently everyone who lives outside of a major city) that Bryson deems stupid and worthless.
I normally love Bryson’s books. I am going to continue reading his other works, but I had to put this book down after Chapter 6. I just couldn’t do it anymore. As a girl from a suburb in the state of Georgia, I was tired of being bashed by this book because of where I am from. I am proud to say that I am well-traveled (despite my “backwoods” upbringing!), and luckily, it has not made me hate my own country or the people who live in it. If he is so cynical about where he came from, I don’t know why he bothered coming back at all.
I am an Anglophile myself, but I still love my own country. Bryson seems to think every person in small-town America is a backwards hick. Insinuating that farmers purposefully injure themselves and insert their limbs and digits into farm equipment is beyond degrading. It was the feeblest attempt at being funny. Farmers are the backbone of our country and grow and harvest much of the food we eat. Everyone in the U.S. has a part to play in society, even those (apparently everyone who lives outside of a major city) that Bryson deems stupid and worthless.
I normally love Bryson’s books. I am going to continue reading his other works, but I had to put this book down after Chapter 6. I just couldn’t do it anymore. As a girl from a suburb in the state of Georgia, I was tired of being bashed by this book because of where I am from. I am proud to say that I am well-traveled (despite my “backwoods” upbringing!), and luckily, it has not made me hate my own country or the people who live in it. If he is so cynical about where he came from, I don’t know why he bothered coming back at all.