The Lost Continent
by Bill Bryson

I couldn't find a suitable quote to begin a review of "The Lost Continent." Bryson is one of the strangest writers I have ever read. He is absolutley hilarious and you will definitely find yourself laughing out loud over and over. If you are self-conscious about public places, read this book only in private spaces.
Bryson is searching for "amalgam," a make believe town that he pieced together from typical scenes he remembers from movies and other media from his childhood - clean, smiling townspeople, with a paperboy riding abike and throwing his papers onto porches while two suited men in lockstep whistle by on the street, is an example of what Amalgam would look like.

Deliverance (1972)

Most importantly, Bryson is a harsh critic of the simple-minded mentality of Americans that ends with poorly planned and cheap looking and feeling "McTowns," overweight, ignorant and rude people, greed and violence. It may be possible that his dark and insensitive humor may be a reaction to the mental lapse of Americans in general.

Bryson travels from his hometwon of Des Moines, Iowa into the deep south, across to the southern Atlantic states, on up into New England, back down through the middle west and into the southwest.

Wall Drug in South Dakota

From there he travels north through California and then on through Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, the lower slice of Minnesota and back into Iowa. he makes this trip in his Mom's Chevey Chevette that starts to clonk a lot coming back over the Rockies.

Most memorably are his thoughts of the Deep South, the gauked at Amish in Lancaster, PA, his views of the people of the West (as opposed to the Midwest) and his obsession with the sanitation of motel toilets.

Bryson has a way of insulting each and every population of people that he comes into contact with, but he does it with such wit and humor that you almost can't take him seriously. I wondered through the book at how accurate his research is when speaking of the various locations and people. If his genealisations and quips about subcultures were aimed at living indivuals he would offend each and every one.

Besides the humor, I enjoyed traveling around the country in Bryson's bizarro world, but reading another similar book by Bryson would be exhausting. "A Walk in the Woods" was not as light-hearted, but it was more enjoyable and better researched.